Renewable Energy Technology (Exports)

– in the Scottish Parliament at on 5 December 2019.

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Photo of Gail Ross Gail Ross Scottish National Party

2. To ask the Scottish Government how it supports exports of renewable energy technology. (S5O-03874)

Photo of Ivan McKee Ivan McKee Scottish National Party

Thanks to the Scottish Government’s commitment and the targets that it has introduced, and thanks to the expertise and entrepreneurialism of our energy sector, Scotland is a global centre of excellence in renewables. Scotland’s green energy export impact report, “Scottish Renewables Export Survey 2019”, which was published earlier this year, highlighted that Scottish renewable energy businesses export to 72 countries.

The Scottish offshore wind energy council, which my colleague Mr Wheelhouse co-chairs, is looking not only to maximise supply-chain content of Scottish and United Kingdom projects but to support the supply chain to compete for overseas contracts. It has engaged with the Administrations in California, Massachusetts and New Jersey in relation to offshore wind opportunities.

We want to build on our success and grow a successful and competitive global supply chain.

Photo of Gail Ross Gail Ross Scottish National Party

What support is given to small and medium-sized businesses in the sector, such as JGC Engineering and Technical Services in my constituency?

Photo of Ivan McKee Ivan McKee Scottish National Party

I met JGC Engineering in Boston when I was there recently with a delegation of Scottish renewable energy businesses, which are looking to export to Massachusetts. I had a successful meeting with the governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, in that regard, to promote the technology that we can export from Scotland.

Scottish businesses, including in the renewable energy sector, are being supported with an additional £20 million over the next three years, which the Scottish Government is investing to grow Scottish exports around the world.

Photo of Neil Findlay Neil Findlay Labour

I am pleased to hear that we are investing to grow exports around the world. What is the minister doing to ensure that wind energy projects in Scotland are supplied by companies from Scotland, instead of us being in the farcical situation whereby wind turbines are being imported from Indonesia to Fife, where, only a few yards away, the Burntisland Fabrications yard is standing empty?

Photo of Ivan McKee Ivan McKee Scottish National Party

Mr Findlay will be aware that the Scottish Government stepped in to support BiFab. We are working with it to identify opportunities and ways in which we can support it in getting contracts. At the end of the day, it is a commercial business, but we take any suggestion of unfair competition very seriously, and we are looking to intervene to identify anything that may be deemed as such internationally.

The Scottish Government is hugely focused on the sector and wants to build up the supply chain—it intervened in BiFab precisely for that reason—to ensure that the opportunity and the technology are maintained in Scotland. Where it can, the Scottish Government supports private sector businesses in investing in the supply chain to provide jobs in the renewable energy sector in Scotland.

Photo of Gillian Martin Gillian Martin Scottish National Party

Will the minister outline the sort of policies that the UK Government has so far failed to deliver that would incentivise investment in renewable technology?

Photo of Ivan McKee Ivan McKee Scottish National Party

Scotland’s technology is in a world-leading position. I attended an event at the City of Glasgow College this morning, where international opportunities for further exports of that technology were discussed. However, the UK Government has not been helpful in that regard. Its failure to follow through on the carbon capture scheme and the way that it changed the contracts for difference, resulting in a lack of support for onshore wind power technology, have not helped Scotland’s drive to support its renewable energy sector and to use its world-leading technology to develop and export more internationally.