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I must put on the record that there has been significant progress on community energy.

The draft energy strategy and just transition plan has been published, but there are a number of things that we need to bottom out as a result of Supreme Court judgments, particularly those relating to oil and gas licensing. Oil and gas licensing is reserved to the UK Government, but people expect us to take a view on it.

There is no shortage of other energy policy documents that set out our ambition on all sorts of energy. The draft energy strategy has been published for the public, and I have also produced onshore and offshore wind statements and a hydrogen strategy. A great number of policy documents have been published already.

I cannot give an answer to the question about when the final energy strategy will be published.

I just want to say how much I welcome talking about all these issues with you, so I thank the committee for inviting me.

I thought that it would be helpful to bring all the petitions together. I am delighted to be here, as it is the first time that I have appeared before the committee.

These issues are matters of great importance to communities, which I completely understand. The petitions are largely about renewables and low-carbon energy, which represent a large economic opportunity, but they have to be managed in a way that brings people with them. I am serious about the fact that people need to see the benefits of energy developments in Scotland as much as possible. While I have been in post, first as energy minister and now as cabinet secretary, I have tried my best to ensure that we have all the levers, both reserved and devolved, to ensure that that is the case.

Investing in new energy generation and the grid to ensure that energy can securely get to where it is needed is essential for energy security. It is also essential to ensure that we capitalise on the low-carbon energy that Scotland is uniquely placed to generate. It will create thousands of jobs and many opportunities for Scottish businesses. Existing transmission upgrades are required and, to be honest, they are long overdue, because the transmission network is very old and will have been subject to various weather events, which are becoming more ferocious across Scotland. The transmission network can be unstable in places. Last week, during the snowstorms in the north-east and the Highlands, thankfully, there were very few outages and those that we had were short. Last year and the year before that, that was not the case.

Energy systems regulation is largely reserved to the United Kingdom Government. As such, there are issues on which I am only able to seek to influence the UK Government. I will outline those as I talk about the various petitions. I am aware that communities are concerned about the scale of development and the impact that some of those issues, such as battery storage, would have on them as householders. I am happy to talk about that and provide detail on what we are doing to look at some of the issues that have been raised with us.

It is important that we air and discuss all the themes that the petitions raise. I thank everyone who has gone to the trouble of raising a petition. I have had ministerial responsibility for the energy portfolio for three years and have been making the case to successive UK Governments that community benefits associated with developments must be mandatory and that developers’ engagement with communities must be much better and done earlier in the process. I would like there to be updated guidance that is mandated by the UK Government. There have been developments in that space in the past year or so with the new UK Government, which I am able to tell the committee about.

Recent changes that have been made to UK legislation will allow for the introduction of mandatory pre-application engagement and other improvements in the consenting process for large-scale applications. Our planning and consenting systems also ensure that the issues of cumulative impact and the impact on our natural environment will be considered in the decision-making process. Communities should share in our nation’s energy wealth. Last year, communities were offered £30 million a year in community benefits and we are providing support for them to invest in community energy projects through our community and renewable energy resource scheme—CARES. I have ensured that it is resourced to keep pace with the increasing demand for community energy. The ministerial code limits ministers’ ability to engage directly with communities about specific planning applications or developments that may become planning applications, but I am pleased to be able to answer general questions in the round. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions.

That was the result of a combination of a couple of things. There was powdery snow rather than the sort of snow that sticks to overhead transmission lines. I am giving my layman’s assessment, given that I was at the relevant Scottish Government resilience room meetings. There was also a lack of wind—on the whole, it was not particularly windy. Storm Arwen was particularly bad in causing outages because there was an unusual wind pattern that brought down trees in winter, when there would not normally have been wind coming from that particular direction. Trees grow to withstand the wind that they expect. Every day is a school day when you speak to people who deal with such outages. Storm Arwen caused a lot of tree fall, which brought down a lot of lines. On this occasion, there was mainly a particular type of snow and there were not the kinds of winds that would bring down power lines.

No, it would not be fair to say that at all. You talked about flash cars and flash suits—I assume that it was the developers that you were talking about.

I want to make it clear that we have pushed the UK Government to introduce reforms on community engagement as a result of exactly the kind of stories that you have told the committee. Under the devolved settlement, we do not have the ability to make conditions on community engagement and community benefit mandatory and we do not have many of the levers that are associated with electricity infrastructure developments. We have set out good practice principles, but they are toothless, because we do not have those powers.

I engaged early with the UK Government’s energy minister after he was appointed and we discussed these sorts of issues and the need for those two areas to be mandatory, rather than just being set out in good practice principles. We have turned a corner, because a code of practice has been consulted on. The 2025 act is a real step change and provides an opportunity to reform the process and to put such mandatory conditions in place. The next step would be to mandate community benefit, which we talked about previously.

We need to look at each planning application on its own merits. I would say, given the 2025 act and the potential for Scottish ministers to have the power to mandate community engagement, I and my officials will be undertaking a consultation with stakeholders to discuss those issues, so that we can improve the process.

I do not agree that nothing has been happening. There is high demand for grants, loans and associated assistance under the community and renewable energy scheme.

When I first met the UK Government’s energy minister once he had come into post, he talked about the UK Government’s local power plan, and I expressly said to him that he should not reinvent the wheel, because we want to expand the capacity of community and renewable energy, given that demand is so high. I am pleased to say that, off the back of that, I was able to secure funding to augment the capacity of Community Energy Scotland through GB Energy. Funding has come straight to CARES via the Scottish Government. The budget, which was announced yesterday, also includes commitments on community energy.

I have also done work relating to repowering opportunities on publicly owned land. We have put in place a scheme that will, in effect, give communities priority in applying for repowering opportunities, which will involve work through CARES. That was not the case previously.

On Fergus Ewing’s general point, developers working with communities to facilitate more community energy is exactly what I want to see happening. I do not want it just to be a case of there being an offer of money on the table, with the message being, “Do with it what you will.”

For communities that want to leverage private finance in order to have a community energy scheme, I agree with Fergus Ewing that there is exciting potential around mandating community benefits, but there is nothing preventing developers from doing that, on a voluntary basis, at the moment. Some developers have done that, but I want to see more of it. I do not know whether every community will want to do that, but the whole point is that it is up to them. That goes back to Jackson Carlaw’s point that communities should be able to decide how they utilise the community benefits.

However, there is no shortage of demand for community energy projects. I am trying my level best to give communities more opportunities to own their own energy. We have set out the repowering opportunities for Forestry and Land Scotland, although I do not have them in front of me. There are a number of such opportunities. I have actively said that community energy schemes should take priority in applications for repowering opportunities, and CARES will assist communities in that regard.

I must put on the record that there has been significant progress on community energy.