Douglas Lumsden: How Scottish Conservatives are fighting the SNP’s unaffordable net zero plans

Douglas Lumsden is the Scottish Conservative and Unionist MSP for North East Scotland, and Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Energy and Environment. He is the candidate for Aberdeenshire East in the upcoming Scottish Parliament election.

Every politician agrees that protecting our environment is one of the greatest challenges of our time – and it should go without saying that, of course, climate change is real.

This isn’t where we conservatives take issue. We want to reduce harmful emissions and pass on a sustainable planet for our children, but we are realists; we don’t do virtue signalling or fantasy politics. We deal in facts.

And it is simply a fact that the SNP’s ‘plan’ to reach net zero by 2045 isn’t worth the paper it is written on. Net Zero is just another empty slogan for the nationalists.

They can’t even meet their own targets: they had to scrap their plan to reduce emissions by 75 per cent by 2030, and they’ve missed nine out of 13 of their climate change goals.

But still, they continue to spin. They claim that they’ve only dropped their targets to focus on net zero emissions by 2045. If you believe that, I’ve got some magic beans to sell you.

The only way they could possibly meet their net zero target is by imposing drastic and draconian lifestyle changes on the Scottish people – and these would come with an eye-watering financial cost.

From ripping out gas boilers and installing heat pumps, to upgrading older homes and forcing Scots to buy expensive electric vehicles. These are the changes that the SNP want to force on families within the next two decades.

We Conservatives believe that people shouldn’t be told what to do by politicians, whether they’re wearing a red rosette or a gaudy yellow one. We want to cut emissions, but we want to do it in a Conservative way. That’s why our leader Russell Findlay recently announced our plan for an affordable transition – one that protects our crucial oil and gas industry and keeps bills low for consumers and businesses.

And if that means ditching the 2045 target, then so be it.

We would scrap the SNP’s arbitrary targets and ditch their empty sloganeering. Our approach would use the oil and gas in the North Sea before we spend millions importing it from abroad.

Because we know that while the demand for oil and gas remains, it is common-sense to produce it here at home. It is worth billions to our economy, creates thousands of jobs and it means that our energy security isn’t in the hands of potentially hostile countries.

Businesses in this country already pay more for energy than any other country in the G20. This is crippling our manufacturing sector, but it isn’t enough for Labour and the SNP – they want to go even further by shutting down our oil and gas sector.

They claim that renewable energy alone can power our country, and whilst it’s true that Scotland is blessed in its sources of renewable energy with wind, tidal and solar: what happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, what will power our homes and businesses then?

Some politicians, like Ed Miliband, claim that battery storage will solve this problem, but even if we increase storage capacity eight-fold, we still won’t be able to deliver consistent power.

Now we know that the solution lies in nuclear, but our nation is losing out on abundant clean nuclear energy and jobs because of the SNP’s pig-headed ideological opposition.

They claim they want to reach net zero, but they are letting Torness nuclear power station close, despite it having the capacity to power more than 2 million homes.

That’s why my party, the Scottish Conservative party, would overturn the SNP’s refusal to grant planning permission for nuclear power plants. As long as the local community gives it consent, we would build enough small modular reactors to replace the amount of power lost by the closure of Hunterston B and Torness.

This will bring down bills for householders, guarantee clean and stable energy and cut bills for households.

Having a frank and honest conversation about the affordability of net zero does not mean deterring investment in green industries, but the push for green energy cannot come at any price, nor can it mean taking an axe to Scotland’s countryside.

We are blessed with some of the most stunning scenery anywhere in the world and the instinct to safeguard this is fundamentally Conservative.

But some politicians at Westminster and Holyrood take a different view. Keir Starmer and SNP leader John Swinney are happy to cover our countryside with mega-pylons and install massive banks of batteries across the country.

Rural communities are terrified at the mass industrialisation of our countryside, but Labour and the SNP don’t care. They’re happy to ride roughshod over local concerns. That’s why we would give communities a veto over new energy infrastructure.

We won’t punish drivers, kill our oil and gas industry, force pylons on rural Scots or throw public money at daft schemes that don’t cut emissions or reduce bills.

The ‘just transition’ championed by Labour and the SNP is anything but. That’s why we are fighting for a credible and affordable transition. A transition that puts the people of Scotland first.

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