A potential split on the future of North Sea energy in an independent Scotland has opened up as the Greens insisted they would oppose any new extraction of oil and gas.
Patrick Harvie, who joined the Scottish Government in August as part of a power-sharing agreement with the SNP, said fossil fuels would be wound down and replaced with renewable sources.
It comes as Michael Matheson, the SNP's net zero spokesman, claimed this week that some oil extraction would continue if Scots voted in favour of independence in the future.
“We’re still some way off from decarbonising our society and we will still require an access to a level of hydrocarbons,” the SNP MSP had said.
But Greens co-leader Harvie rejected that position.
“This is one of the issues where we’ve been very clear in the co-operation agreement. It’s an issue where the Greens and the SNP don’t have a fully shared position,” he said.
“The Greens are very clear, as are the majority of the world’s climate experts, including the likes of the International Energy Authority, who say no new oil and gas extraction.
“That’s our position, that’s the position of, I think, a great many people here at Cop and I think it’s the position that all of the Scottish political landscape will get to as well.
“It’s only a few months since every political party, excluding the Greens, were supporting maximum economic extraction – that’s now dead as a policy. It’s only the Conservatives who are isolated in pretending you can carry on with that and take the climate emergency seriously.”
Harvie added: “That shift in the political landscape hasn’t yet reached where the Greens are at and, I think, a lot of people understand that two political parties can agree on some things, disagree on others and still find ways to work together constructively.
“But I think everybody, ultimately, is going to have to arrive at the point of saying, ‘oil and gas is not our future’, let’s harness the immense renewable potential of Scotland.”
Harvie also tried to counter previous criticism of Greenpeace after he suggested the environmental activists did not understand the political landscape of Scotland after they criticised the First Minister’s position on the controversial Cambo oil field.
The Greens co-leader, who stressed he is a donor and supporter of Greenpeace, rejected the idea he was in a “briefing war” with the pressure group, saying: “I certainly didn’t do that – I made some very supportive comments about what Greenpeace do and I said they’re a little bit more tuned into UK politics than Scottish politics.”
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