Everyone needs to reduce their reliance on oil and gas but that's not a quick switch to flick instantly when homes are heated and lit by it, majority of products (including medical supplies) are made from it and we would end up importing to cover those demands during transition.
Yy to this. It seems nonsensical to me that "we" think it's fine to (literally) offshore our emissions while making a political statement that we have to show a good example and can't be seen to be making money out of something so non-green as fossil fuels.
Gas in particular we'll continue using well beyond 2050 - for manufacture even if not anything as flippant as domestic central heating... And possibly even in the manufacture of hydrogen which the SG is putting a lot of hope in as a new wonder-fuel (yes, theoretically renewable electricity can be used, but the quantities and infrastructure needed for mass production haven't been proven yet, only small scale trials).
At the moment we import just over half our gas requirements, and produce the rest. As production falls, it's predicted we will need to import about 80%? by 2030. Most of that import at the moment comes by pipe from (relatively friendly and cuddly) Norway, but their production is decreasing too. So more and more we're relying on imports from Russia and Qatar and other less friendly places, with I'm pretty sure less stringent environmental regulations relating to its production. And those imports come as liquified gas, that needs energy in its compression, and to be shipped huge distances. Quite how that's preferable in environmental, let alone energy security/ cost terms is a mystery to me. But because those emissions don't "count as ours" we can forget about them and say our emissions have decreased by however much because we just burn the gas and don't produce anything during it's production.
Scottish energy policy as a whole is a bin fire - and I appreciate there are difficulties given the reserved nature of eg oil and gas and financial issues in funding CCS projects etc. But they seem very quick to discount energy production techniques (nuclear, onshore gas, wind farms in certain areas etc) and not nearly quick enough to come up with alternatives or support for companies that want to take advantage of them (all onshore and offshore turbines are imported for example, despite huge amounts of Scottish engineering expertise). Or even outline how they intend to reach their (frankly unachievable) aim of net zero by 2045 or producing 50% of ALL energy (heat, transport and electricity - not just electricity) from renewable sources by 2030. 