Chamber and committees

I suppose that the regulations have come about because of our greater understanding of what is happening in the natural world and how the greenhouse gas inventory is changing over time. Do you anticipate any other changes being made in later years? I know that our understanding of blue carbon, for example, is increasing, although that is currently outside of the inventory; we do not really account for it. Could this be a game changer in increasing our understanding of the science? Might there be an impact further down the line? Is there any sense of that in the international debate within the science community?

On the supply chain, I have heard feedback from parts of the renewable energy industry that, although there are strong targets and a strong ambition in the energy strategy and just transition plan, there is perhaps not a clear pathway towards development of the supply chain or a clear focus on which bits of the supply chain that we want to develop. Might that come on the back of the energy strategy and just transition plan, or are you looking at changing that as a result of the consultation and feedback? I am trying to work out where the issue of supply chain development sits. The Japanese announcement is incredibly welcome, but where does that sit within a wider plan for a supply chain for the offshore industry?

That will be useful. Thank you.

Okay. On funding, there has been discussion in the chamber about the Scottish Government’s contribution, particularly with the emerging energy technologies fund. Can you provide some clarity about what the funding for carbon capture, utilisation and storage might look like and how that relates to the UK Government’s commitment?

The flip side is that, if blue carbon was brought into the inventory, that might affect the targets but it might also provide solutions, such as blue carbon marine protected areas and seagrass or kelp restoration. As well as having to account for an entirely new part of our biosphere in our thinking on the inventory, that might open up opportunities for progress.

Were particular lessons learned from the Beauly to Denny project, which took forever to get through? Landscape-scale mitigations were put in place, communities came forward to seek reductions in the wirescape in their surrounding areas and substations were moved, so some benefits flew from the project as well. Is that feeding into the current thinking? We have been here before with the Beauly to Denny project, where there were debates about undergrounding and everything else.

I want to go back to the issue of community benefit for windfarms. When a lot of the windfarms were being developed in the early noughties, the community benefit payment levels were set quite low. Sometimes, the level is set at around £1,000 a megawatt. Some of those windfarms are seeking to expand or they are repowering. Is that an opportunity to dramatically increase the amount of money that communities are getting per megawatt from those projects as they seek to expand and become more efficient?

The ambition of an extra 12GW is huge, so the potential benefit to communities is huge as well, regardless of whether that is through ownership or, indeed, through a smaller amount of money coming through a community benefit payment.

I want to go back to hydrogen to explore the Government’s vision for that. We have targets in the energy strategy, for 5GW of hydrogen by 2030 and 25GW by 2045. I want to get a sense of where you see that generation coming from and the mix of blue hydrogen versus green hydrogen, or the transition to green hydrogen. Where do you see the 5GW of capacity coming from and how can that shift over time?

I guess that the blue hydrogen would come from Grangemouth and maybe on-site generation at Mossmorran. Beyond that and the Acorn project cluster, are we looking at green hydrogen going forward?