Time for Enthusiasm on Renewables

Banffshire and the Buchan Coast is one of the beautiful places in the world. Many probably take that for granted. It’s a simple reason to love this place – but it’s one of many good reasons.

We shouldn’t take Scotland for granted. The Scottish Government hasn’t. That’s why we’ve had the most ambitious targets on climate change. We’ve even managed to hit our previous targets six years early. And as recently as last week, Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, Roseanna Cunninghame, announced £400,000 to improve our peatlands. Funding which will be used to improve biodiversity, water quality, and natural flood management. But our work continues.

Climate change affects everything. It affects our crops, our seas and our homes. Over the last few years we have seen weather events that have caused flooding. Here in the North-east homes have been destroyed by flooding. If we fail to tackle climate change, these things will happen more often.

One of the ways we tackle this is through renewable energy. The Scottish Government has been extremely successful on this front – as former Minister for Environment and Climate Change; I took the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 through the Scottish Parliament. I would consider it one of our greatest achievements as a Parliament.

That is why I find the hypocrisy from the Westminster government particularly galling. Last week, Tory Energy Secretary, Greg Clark, took credit for the success of onshore wind in Scotland. At the same time, Mr Clark’s government is responsible for slashing support for the sector.

Mr Clark even managed to debar our island communities from bidding for millions pounds in contracts for difference – Contracts which would allow them to access funding for onshore wind. These island communities have some of the greatest renewables potential in all of Europe.

But this more than just an annoyance. It’s damaging. The Tories damage not only our climate change policies. But also our economy.

If you remember, last November, the Tories dropped another project. It was a competition to set up a carbon capture storage plant. A project that might have seen £1 billion pounds of investment come to Peterhead – giving us the ability to reduce our carbon emissions while creating jobs in the North-east.

Time and again the Tories have taken jobs out of Scotland. Now when they do it, they also are weakening our ability to tackle climate change. If they care about people having decent jobs here ­– why slash funding to a growing sector that creates high paid, high skilled jobs?

The UK Government have shown little concern for the environment and even less regard for creating jobs in Scotland. They choose to wreak havoc with renewables funding and hinder our ability to tackle climate change.

The Scottish Government has a different approach. We recognise the need to tackle climate change and also realise the potential to create jobs in Scotland. It’s the Scottish Government that has tackled climate change in Scotland – not the UK Government. It’s time the Conservatives found some of their own achievements on climate change, instead of stealing ours. I for one would welcome it.