He also called for it to do so sooner rather than later and give Scotland the same implementation ‘discretion’ it has enjoyed in the past.

“The UK government is moving from a very definite and well understood mechanism of supporting renewables through ROCs to a mechanism that is less well understood and where the details aren’t there at present,” the first minister told edie, speaking at the All-Energy Exhibition in Aberdeen yesterday (May 23).

After also voicing some energy-mix concerns, particularly that a lot was being constructed to give support to the nuclear industry, the Mr Salmond suggested that time pressures were beginning to build in relation to the UK’s new energy legislation.

“Pieces of the legislative jigsaw still have to come into place and they need to come into place quickly because people are making decisions now about the future,” he said. “It’s also important to make sure that what replaces ROCs is predictable so that we get the same certainly out to the new mechanism as we had out of ROCs.”

Having opened All-Energy with the news that renewable energy had moved ahead of the Scotch Whisky industry in job numbers, with a total of 11,000 now employed, the minister ended with message that Scotland needs to retain its ‘control’ over future support implementations.

“We want the same discretion over the new mechanism, over CfDs, as we had over ROCs,” he said. “That way we can continue to protect Scottish interests and investment.”

Edie Staff

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