Keir Starmer has admitted that Labour needs "seats in Scotland to win the general election".
The Labour leader said "Scotland is central to our plans" in a Q&A session following a speech in Edinburgh on Monday morning.
Starmer was speaking at tidal energy company Nova Innovation in Leith after he announced Labour's publicly-owned energy company, GB Energy, would be headquartered in Scotland.
Labour has also promised to create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs as part of their clean energy plans.
Starmer made a speech before being joined by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for questions.
He said: "Scotland is central to our plans as we go forward for two reasons.
"Of course we need power and we need seats in Scotland to win a general election.
"But there's a secondary, really important matter. And that is, if we are privileged to serve, I want to be the Prime Minister not just of the UK, but for the UK.
"And therefore I want that representation here in Scotland, to bind together everything that we do as an incoming Labour government for the whole of the United Kingdom."
Labour currently only has one Scottish MP. Before 2015, the party had been dominant for decades, winning more than half the Scottish seats in every general election since 1959.
When Labour won a majority in 2005, it would not have done so without its 41 Scottish seats.
This comes after a recent poll suggested Scottish Labour beat the SNP in the next general election. It predicted Labour would win 26 to the SNP's 21.
Sarwar also said that the location of the GB Energy headquarters within Scotland was yet to be decided.
The pair were also joined by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband.
During his speech, Starmer said "that the creative genius of Scotland is critical to our prospects."
He said that Scotland was still showing the "scars" of the Thatcher era and pointed the finger at the SNP for contributing to Labour being "turfed out of power" in 1979.
He said he had a vision of a "a new Scotland, a future Scotland.
"A Scotland that is once again the beating heart of Britain. Because Britain is once again built for and by the solidarity of working people."
He added that the country could face a repeat of the deindustrialisation 1980s if it does not act now on green policy.
"The moment for decisive action is now," he said.
"If we wait until North Sea oil and gas runs out, the opportunities this change can bring for Scotland and your community will pass us by, and that would be a historic mistake.
"An error, for the future of Scotland, as big as the Thatcher Government closing the coal mines, while frittering away the opportunity of the North Sea."
He said that he understood Scots would be "sceptical" about his plans because there is already renewable energy infrastructure but there has been no "jobs boom".
He firmly placed the blame for this with the Scottish and UK Governments: "The Tory-SNP era has failed miserably.
"Less than a quarter of the jobs that the SNP promised have materialised. The simple reason for this is they don’t have a plan and never had a plan. In the case of the Tories, they don’t believe in plans.
"But at a deeper level, neither of them are truly invested in Scotland’s success. For the SNP, any Scottish triumph in Britain is a threat to the ultimate prize, while the Tories welcome such division because they think it works for them, politically."
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