Seòmar agus comataidhean

There are a number of things there. I will talk about what the hubs have done with the funding that they have had to date to give you an idea of the sort of thing that they are doing. They hold events and workshops to reach people and support community groups to take action. The hubs have provided small grants to community projects. They bring new groups into the climate conversation and support groups to apply for wider funding. The core funding helps with the establishment of the climate hubs and their operations, and they provide knock-on support for community groups. People could set up a group in a small community to do more and then apply for funding that might be available in other areas.

I hope that that answers your question, but I can give you a little more detail if you want. The hubs’ primary focus is climate action, which encompasses areas such as energy, transport and waste, but they are also very community based, and enable and empower people to make decisions in their communities about the right actions to take. That advice capacity is very important, because it can lead to community groups being able to access funding. The first tranche of the just transition fund had a participatory budgeting aspect, which you will know well. You can imagine that a climate action hub would be able to point a community in the direction of applying for that or another tranche of funding. There are 24 climate action hubs across Scotland, which means that there is national coverage. The knock-on effect that they will have on smaller climate groups and community groups will be pretty significant.

I think that there is an uplift.

I am looking at the figures, and according to them, I see an uplift of 10 per cent. However, I will check that and come back to you.

Yes. Again, it is spread across some of the schemes that I have outlined to you.

Your feedback on that would be helpful, because we want to go further. Feedback from the committee on the detail that is in what we have produced would be really helpful for us as we develop the approach further. I hope that Mark Ruskell agrees that it is better than it was five years ago, when there was not that level of detail. We are working hard to give the level of detail associated with the budget spend. The pilot and the work that has been done this year are an indication of that, but we are not there yet.

Grangemouth is an immediate priority for obvious reasons. The work that we are doing in Grangemouth will help to inform the just transition plan that I have already announced for Mossmorran. It would have been—gosh—more than a year ago that I had a discussion with the operators of Mossmorran, who were open to working with us on a just transition plan. The immediate priority is Grangemouth, and the learning from that just transition plan for Grangemouth will help to inform the Mossmorran just transition plan. Those are active discussions and I know that Mark Ruskell has been having those discussions, too.

I also want to do a just transition plan for Torness, and I have had early discussions with the operators about that. There should be a just transition plan for all those critical large industrial sites.

The allocation that I have outlined is directly related to the circular economy, and that work is spearheaded by Zero Waste Scotland, which is absolutely critical in delivering a lot of the outcomes.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to the committee about the net zero and energy part of the draft Scottish budget.

The budget for the portfolio is £900 million, which is an increase of £221.1 million from 2024-25. I appreciate the work that the committee is doing in its pre-budget scrutiny; as always, it is an important part of a much longer and wider process.

It might be helpful to set this conversation in the context of the Scottish Government’s overall approach to this year’s budget. The First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government have made it clear that this budget focuses on delivering progress and laying the foundation for Scotland’s long-term success, and that it is set against continued and unprecedented challenges to public finances. The budget focuses resource across the four priorities that are set out in the programme for government, with which we are all familiar: eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency, and ensuring high-quality and sustainable public services.

My joining you today is mainly about the third of those priorities—tackling the climate emergency. In 2025-26, we intend to commit £4.9 billion across all portfolios to investments that will have a positive benefit for climate. The £900 million net zero energy budget will strongly contribute to the other priorities as well, as we scale up renewable energy, restore Scotland’s natural environment and tackle fuel poverty. I hope and strongly believe that we all share those objectives across the Parliament.

I look forward to discussing the net zero and energy budget in detail.

I will use the example of the licence conditions for the ScotWind contracts. The companies and the consortia that bid for those licences have to sign up to the conditions, which include local content with regard to the supply chain. As a result, there is a huge economic benefit to the whole of Scotland—not just the north-east and the Highlands—because we will have companies that are setting up and growing as a result of realising that the supply chain capacity will have to increase. That will not be done by any one region but by the whole of Scotland. By local content, we mean the content of the supply chain in Scotland. Those who were putting the licence conditions together made sure of that. I am looking at Mr Matheson, who was instrumental in that.

The devolution settlement had not happened when most oil and gas was discovered, so we did not have those conditions in place previously. As a result of the devolution of the Crown Estate, we have been able to work with the Crown Estate on licensing the sea bed for offshore wind power generation to ensure that licences come with conditions. However, there will also be conditions around some of the grants and loans that are associated with SNIB and with some of the support that companies get from our enterprise agencies. Some of that is to ensure that there is local content.

You talked about golden handcuffs. The approach is quite light touch, because it is obvious that the supply chain will be anchored in Scotland, as that is where the skills already are. If we get the conditions right, we will have a supply chain that is not just anchored in Scotland; we will potentially have orders from the oil and gas supply chain and orders for ScotWind, so the supply chain will have to vastly increase capacity to be able to serve those two industries. The term “handcuffs” may be overstating it, because it is a no-brainer that the supply chain will be in Scotland, as we already have a very healthy energy supply chain in Scotland, which will have to increase its capacity to serve both sides of the energy sector.

Diarmuid O’Neill has some additional information on that.