Chamber and committees

I thank Maurice Golden for setting out the landscape. It is important to be aware of the different roles and the many different players. There are reserved responsibilities associated with transmission in particular. The Electricity Act 1989 is the governing legislation around all the regulations associated with consenting. The Scottish Government’s energy consents unit must conform to everything in the 1989 act. NESO has responsibility for what the transmission network looks like, and must look like, in order to facilitate the getting of the electricity to all the places where it needs to go throughout the whole of the UK.

The previous UK Government worked with NESO, and it has issued its plans for upgrading the transmission infrastructure. Regarding the role of the Scottish Government, ministers have the final consents, once developments have been through the whole process, which is regulated at UK level—although we have planning powers. Any developments over 50MW currently go to the energy consents unit in the Scottish Government; anything under 50MW is decided at local authority level by councillors and the authority. We are currently consulting on changing that threshold—to see what people think about changing it to give more responsibility to councils up to a level beyond 50MW.

We have some of the most stringent environmental conditions in Scotland. A series of documents and assessments must be submitted in applications to the energy consents unit. We do not dictate and cannot dictate to an applicant what the engineering solutions are for their application. Indeed, nowhere in the UK dictates that.

The ECU assesses the application as submitted. Let us say that those in charge of project X want power transmission lines. They have set out the engineering solution that they have found, and they have determined how and where they want to site those lines. We will assess that application as written. We will not dictate in advance that things have to be done in a particular way. It is for them to make an assessment and submit all the documentation associated with environmental impact assessments. That will then go out to all the statutory consultees, which includes local councils. Even if the development is over 50MW and comes to the ECU, local authorities will still be a statutory consultee. If local authorities do not agree with the application as written, it will automatically go to a public inquiry.

If the application goes through the energy consents unit, it will assess all the documentation, assessments and plans that are supplied by the applicant, and then, in accordance with all the regulations and the Electricity Act 1989, it will advise the minister who is making the final determination, with an assessment of what all the statutory consultees have said. It is important to realise that the minister who is looking at that advice can go back to their officials and question certain things, such as, for example, “Why are you giving me this advice when this has happened?”

The minister has to be certain that, when they make a determination, they are not going against any legal advice because, if they do, it might give them an opportunity to turn something down, for example. If officials have given the minister advice to consent to something and all the reasons why, and the minister says, “Nah—I don’t like it,” they need to be certain that they are on solid ground legally, because the decision might be appealed and taken to court.

That is the process and it is very rigorous. Many developers say that we take too long to make determinations. We try our best and we have doubled the capacity of people working in the ECU to streamline the process. That is good for developers, but it is also good for communities, because they get a quicker decision, they know what they are dealing with and it does not drag on for years.

We will reach out to SEPA and, as and when any information becomes available, we will pass that on to the committee.

I will get that information—I do not have the tables with all those figures in front of me. We will produce information for the past few years—

Every point that Fergus Ewing has just made I have absolute sympathy with. That is why we have asked NESO to do the strategic planning work that I mentioned in response to Maurice Golden. The assessment that it will undertake will give us that detail. It is all about energy security.

On constraint payments, I think that they are an absolute scandal, to be honest, and they are one of the reasons why we need to improve capacity in the grid. Why are we paying developers to stop generating? Most people in Scotland will find it absolutely unbelievable that that is the case. That energy—that electricity—has nowhere to go, and the grid upgrades will allow more of it to go into the grid and to be used.

There are also opportunities for more local offtakers to take that electricity, too, and the Scottish Government has been looking at heat networks—the work that Màiri McAllan is doing—and at the high-intensity industries that we are trying to encourage to come to Scotland, as part of the work that Kate Forbes is doing with the green industrial strategy.

The work that we have asked NESO to do will be absolutely fundamental to how we go forward. We need to ascertain where the energy security and resilience weak spots are and plan accordingly, and that very important work needs to be done to inform what we, in turn, will do. That future strategic spatial energy plan is, in effect, what we have commissioned NESO to do, and it will allow us to ascertain exactly where the weak spots are in the Scottish grid and in energy generation. We can then plan on that basis with the expert advice that it will supply us with.

No, it would not be fair to say that at all. You talked about flash cars and flash suits—I assume that it was the developers that you were talking about.

Okay—I just wanted to clarify that.

You have asked me about particular instances in your constituency in the chamber before, and I remember you putting it to me that representatives from various developments had been disrespectful to your constituents. Frankly, I think that that is completely out of order. However, it also lends weight to the need to make community engagement mandatory, and to the point that that must have a code of practice associated with it. At the moment, that does not exist.

However, what does exist at the moment is the reporter, who is completely and utterly independent of anyone. Ministers do not get involved in that process—and for very good reason. The reporter is deployed when there is an objection of the type that you have mentioned, in order to make a dispassionate assessment.

I must put on the record that there has been significant progress on community energy.

The draft energy strategy and just transition plan has been published, but there are a number of things that we need to bottom out as a result of Supreme Court judgments, particularly those relating to oil and gas licensing. Oil and gas licensing is reserved to the UK Government, but people expect us to take a view on it.

There is no shortage of other energy policy documents that set out our ambition on all sorts of energy. The draft energy strategy has been published for the public, and I have also produced onshore and offshore wind statements and a hydrogen strategy. A great number of policy documents have been published already.

I cannot give an answer to the question about when the final energy strategy will be published.

I just want to say how much I welcome talking about all these issues with you, so I thank the committee for inviting me.