Question reference: S6W-05763
- Asked by: Liam Kerr, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 20 January 2022
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Current status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 3 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, in relation to its announcement of £80 million funding for the Scottish Cluster, (a) as a result of this funding, which projects, if any, will not receive or be eligible to receive, support from the Emerging Energies Technology Fund, (b) for which aspect(s) or part(s) of the Scottish Cluster is the funding to be made available, (c) what the application process will be for accessing the funding, and when the application process will open, (d) when the funding will be paid to any successful applicant(s), (e) what proportion of the funding will be available to each applicant(s), (f) what the precise definitions of "certainty" and "due status" are in the phrase "...the Scottish Cluster is given certainty of its due status within the UK sequencing process...", (g) what it has specified as the year 1 outcomes of the funding, (h) with whom has it held formal discussions regarding the decision to make the announcement of the funding, and which organisations they represented, broken down by organisations that (A) are part of the Scottish Cluster and (B) those that are not part of it, and (i) how the figure of £80 million was arrived at.
Answer
As confirmed on 14 January 2022, the Scottish Government has offered financial backing of up to £80 million from the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF) to help the Scottish Cluster project accelerate its development.
As set out in our Climate Change Plan Update 2018-2032, £80 million of funding from the EETF will be directed to projects supporting the development of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) transport and storage network that will further enable negative emissions technologies (NETs) projects to develop in Scotland. This is the basis on which the figure of up to £80 million was developed.
The Scottish Government first offered this financial backing to the UK Government in a letter dated 12 October 2021 (i.e., prior to the UK Government’s announcement of Track-1 clusters on 19 October 2021) to the UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Her Majesty’s Treasury. Our offer was reiterated in a meeting between the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport and the UK Government’s Minister for Energy, Greg Hands, on 13 January 2022.
Our offer of support was made on the basis that the Scottish Cluster is given certainty of its due status within the UK cluster sequencing process.
The Scottish Cluster demonstrated full suitability for Track-1 status based on the competition criteria, but has been designated as a ‘reserve’ cluster. Awarding the Cluster its ‘due status’ would therefore mean ensuring it can continue its development on a Track-1 timeframe.
Despite repeated requests to the UK Government from both the Cluster and Scottish Ministers, the designation of ‘reserve’ status has come with little clarity and no guarantees of future support for the Cluster. As the First Minister stated in her letter to the UK Prime Minister on 04 November 2021, this uncertainty risks delaying the delivery of crucial and strategically important projects including the decarbonisation of Scotland’s largest point industrial emitter at Grangemouth.
The Scottish Government does not hold all the necessary legislative and regulatory powers to allow us to support the Cluster alone; key levers, including access to BEIS business models, are reserved to the UK Government. Further detail on how the financial backing of up to £80 million could best be spent will therefore be determined in due course following further engagement with the UK Government on the Scottish Cluster’s status within the cluster sequencing process.
As detailed above, our offer of support has been made on multiple occasions to the UK Government. Officials also consulted with representatives of the Scottish Cluster.