Question reference: S6W-26512
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 27 March 2024
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Current status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 16 April 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide the research used as the basis for the reported comments of the Minister for Energy, Just Transition and Fair Work, during the March 2024 Scotonomics Festival of Economics, that Scotland will "potentially not even have the population capacity to deal with the amount of jobs" created by the energy transition away from fossil fuels.
Answer
The Scottish Government has not conducted any specific research on the question of whether Scotland’s population has the capacity to deal with the number of jobs created from the energy transition.
However, it is clear that Scotland is facing a set of long-term demographic challenges, including an ageing workforce, and perhaps the most stark projection is that as of 2033 Scotland’s overall population will begin to decline, and this is exacerbated by the impact of the UK's exit from the EU and subsequent loss of freedom of movement of EU members wishing to live, study and work in Scotland.
Scotland’s long-term demographic challenges will have impacts for sectors, particularly those that are expected to be fast growing, like net zero. Independent analysis commissioned by the Scottish Government and conducted by Ernst and Young (EY) suggests that with the right support there could be almost 80,000 jobs in the low carbon energy production sector and a net-positive impact for overall energy production jobs by 2050.
In our forthcoming Just Transition Plans, the Scottish Government will set out how we intend to support existing workers and new entrants to the workforce to take advantage of these opportunities and deliver a just transition to net zero by 2045.