Greens call for transformation in Scots energy

A fundamental reform of Scotland’s energy markets is a priority to ease fuel poverty, according to the Scottish Greens.

Co-leader Patrick Harvie told the party’s conference in Stirling funding should be targeted at insulating homes and people struggling to meet rising bills.

He said the war in Ukraine and increasing uncertainty around international supplies of fossil fuel means the need to ease reliance on fossil fuels is even more pressing.

Meanwhile, co-leader Lorna Slater said the Greens are just getting started in government, with far more to come. She and Harvie became junior ministers at Holyrood six months ago after their party signed a co-operation agreement with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP.

Slater said that deal – which put the Greens in power for the first time anywhere in the UK – had taken the party out of its comfort zone but had also put it right at the heart of the big decisions.

She said that made the “difference between calling for something to be done and being able to directly deliver it”.

An example of this includes the government now looking at introducing legislation which would ban companies in Scotland from dumping unsold goods.

Slater, the circular economy minister, recalled how she had previously pressed the first minister on the “national disgrace of companies across Scotland destroying thousands of unsold items every week, including computer equipment, books and even face masks”. She said legislation would now prevent this.

She added: “That isn’t something that we could have done from the backbenches.”

She also said Scotland was looking to implement a “ban on the most damaging single-use plastics that pollute oceans and litter coasts”.