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Yes, that has been put to us. We said that we were going to consult on the issue, and I think that the time is right to do it.

For projects under 50MW?

I would have to look back at that. In my time as energy minister—Dr Allan then became the energy minister when I became cabinet secretary—I cannot recall calling in a decision that had been made by a local authority.

You mentioned Spain. At that time, I discussed the issue with someone when I was in Brussels, and actually, it was the generation of wind capacity that brought things back online. However, I take the point more generally. [ has corrected this contribution. See end of report.] I agree that variety is very important and that, as long as we rely on gas to heat our homes, we need to keep supplying it.

I also think that the UK Government needs to look at the injection of hydrogen into the gas grid. We have the infrastructure, with all the gas pipelines—the gas actually goes in nearby, in my constituency—and they are ready to inject hydrogen into the pipeline as well, which would reduce the amount of associated emissions.

I have pressed the UK Government for more decision making around that. As long as we are using gas, we have to look not only at how we bring down the carbon emissions associated with that but at the various electricity-generating and storage opportunities. We have to look at everything, with one exception, as Fergus Ewing knows very well. I know that he does not agree with his former party’s policy on this, but the SNP’s party policy is that we are against new nuclear.

I also make the point that, regardless of where and how it is generated, electricity needs to fit on a grid, and the grid infrastructure is old and creaking. Until the infrastructure is upgraded throughout the UK, we will have a situation in which we are paying developers to switch off generators.

I have heard different views on that. I am not talking about people in my party, and I will not divulge who I heard those views from—it was at a public event, but I do not feel comfortable saying who they are. They had a completely different view and wanted the status quo to remain.

I thank Maurice Golden for setting out the landscape. It is important to be aware of the different roles and the many different players. There are reserved responsibilities associated with transmission in particular. The Electricity Act 1989 is the governing legislation around all the regulations associated with consenting. The Scottish Government’s energy consents unit must conform to everything in the 1989 act. NESO has responsibility for what the transmission network looks like, and must look like, in order to facilitate the getting of the electricity to all the places where it needs to go throughout the whole of the UK.

The previous UK Government worked with NESO, and it has issued its plans for upgrading the transmission infrastructure. Regarding the role of the Scottish Government, ministers have the final consents, once developments have been through the whole process, which is regulated at UK level—although we have planning powers. Any developments over 50MW currently go to the energy consents unit in the Scottish Government; anything under 50MW is decided at local authority level by councillors and the authority. We are currently consulting on changing that threshold—to see what people think about changing it to give more responsibility to councils up to a level beyond 50MW.

We have some of the most stringent environmental conditions in Scotland. A series of documents and assessments must be submitted in applications to the energy consents unit. We do not dictate and cannot dictate to an applicant what the engineering solutions are for their application. Indeed, nowhere in the UK dictates that.

The ECU assesses the application as submitted. Let us say that those in charge of project X want power transmission lines. They have set out the engineering solution that they have found, and they have determined how and where they want to site those lines. We will assess that application as written. We will not dictate in advance that things have to be done in a particular way. It is for them to make an assessment and submit all the documentation associated with environmental impact assessments. That will then go out to all the statutory consultees, which includes local councils. Even if the development is over 50MW and comes to the ECU, local authorities will still be a statutory consultee. If local authorities do not agree with the application as written, it will automatically go to a public inquiry.

If the application goes through the energy consents unit, it will assess all the documentation, assessments and plans that are supplied by the applicant, and then, in accordance with all the regulations and the Electricity Act 1989, it will advise the minister who is making the final determination, with an assessment of what all the statutory consultees have said. It is important to realise that the minister who is looking at that advice can go back to their officials and question certain things, such as, for example, “Why are you giving me this advice when this has happened?”

The minister has to be certain that, when they make a determination, they are not going against any legal advice because, if they do, it might give them an opportunity to turn something down, for example. If officials have given the minister advice to consent to something and all the reasons why, and the minister says, “Nah—I don’t like it,” they need to be certain that they are on solid ground legally, because the decision might be appealed and taken to court.

That is the process and it is very rigorous. Many developers say that we take too long to make determinations. We try our best and we have doubled the capacity of people working in the ECU to streamline the process. That is good for developers, but it is also good for communities, because they get a quicker decision, they know what they are dealing with and it does not drag on for years.

First of all, I want community benefit to be mandatory. The UK Government has consulted on the issue—the consultation is closed and it is assessing the responses—and I am hopeful that we will have a situation in which community benefit is mandatory. Once that is the case, all the issues of the sort that you have mentioned will have to be worked out. Consideration will have to be given to what “community benefit” means and how “community” is defined.

A community’s proximity to the geographical siting of a development, whatever that might be, is the reason why it should benefit. Because the community is hosting that development or infrastructure, there should be a benefit associated with that, as it is right on the community’s doorstep.

The point that you made about Castlemilk relates to line of sight. As I said, I hope that the UK Government agrees to make community benefit mandatory. Once that has happened, we will need to do a piece of work that involves going out to the public to assess what community benefit should look like, what conditions should be associated with it and who should get it.

There is a trade-off to be made, because if we spread the community benefit too thin, people will feel as though they are not getting much of anything, and communities that host the infrastructure will think, “It’s all very well for that neighbouring city over there to get community benefit, but we’re the ones who’ve got this on our doorstep.” There will be different views on that.

However, the first step is to make community benefit mandatory. At the moment, the picture is too piecemeal. I have been to certain communities where really good work has been done on community benefit and people are delighted with how things have gone. However, we all hear from communities that feel extremely aggrieved, because they have been promised something that has not been delivered, they have not been engaged with properly or they have felt that their views have been ignored. Such things need to be made mandatory—the conditions, the guidance and the protocols on such matters need to be set in stone, and the process needs to be based on good practice.

We published guidance on effective community engagement in local development planning in December 2024. Transmission operators are expected to follow that guidance, which was produced by the ECU, so that they deliver consistent and meaningful pre-application consultation and engagement. Because of the extent to which we were hearing from communities on that issue, we could not wait for the UK Government to set out a mandatory process. We wanted to put in place something that meant that I could hold developers to account by saying, “Here’s the good practice that we’ve asked you to follow.” Of course, we do not have the power to make following that guidance mandatory, but it is there.

In addition, we got Planning Aid Scotland to produce an information sheet for communities—that was published in September last year—and there are guidance notes that explain the role of community hearings.

However, to be honest, until community benefit is made mandatory, the rogues who might be out there, whom people feel aggrieved about, can ignore all that. It needs to be made mandatory.

I would just note that all the planning regulations that pertain to Scotland have been passed by this Parliament, and that the Parliament put through national planning framework 4. There are also the regulations associated with the Electricity Act 1989, which are in statute, too. Of course, there are also the statutory consultees and the views that they put in. All of that is taken into account by the reporter.

Robert Martin might be able to give you a little bit more legal background on how the reporter operates.

That is one of the areas in which things could move with regard to community benefit. If a developer comes into an area and has a wind farm development, it could work with the community to share the grid connection for a community energy scheme. That could be a welcome offer for communities.

Substantial developments have been waiting for a long time to get a grid connection. The developers might be told that the development will be connected by a certain time, and then a review is done—as it has been recently—and they will be told that it will actually be five or 10 years beyond what they were originally told. That means that community energy schemes, which generate small amounts of energy, are all the way at the back of the queue.

There will be ways and means in the exercise that I hope we will be able to undertake once—this is wishful thinking—community benefit is made mandatory. That could be one of the opportunities for communities to get a benefit that is not so much about having money on the table—it would certainly not be about having football strips for local primary schools, as important as those are—but involves facilitating communities to have their own community energy scheme that has access to the grid via a shared connection. I think that communities would be excited about those opportunities, for the reasons that you described.

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.