Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide evidence to the committee today.
Scottish Renewables is the voice of Scotland’s renewable energy industry. It represents more than 270 organisations, including developers and installers, as well as community organisations and companies right through the supply chain. Many of our members are developing projects across a range of scales, from district heating schemes to wind farms, and from hydro power projects to solar panels. Those businesses and communities are helping to deliver the Scottish Government’s target, which all the major parties support, to meet half of all our heat, power and transport needs from renewables by 2030. Those ambitions are extremely challenging and require a joined-up approach across all levels of government and its agencies.
Although we welcome many of the bill’s provisions, we believe that some of the proposals would have unintended consequences for our sector and, as a result, many of the Scottish Government’s national outcomes.
More specifically, I will summarise a few of our recommendations. We recommend that the bill be designed to enable the national outcomes to be achieved within the necessary timescales while minimising costs; that sustainable development should be an explicit purpose of the bill to make it clear that the delivery of the climate change plan, the future climate change act and the energy strategy will be facilitated; that the process for reviewing plans and policies must be able to reflect rapid changes in technology and policy—that is particularly pertinent for energy and carbon reduction; and that the planning system should not be viewed simply as a service for developers but also as a service for the public good that must balance a range of interests, and that it should therefore be resourced by both the public and private sectors.
We also recommend that consideration be given to introducing a new consultee tasked with advising on the socioeconomic impact of applications, to provide balance to those who assess other impacts—for example, the economic development department of the local authority; and that complex applications that require an environmental impact assessment be treated as major projects and not determined under delegated powers, or, at least, given that option. We support the independent planning review recommendations and those of a number of stakeholders who have argued that front loading community involvement is the most effective way to empower people in the process, as opposed to reforms to appeals.
We agree with Community Land Scotland, the Scottish Crofting Federation and others that areas of Scotland that are currently mapped and identified as wild land areas should be balanced with socioeconomic opportunities for Scotland’s rural land, whether that be for crofting, woodlands, renewable energy generation or other opportunities for income.