Scotland’s supply of energy is secure and Russian gas imports can be easily replaced with other sources, Energy Secretary Michael Matheson has said.
He was responding to calls from the Conservatives for the Scottish Government to reconsider its position on North Sea oil and gas in light of the war in Ukraine - and concerns about the supply of gas to Europe.
Natural gas from Russia accounts for a third of Europe’s consumption of the fossil fuel.
The EU is considering plans to cut these imports dramatically and US President Joe Biden yesterday decided to ban Russian oil imports.
Speaking in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday, Matheson reiterated the government’s position that unlimited extraction of fossil fuels was not consistent with climate obligations.
He said: “Scotland and the UK as a whole has security of energy supplies as it stands at the present moment.
“It has a very low reliance on importing gas from Russia, apparently around 2%, which could easily be displaced by alternative routes.”
Saying there was no issue around security of supply, he added: “We are at the point where we have an equivalent of Scotland’s domestic electricity supply, some 80% (or) 90% of it, now coming from renewable sources.”
He was responding to questions from Conservative MSP Liam Kerr, who asked if a full investigation into future energy security was carried out.
“The UK Government has been clear that we must ramp up domestic gas production to replace Russian supplies and reduce costs on UK families,” he said, noting that SNP politicians, including Ian Blackford and Fergus Ewing, had called for more homegrown gas to ensure security of supply.
Kerr added: “What evidence does the Cabinet Secretary have that convinces him that in rejecting more domestic production, he and Nicola Sturgeon are right, and everybody else is wrong?”
Matheson said the climate crisis had not gone away. “The answer to the member’s question is to step up the decarbonisation of our energy system.
“Just in the way in which Germany are proposing to do by bringing forward their target by some 15 years, just by the way in which the Dutch Prime Minister said yesterday when he was in London, sharing a platform with Boris Johnson.
“The answer to this is to decarbonise at a faster rate.”
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