Chamber and committees

I have a final question for Emily Rice. Clare Lavelle rightly mentioned the Climate Change Committee. It has said, among many interesting things, that there will be more frequent and more intense weather events as we become more dependent on renewable energy generation. Do you think that, if we put so much development and time into renewable technologies such as solar and move away from things such as nuclear energy and North Sea oil and gas, we will be increasingly subject to the risks that the Climate Change Committee has warned us of and that our energy security will be threatened?

Picking up on the last point that Stuart Haszeldine made, I note that the draft energy strategy has a presumption against new oil and gas exploration while, at the same time, committing to developing a Scottish carbon capture use and storage cluster. Given the key role that the North Sea fossil fuel companies will play in developing skills and funding CCUS and other renewables, is there, in your view, a risk that the draft strategy’s positioning might hinder development of a Scottish cluster, to say nothing of other renewables such as hydrogen?

I am asking whether, in its presumption against new oil and gas exploration, the draft energy strategy might inadvertently hinder the development of the technologies that we have heard so much about.

I turn to Clare Lavelle. That answer was interesting, but it did not answer the question that I posed. When does green hydrogen, solar or any other renewable technology get to such a point that we can generate non-intermittent energy such that we have no further need for nuclear-generated energy or oil and gas-generated energy?

I am grateful for that response.

I want clarification of something that was mentioned earlier. I will put this to Scott Mathieson and then Aileen McLeod. Scott talked about regulatory frameworks. My understanding is that Ofgem will set price controls that will regulate how much Scottish Power and SSE can spend on investment and innovation during a particular period. I understand that both transmission and distribution are in the regulated periods until 2028. What scope is there to alter your investment plans in response to changing circumstances, changing technologies and changing priorities during those regulated periods?

I am grateful. Aileen, would you like to add to that, or is your answer similar?

Will you publish the evidence that you have collated that has led you to come to that conclusion?

It is a brief question on the practicalities. Mercedes Villalba asked what I thought was a salient question on hospitality. As I understand it, Biffa is the only logistics operator in the scheme, so hospitality venues will be required to work with Biffa. Can you tell the committee why the contract was not put out to tender? In any event—and perhaps more crucially—what will happen to existing contracts that venues have with other waste management companies when Biffa takes over?

For absolute clarity: you do not recognise the warning that 40 per cent of products could disappear.