Scottish Ministers are fully committed to promoting the increased use of renewable energy sources. This commitment recognises renewables' ability to tackle causes of climate change as well as their potential to support economic growth.
An increase in the amount of renewable energy generation (electricity and heat) as a means of reducing carbon emissions is an important part of our efforts to tackle climate change. The UK Government has set a goal of reducing the UK's carbon dioxide emissions, the main contributor to global warming, by 60% by 2050. The development of renewable energy will be an important contributor to the success of that policy.
It also provides new opportunities to enhance our manufacturing capacity and to provide new employment, not least in the remote and rural areas. This Government has set clear targets for renewable electricity, announcing an increase in November 2007. Ministers want 50% of the demand for Scottish electricity to be supplied from renewable sources by 2020, with an interim milestone of 31% by 2011. Energy statistics are published annually.
Scotland's pursuit of its huge renewable energy potential has been very successful to date. The installed capacity of renewable electricity generation overtook nuclear in 2007, which was celebrated on Green Energy Day - 7 September 2007.
Ministers want to see targets exceeded rather than merely met, and have made it abundantly clear that they do not wish targets to be viewed as a cap on what renewables can deliver. It is important that our momentum towards our target for 2020 and beyond is maintained. This will require many more technologies to start playing a major role - for example, marine energy and biomass energy.
The main driver behind renewable electricity development in Scotland, now and over the coming years, is the Renewables Obligation (Scotland), or ROS. This mechanism places an obligation on electricity suppliers to provide an increasing amount of their electricity supplied from eligible renewable sources.
We want our targets to be met by as wide a range of renewable sources as possible. Our historic hydro resource plus new onshore wind developments have made tremendous and welcome contributions to our renewable capacity and output over the past few years; we expect that deep water offshore wind, wave power, tidal stream and biomass will make an increasing contribution in future. We are supporting these emerging technologies in a number of ways, including new grant support schemes for wave and tidal energy, renewable hydrogen fuel cells and biomass. We have also made changes to the Renewables Obligation (Scotland) Order to increase the financial rewards for marine energy.
Electricity is only a part of the energy jigsaw, and more of the energy we use is for heat. The Scottish Government will develop an action plan for renewable heat this Summer. A report from The Forum for Renewable Energy Development Scotland (FREDS) has initiated this work by setting out recommendations on key actions to develop the sector. This is a challenging area to tackle, however it is right that we do so as most energy use in Scotland is for heating, with a large share of that being supplied from fossil fuels.
Scotland's energy map is changing: the outlook is for cleaner, greener, more sustainable energy.