The question of what the communities which host the drive for renewable energy can expect to get out of it will acquire greater prominence in the year ahead and both Scottish and UK governments must come up with plausible answers soon.
Reeves' Autumn budget was "not the apocalypse" for oil and gas as Labour laid out energy transition plans, writes Brian Wilson.
On the face of it, there is a paradox. Rachel Reeves has inherited a massive black hole in public spending. Large scale infrastructure projects are being cut, left, right and centre.
By this weekend, only one poll will have mattered. The implications for the energy sector will be massive; for relative degrees of good or ill.
You have to go back half a century since energy featured as a major General Election issue.
The big bust-up at Holyrood needed a trigger point and that came when the SNP-Green administration formally dropped its target for a 75% cut in emissions from 1990 by 2030.
The CCC has caught up on realities and is asking hard questions, writes Brian Wilson.
It was all a bit odd at the Scottish Labour conference last month. A few days earlier, the oil and gas industry was shrieking outrage at Labour for proposing a windfall tax on gargantuan profits.
The world is "disappointingly grey" in terms of energy production, writes Brian Wilson as he turns his attention to China's coal industry.
The announcement from PetroIneos that Scotland’s only oil refinery at Grangemouth will close by 2025 can, one hopes, be reversed and time bought.
One of the many sub-plots in the saga of two uncompleted Caledonian MacBrayne ferries at the Ferguson yard in Port Glasgow involves the proposed use of Liquefied Natural Gas to part-fuel them.
And so it came to pass …. I was writing here last month when the announcement on the latest Contract for Difference round was imminent and it appeared a distinct possibility that offshore developers would give it the cold shoulder. As indeed they did.
A former UK Government minister has taken the current regime to task for repeatedly changing who is in charge of the energy brief.
Everyone likes anniversaries, so how about marking this one? On August 5th 1943, the Hydro-Development Act (Scotland) was given Royal Assent. Eighty years ago, at the height of war, the Government of the United Kingdom passed a momentous law directed mainly towards the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Small is beautiful but it’s also nice to be part of something bigger. That applies to many aspects of life and is certainly a sound basis for energy policy which always has to be underpinned by security of supply.
Brian Wilson takes a look at a recent Scottish Parliament committee, which had plenty of "possibilities and doubts" on the future but not a firm agenda on replacing Scotland's energy supply.
The contest to become leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister of Scotland did not get off to an auspicious start. The first week was largely devoted to arguing about the place of God in politics.
While the country cries out for cheap electricity, it seems perverse to fork out hundreds of millions of pounds to pay wind farm operators not to generate electricity.
It is not the snappiest of titles but Ofgem’s Decisions on the new Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment (ASTI) strategy may come to be seen as a landmark document in the evolution of Britain’s energy industry and the Scottish economy.
A month is indeed a long time in politics. Since I last wrote here, we have a new Prime Minister, a crashing pound and an unprecedented scale of intervention in the energy markets in an effort to stave off the worst impacts of impending price rises.
It’s a couple of months since I suggested the energy crisis would be as big as Covid and thereby demand the same scale of response. It wasn’t a very fashionable thought but perceptions have moved rapidly – everywhere, except where it matters most, in government.
Last month, when the much anticipated announcement was made of winners and losers under the Contracts for Difference scheme, it seemed the 20 year struggle for the Western Isles to be connected for generation purposes to the National Grid had finally prevailed.
Setting targets is one thing and meeting them is another. That is the underlying message on which the latest, highly sceptical report by the Committee on Climate Change is built.
An "unprecedented" declaration has been signed by five former UK and Scottish Government ministers urging support for the oil and gas industry.
A ministerial visit that’s long stuck in my mind was to a city called Khanty-Mansiysk far to the north in Siberia. You haven’t heard of it? Well, join a very large club to which I belonged before going there.