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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.

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.

To go back to what Fergus Ewing said, there is an opportunity for constrained power to be used to produce green hydrogen, although the potential for that has not yet been exploited at scale. As you rightly said, in your constituency, the H100 Fife project is leading the way in proving the point that hydrogen could be safely used for heating homes. There are different views on whether that is feasible from a cost point of view, but the H100 project is seeking to prove the concept. I was delighted to be able to visit it to see what it is doing.

Water usage, whether for hydrogen or anything else, is continually assessed by Scottish Water and SEPA. Hydrogen would not be the only high water usage industry. There are many high water usage industries in Scotland, including breweries and distilleries, and hydrogen would be another one. We would need to ensure that we had the volume and the capacity to allow that. Anyone who required to use a great deal of water would have to engage with SEPA and Scottish Water on their plans before they could implement them, because their business case would depend on that water being available. They would need to assess whether they had the volumes that they needed before they put in a planning application associated with what they wanted to do.

In general, water scarcity is becoming a more pressing issue in Scotland. Last year, we had record water scarcity, and river levels were very low. That started a lot earlier in the year than is usually the case. SEPA issues licences for water abstraction from watercourses, and quite a number of people who would ordinarily apply for such licences, such as farmers, were told that they could not take water from watercourses over a period of several months.

Scottish Water monitors the volumes in its reservoirs. Until fairly recently—up until the past few months—Scottish Water’s reservoirs were back at their normal levels, except in Dundee. People think that “sunny Dundee” is just something that a Dundonian came up with for a laugh, but it is genuinely true—rainfall levels in the Dundee area are a lot lower than those in the rest of Scotland. That is why Scottish Water has implemented a household usage pilot in Dundee.

Given the more general concerns that exist, Scottish Water, SEPA and the Scottish Government are working together to produce water scarcity reports and assessments of where water is needed. Consideration needs to be given to the availability of water, whether to produce hydrogen or for anything else. For example, a lot of the beer that Brewdog makes is made in my constituency, which is where the company’s headquarters is. Brewdog had to engage with Scottish Water, because it wanted to expand and it required more water. At the same time, planning applications for new housing developments were going through the council.

An assessment is made at local level of what water is required in particular areas, and that would be the case in relation to hydrogen production.

More generally, your question gives me the opportunity to mention a hobby-horse of mine. We must start treating our water as a precious resource. The fact that it is rainy in Scotland does not mean that we have an abundance of water. We have the best water in the UK when it comes to water quality. However, the supply is not infinite, and we should not take its availability for granted. Scottish Water puts millions of pounds into upgrading its facilities to stop leakages and to bring down the emissions associated with processing our water, and SEPA constantly monitors our river sources and our watercourses.

If a hydrogen producer wanted to invest an awful lot of money in a way that involved counting on water coming from a particular watercourse, that would have to be bottomed out with SEPA well before it put in a planning application.

If someone is in danger of being told by SEPA in the months between April and September that they might not get a licence to take water, that is a pretty precarious position for their business to be in. A combination of all those things applies not just to hydrogen but to anyone who needs a water supply to run their business or housing development, or whatever it is.

Scottish Water has a critical role to play in that through investment in its infrastructure, and it is well apprised of the potential requirements for water in all communities—it will get that information through councils and local development plans. It will also be mindful of any particular developments that might need water. Scottish Water also knows about the Government’s hydrogen strategy and where population growth and industrial growth are predicted to take place in Scotland.

Of course, individual projects cannot be predicted. There are many different factors relevant to whether hydrogen will become a big player in the energy industry in Scotland. A lot will depend on the market and demand, and a lot will depend on the infrastructure that might be required to get the hydrogen to mainland Europe. You mentioned the fact that the Germans want to use it for making steel, and they are looking at which countries can supply them with it.

Scottish Water cannot predict what applications will come in that will require high water usage. A lot of water will be required not only to produce hydrogen—for example, data centres require coolants and water supply. However, Scottish Water works closely with the Government on its industrial strategy. I have regular meetings with Scottish Water on a range of issues.

We need to get across the message about water scarcity. Scottish Water works with the Scottish Government and the general public on our general water usage, even at household level. Water is not an infinite and cost-free resource. It costs money to get it to the required quality, and we do not want to waste it. We need to get that message across. Businesses pay directly for their water, so they are cognisant of the need not to waste it.

We do not meter water at household level, as is done in England, and we do not want to go down that route. However, in England, where water is metered, people conserve it more. I would prefer us to have a communications campaign for the Scottish public—indeed, Scottish Water does—to get people to think about how much water they use and how they use it.

SEPA is doing a bit of work on that at the moment. I was interested to see the petition come through, so I reached out to SEPA, which has a working group that is dedicated to pump storage hydro. It is exploring all the challenges that are associated with pump storage hydro and the interaction with watercourses and whether there would be loss or whatever. The group is also looking at the cumulative impacts and at the lack of formal co-ordination agreements for developers who are working on the same body of water. It is also looking at the impact of pump storage hydro on fish more generally, which includes the subject of the petition.

SEPA is developing guidance on the consideration of the cumulative impacts, and I believe that it will consult externally on that. I do not know whether it is doing that yet, but I can find out when it will. That will give the people who lodged the petition and people who are interested in the issue an opportunity to engage in the consultation and to provide their knowledge of the impacts that pump storage hydro is having.

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.

You have asked me about particular instances in your constituency in the chamber before, and I remember you putting it to me that representatives from various developments had been disrespectful to your constituents. Frankly, I think that that is completely out of order. However, it also lends weight to the need to make community engagement mandatory, and to the point that that must have a code of practice associated with it. At the moment, that does not exist.

However, what does exist at the moment is the reporter, who is completely and utterly independent of anyone. Ministers do not get involved in that process—and for very good reason. The reporter is deployed when there is an objection of the type that you have mentioned, in order to make a dispassionate assessment.

Absolutely. When—if—community engagement becomes mandatory, we are going to consult widely on the issue and the good practice that is associated with it. However, the issue that you have just described, of people not seeing community benefit, is the cause of the problem of communities not buying into these developments.

I am almost becoming like a broken record, but we are no longer in the realms of painting the scout hut or buying football strips for the school team. There has to be a substantial and meaningful community benefit that will improve that community. I believe very strongly that it should be the community that decides how the money is spent.

I will give you an example from my constituency. Vattenfall had a process in which it worked directly with all the associated communities around its Aberdeen offshore wind farm, including community councils and community groups, to see where its community benefit should go. The process was quite wide ranging, and there are communities in the west of Aberdeenshire that cannot see the sea that got community benefit from it while some coastal communities that bid for money did not get any. It is all about balance. Again, spreading the community benefit too thin is a problem.

I am not currying favour with you, convener, but I would say that it is a bit disappointing that you only got a park bench out of it. However, what a great dog walk Whitelee is. I have family in the area, and we often go up there to walk our dogs.

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 agree with that, but I would also expand it. As you rightly said, the Scottish Parliament agreed to national planning framework 4, which set the narrative that we want to facilitate as much low-carbon energy as possible to reduce our emissions, but also for energy security reasons. The Scottish Government does not have responsibility for energy security, but we have an interest in it. We also have an interest in economic growth in Scotland, making sure that we provide jobs for the future and that we have an energy industry in Scotland that is able to adapt and pivot to new energies.

So, yes, we set a narrative, but Parliament also set a narrative by agreeing to NPF4, which gives guidance to planning authorities throughout the land—at local authority level and more generally—on what is expected in relation to planning applications.