Scotland needs a clear national energy strategy to avoid the “disproportionate burden” on infrastructure projects in rural areas, according to local constituency MSP Finlay Carson.
It does not need another consultation or even a set of high-level ambitions – but a real plan with maps, limits, sequencing and transparent reasoning.
Instead the Galloway and West Dumfries MSP insists it should answer questions rural communities have been asking for years – how much infrastructure does the country actually need?
He revealed: “Local authorities themselves are overwhelmed, grappling with multiple technical applications of enormous complexity.
“They lack the staffing, the specialist expertise, and the time required for rigorous scrutiny. Communities face thousands of pages of environmental assessments, grid reports, and construction statements, often with only a few weeks to respond.”
Mr Carson fears many residents feel consultations are not genuine exercises in listening – but performances – carried out because the rules require them, not because the outcomes will change anything.
“And when people feel they are being spoken at, not spoken with, trust collapses,” he argued.
“That trust matters. It is the bedrock of any major national transition. If we want communities to host infrastructure, then we must treat them as partners from the outset, not as obstacles to be managed once designs are finalised and decisions effectively made.”
Speaking in a members’ debate called by the Scottish Conservative and Unionist MSP, he explained the Scottish Government continued to rely on a planning framework that communities find “inaccessible and unbalanced”.
Mr Carson claimed Section 36 of the Electricity Act was repeatedly cited to him as a barrier to genuine local influence.
However it centralises decision-making, limits the weight of local authority views and created a perception that once a project reaches a certain size, community sentiment becomes little more than a procedural tick-box.
Mr Carson supported calls for a moratorium on energy infrastructure projects from the Highland Convention, the South of Scotland Convention, and countless local campaign groups, insisting it was “entirely logical and entirely justified.”
He praised the remarkable leadership, clarity and professionalism of groups in Galloway – Hands Off Our Hills, Galloway Against Pylons and the Glencap Community Group – adding they have done the work government should have done.
“They have informed their neighbours, analysed proposals, and built constructive, evidence-based campaigns,” the MSP explained. “Their voices should be valued, not sidelined.
“Presiding Officer, this debate is ultimately about democracy. It is about whether rural Scotland’s voice carries the same weight at urban Scotland’s interests,” he told MSPs. “It is about whether government sees rural communities as partners – or as places where decisions can be imposed because the population is dispersed and the political cost low.
“We can have a strong energy future. We can expand infrastructure responsibly. But we cannot do it credibly unless the people who host that infrastructure are respected, included, and empowered from the start.”
Mr Carson reiterated: “Local voices matter. And rural communities deserve no less than a genuine role in shaping Scotland’s energy future – not as spectators, but as equal participants.”
He highlighted extensive energy infrastructure projects carried out locally, ranging from Windy Standard near Carsphairn, the first offshore wind far at Robin Rigg in the Solway, and The Galloway Hydro Scheme, Britain’s first major integrated hydro complex developed for the public electricity supply.
Constituents in rural communities understand the need for energy infrastructure in Scotland – they are not anti-development, not anti-renewables but pro-fairness, pro-transparency and pro-democracy.
But what has emerged in recent years is something entirely different, not planned, strategic modernisation, but a “disjointed” surge of proposals arriving simultaneously, each assessed in isolation as though the others do not exist.
The MSP cited the Kendoon to Tongland powerline upgrade – initially presented as a straightforward modernisation of an aging line – before it evolved changing routes, scales and justifications.
Indeed the process became so opaque, so confusing, and so detached from local concerns that they were driven to seek a judicial review simply to have their voices heard.
Mr Carson said: “That should act as a warning siren to this government. When ordinary citizens feel the only avenue left to them is the courts, it demonstrates not only planning failure but democratic failure.
“They united around a simple, powerful message: the planning system is not listening, and rural communities are being treated as passive observers rather than active partners.
“This is not obstructionism or nimby-ism. It is responsible citizenship. It is people saying – we will engage. We will play our part.
“But we cannot agree to limitless development with no clear end-point, no assurances of fairness, and no sense of where the burden will fall next.”
The local constituency MSP also challenged a decision by the Scottish Government that the Energy Consents Unit would no longer accept email objections – insisting instead on only postal ones in future or via its online portal that has previously proved unreliable.
