SNP members demand creation of state-run energy company | Scotland

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Scottish National Party members backed a call for a state-run energy company on the second day of the Autumn Conference, four years after leader Nicola Sturgeon pledged to set up one. The move would be seen as a direct rebuke to the leadership’s failure to deliver on its promise.

On Saturday, activists overwhelmingly supported a proposal to create a Scottish national energy company, which First Minister Nicola Sturgeon first promised in October 2017 at an earlier conference.

It recently emerged that ministers halted the plan, refocusing efforts on a new national public energy agency.

Sturgeon told 2017 conference delegates that a “publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company” with fees “as close to cost as possible” will be created by 2021.

The Scottish government has since said work on the scheme has been halted by the pandemic and changed by changes in the energy market.

The proposal, approved by SNP members 527 to six, stipulated that a new national energy company could set “a standard for Scottish clean energy production that prioritizes electricity made in Scotland”.

Rob Gibson, former head of SNP MSP, told the conference: “The Scottish National Energy Company can guide us into an all-clean energy future.”

He added: “Why do we have electric cars if they are nuclear or gas-powered, they must run on clean electricity. The renewable public spirit will create a Scottish national energy company, and that is our goal.”

Responding to the vote, Scottish Conservative energy spokesman Liam Kerr said: “SNP has spent half a million pounds on a public energy company with great fanfare. Like so many of their undertakings over the years, they have all been headlines and have no substance.”

He noted that the proposal reflected the party’s recent power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens: “The company’s shelves have clearly tarnished the new partnership with the Greens. Perhaps the move towards renewables was not as important to them as getting into government.”

Tomorrow delegates will debate a motion calling for the referendum bill to be introduced at the “first moment” after the current public health crisis ends.

On Friday, Sturgeon insisted that holding a second independence referendum in the next two years is a realistic timetable. And she announced in her government program earlier this week that civil servants would resume work on her plans to conduct the vote by the end of 2023.

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