A warmer, greener Scotland
Scotland is blessed with abundant renewable energy resources, with enough wind, wave and solar power to meet our needs many times over. Yet energy bills keep rising, homes stay cold, and profits flow to distant shareholders while communities see little benefit.
This isn’t an accident: the system is designed to extract wealth, not deliver warmth. For decades, fossil fuel companies have banked record profits, while the energy price shock that began in 2022 has pushed many more people into fuel poverty. It’s a broken system and impossible to ignore. Despite broad public support for renewables, those with vested interests are funding campaigns that sow doubt, using the same playbook as climate change deniers.
The Scottish Greens believe energy should be an affordable public good, not a private commodity. With the huge strides in renewables technology, energy should be cheap in Scotland, but Westminster holds the power to de-link cheaper electricity prices from extortionate international gas prices.
Scotland needs full control over our energy generation, licensing and transmission, to make sure everyone here benefits from clean, cheap, abundant renewable energy. Meanwhile though, we can still make progress by rolling out a comprehensive household retrofitting programme so that people have warm homes they can afford to heat without paying the earth.
The Scottish Greens don’t believe in the false solution of new nuclear projects owned by overseas mega-corporations – it’s incredibly slow to deploy and extortionately expensive. Instead, communities must be empowered to own more renewable energy assets, receiving a share of the profits to invest in local infrastructure. We want to put more of Scotland’s energy system into genuine community ownership, not token gestures.
- Support an immediate end to new oil and gas extraction. While Westminster retains the power to issue new oil and gas exploration and extraction licenses, the next Scottish government must leverage all the powers available under devolution to halt any further climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects.
- Lead a renewables revolution with a £600 million investment programme in onshore and offshore wind, tidal and solar, including redeploying the millions of public funding that’s been pledged to unproven, greenwashing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.
- Consolidate Scotland as the world leader in marine energy innovation by providing stability to the wave and tidal sectors, and establishing a world leading offshore wind test site.
- Bring back the Heat in Buildings (Scotland) Bill to set a clear routemap for decarbonising Scotland’s homes and buildings by 2045; to include a Clean Heat Standard and target dates for compliance, set in consultation with individuals, local councils, social housing providers and industry experts.
- Help homeowners cut their energy bills by making their properties the most energy efficient they can be, expanding current support schemes and rolling out bespoke support for those in older properties.
- Ensure Scotland benefits from the jobs and investment in energy efficiency, by working with industry to source a minimum percentage of their materials and components from Scotland.
- Pay for people to install heat pumps, solar panels with linked battery storage and other green heating technologies on their homes, with help available for homeowners to remove fossil fuel boilers, to meet a 2035 phaseout target for most households.
- Support the expansion of locally-owned district heat networks by increasing the Scottish Heat Network Fund, supporting the wider rollout of low-carbon, affordable heat to around 1-in-6 homes in Scotland’s densely-populated urban areas, alongside expanding legislative and technical support for the development of low-carbon heat networks.
- Deliver at least 1GW of new, truly community-owned energy projects by 2030, with a nation-wide review to maximise opportunities for community projects on publicly-owned land and exploring legislative options to enable councils and public agencies to enter into energy supply contracts with community-owned projects.
- Increase the current government funding through the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme covering feasibility studies, capital costs and project staff, and develop a standardised approach for industry to engage with community groups on developing projects and partnerships.
- Establish a Scottish Community Wealth Fund to deliver equitable distribution of a proportion of the wealth being generated by Scotland’s renewable energy resources. Large renewables developers would be required to contribute a percentage of their profits to this fund – in addition to any existing local benefit schemes – which would then be disbursed to communities across the country as determined by an independent board of community representatives.
- Invest in Scotland’s planning system to be fully capable of accelerating the rollout of grid infrastructure so that affordable renewable energy can reach all parts of the country. We will invest in recruitment, training and professional development so that infrastructure proposals can be assessed in a timely fashion while incorporating community feedback.
- Remain firmly opposed to the expensive, false solution of new nuclear generation in Scotland, including opposition to small nuclear reactors.
