The Scottish Government is the devolved government for Scotland, exercising responsibility for environmental regulation and consenting of energy infrastructure. SG is the competent authority for the EU CO2 storage directive and Scottish Ministers exercise the CO2 storage licensing functions under the Energy Act 2008.
Expertise and capacity
As the principal regulator for CCS in Scotland, the SG has a team of dedicated professional staff who have expertise in consenting power stations and in managing licensing of energy and environmental activities in the offshore area through our agency, Marine Scotland The SG is leading a regulatory group of the principal CCS regulators that will be essential for a CO2 licence application in Scotland (SG, UK Government Department of Energy & Climate Change, Crown Estate, Health & Safety Executive, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Marine Scotland). The SG will use its position in this group to ensure that the dry run licence application process is fully tested amongst all of the regulators to give a complete and thorough assessment of all aspects of the licensing framework, ensuring best practice learning for the European Commission and competent authorities in other Member States. As principal consenting authority, the Scottish Government is also responsible for ensuring that project developers adequately consult the public on all aspects of their licence proposals, and can therefore quality-check the public engagement work proposed by ECN as part of WP8, which will interact with WP3. As the Managing Authority for European Structural Funds in Scotland, the Scottish Government has a long and successful history of managing and participating in large European funding programmes, including in partnership with other EU member states. The Scottish Government is a member of the ZEP Platform’s Government Group and is a member of the European Commission’s Berlin Forum and its Sustainable Fossil Fuels Working Group.