Energy Factfile

Tables-November 2009

The Government is committed to legislating for an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, the most ambitious target anywhere in the world.
The Scottish Government has an ambitious but entirely achievable target for Scotland to provide 50 per cent of Scottish electricity consumption from renewables by 2020.
Earlier this year Scotland marked a milestone in renewables - Scotland now has more than three Gigawatts of installed renewables capacity, enough to power 1.5 million homes with clean, green energy. Adding in all the potential energy from already approved renewable projects to those already operating brings the total to over 5.5 Gigawatts - already in excess of our target of 31% by 2011.
Renewable resources have been estimated at more than 60 Gigawatts, ten times Scotland's peak electricity consumption.
Boosting renewable energy and maintaining Scotland's oil and gas industry will also make a significant and important contribution to a sustainable economy.

Scotland's seas can provide 25 per cent of Europe's tidal power and 10 per cent of its wave power

The world-leading European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney is testing new technologies for commercial deployment.

The Crown Estate, which owns the sea bed is in the process awarding leases for commercial marine energy projects in Scottish waters, beginning in the Pentland Firth.

To put Scotland at the heart of European green energy developments, last month we launched the Scottish European Green Energy Centre. This new hub, based in Aberdeen but working around Europe, will play a pivotal role in the research, development and deployment of clean energy technologies, such as carbon capture and renewable heat.

Scotland can get windy! As a result, onshore wind power has recently overtaken hydro power as the most common form of renewable energy in Scotland.

The largest onshore wind farm in Europe is the 152 turbine Clyde wind farm in South Lanarkshire. This farm is capable of powering up to 320,000 homes.

Scotland was the one of the first countries in the world where electricity was harnessed from the water around us. That legacy is still visible - Scotland's ambitious hydro building programme in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in infrastructure which still produces electricity today.

More hydro schemes are in the pipeline with the Glendoe project near Fort Augustus, scheduled to open next spring, set to be a significant addition

And a recent study - The Scottish Hydropower Resource Study - has found that there could be as much economically viable untapped hydropower potential to power a quarter of Scotland's homes.

North Sea oil was discovered in 1967 with first production in 1975. The North Sea contains Western Europe's largest oil and natural gas reserves
Aberdeen is the world's second largest energy hub, behind only Houston and over 100,000 highly skilled oil and gas jobs exist in Scotland.
To date, the UK has produced just over 36 billion barrels of oil equivalent The Scottish Government aims to ensure that Scotland retains a thriving oil and gas industry for generations to come by ensuring that our skills are maintained and developed to harness continuing opportunities at home and abroad.