Scotland’s delusional climate change plan, 2026 to 2040

By Douglas Brodie, Nairn

Foreword

The following article is a strongly critical opinion piece arguing that Scotland’s new climate change plan for 2026–2040 is technically illiterate, economically damaging, and driven by ideological “Net Zero” dogma rather than realistic energy policy.

Douglas Brodie contends that SNP ministers and most MSPs misunderstand how the electricity system works, wrongly believe removing gas generation will cut bills, and ignore expert warnings (notably from energy consultant Kathryn Porter) that Scotland’s grid is increasingly fragile due to heavy reliance on renewables and the impending closure of key synchronous plants like Torness and Peterhead. He argues that despite continued heavy UK dependence on fossil fuels and already very high electricity prices, the plan doubles down on unilateral Net Zero, which he sees as leading to deindustrialisation and blackout risk.

Politically, he portrays the plan as part of a wider “deep state”/UN/Agenda 2030 project, accuses Scottish and UK leaders of dishonesty, and claims mainstream media and institutions are promoting a “climate change hoax.” He urges opponents to use these themes in the upcoming Holyrood elections, calling for the climate plan to be scrapped and describing the Scottish Parliament’s approach as a “scientifically-flawed economy-wrecking disaster” that should delegitimise the current political leadership.

The same could be said for the rest of the United Kingdom.

Joel Smalley

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The SNP Scottish Government has just published its updated climate change plan for the period 2026 to 2040. It is very long-winded as its tentacles extend intrusively into almost every aspect of Scottish society and life. It is also very off-putting to read as almost every sentence contains an unjustified assertion, an obvious nonsense or a blatant falsehood.

The ministerial forward by Gillian Martin gives the depressing flavour. After a political career spent fobbing off and ignoring contrarian climate change/Net Zero realists (like me), she sadly has the lack of self-awareness to complain about “a worrying increase in anti-climate rhetoric”!

The Holyrood official report of the ministerial statement and questions from MSPs is also very depressing as it shows that climate and energy ignorance is rife throughout the Scottish parliament. The only minor relief came from Douglas Lumsden (Con), although I found his contribution disappointing in not referring to his Westminster party promise to repeal the Climate Change Act, as recorded here and here. His party colleagues were also underwhelming in expressing scepticism of the plan.

It is clear that the SNP (in fact most MSPs) haven’t a clue how our electricity system works, revealed through the contribution from Kevin Stewart (SNP), with the energy minister in agreement, ludicrously claiming that the only way to get Scottish electricity bills down is through Scottish independence!

The minister and several other MSPs lean on the doubly-false narrative that the price of electricity is determined by the price of gas and that this price is set by the international market. Their simplistic mantra is that everything would be hunky dory if we could only get rid of gas-fired power from the grid. The obvious flaw in their naive narrative is that dispatchable gas is essential for grid balancing and backup. Here’s a quick schooling by an energy accountant expert on how misguided they all are.

Independent energy consultant Kathryn Porter is doing great work in debunking Net Zero energy policy madness, for example here on the UK’s mad oil and gas policy and here in a video presentation on the Net Zero electrification delusion. She is even offering to educate politicians pro bono on how the energy system and its markets work.

I note from Annex 3 of the plan on Energy Supply Loss of Load that they hope grid outages will not exceed 3 hours per year. The reality is that the Scottish electricity grid is hanging on by a thread against potentially catastrophic outages thanks almost entirely to its two remaining large synchronous generators, Torness and Peterhead, which are both nearing end of life. The clueless SNP who needlessly blew up Longannet give the impression that they would happily replace these vital power stations with yet more very expensive (not “low-cost”) yet low energy value weather-dependent renewables.

The ubiquitous Kathryn Porter published a report last October saying that Scotland is uniquely exposed to grid failure due to its already over-heavy reliance on inertia-lacking renewables. I referred to this in my response to the SNP’s consultation on their draft plan. Kathryn has repeated her warning of looming Scottish blackouts in this recent lecture. There is no indication that the SNP or our delinquent grid professionals have taken any heed of these warnings.

There is no point in going through this SNP climate change plan to debunk its many technical absurdities and overall futility. I stand by my broad-brush dissection of the nonsense in its draft version. With official statistics (Dukes 2025) showing that in 2024 the UK was still 75.2% dependent on fossil fuels for its primary energy supplies, UK Net Zero is clearly going nowhere yet has already given us the highest electricity prices in the developed world, a crippling four times higher than the USA, with devastating deindustrialisation proceeding apace. The whole thing needs to be swept away before it does even more damage as it is based entirely on the multiple false narratives (i.e. lies) put out by the establishment climate change mafia and green blob, e.g. as in these headline extracts from the plan.

I mused in my response to the draft plan consultation, referring to minister Gillian Martin: “Is she bad (a treasonous Globalist puppet) or is she mad (having swallowed the Globalists’ false propaganda)?”

To the long-suffering electorate who have never been given a proper vote (or the truth) on this issue, the answer to that question actually makes no difference as the outcome of pursuing Net Zero to the bitter end is certain to be dire, perhaps catastrophic. The depth of climate change lunacy prevailing throughout parliament suggests that most MSPs are mad, having fallen hook, line and sinker for the deep state/UN/EU/WEF/WHO false propaganda constantly spun by the green blob and the bought-and-paid-for mainstream media to support their nefarious ulterior motives.

I still hold to the view that our political leadership is probably bad rather than mad through having meekly and cravenly followed the destructive policy instructions of their deep state overlords and knowingly lied to the electorate the whole time, just as they did during other recent oppressions.

As I surmised in my consultation response, the ulterior motivation of pursuing this climate change plan is revealed in Annex 1C, namely the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN’s dystopian Agenda 2030 which no electorate has ever voted for, which no politician dares to even mention in public and which is entirely predicated on the widely-discredited climate change hoax. This innocently-worded yet 1984-inspired technocratic slavery system is exposed in this article which introduces a documentary about it entitled “The Agenda: Their Vision, Your Future”. The first 10 minutes gives the full flavour.

It ought to be easy to campaign against this climate change lunacy in the hustings for the May Holyrood elections. One easy line of attack is the self-harming and pointless unilateral pursuit of Net Zero which most of the rest of the world clearly doesn’t give two hoots about. I find it impossible to believe that this unilateral striving is due to pig-headed stupidity. It must be a deep state policy which is somehow unchallengeable and mandatory for the compliant Uniparty, with the original intent stated about 30 years ago by the father of the corrupt-by-design UN IPCC Maurice Strong, as recorded in my May 2024 post Debunking the climate change hoax:

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?”

Sadly, the deep state doesn’t seem to have realised that it is now just shooting itself in the foot as very few other countries are following us down their green-tinted path to deindustrialisation and national irrelevance. The USA in particular, which was probably their main target for deliberate deindustrialisation, has now pivoted away from the deep state-compliant self-destructive lunacy of Obama and Biden. Harsh geopolitical reality will hopefully soon force a policy reversal here in the UK.

A final piece of trivia. Although this plan is entitled the “climate change plan”, its content makes scant mention of actually “tackling climate change”. Apart from referring to reducing emissions (a pointless exercise IMHO, especially unilateral), all I can find in the main body is:

“Given the crucial role that devolved governments play in tackling climate change, we are also working to enhance their visibility and influence within multilateral climate discussions, ensuring that voices like Scotland’s—and those of our partners—help shape global progress.”

In other words, carry on blethering at COP conferences and suchlike forums! What an idiotic, intelligence-insulting policy. This delusional Scottish parliament deserves to be shut down for creating and endorsing such a scientifically-flawed economy-wrecking disaster of which they were fully forewarned by many well-informed technically-competent climate sceptics a decade and more ago.

Yours faithfully,

Douglas Brodie, Nairn, 27 March 2026

PS: The UK government has just announced that due to security concerns it has blocked the Chinese company Ming Yang from supplying wind turbines. This will hopefully put the kibosh on the threatened blot on my local coastal seascape of an intrusive eyesore staging ground for the foundations of ruinously-expensive floating offshore wind turbines. If the SNP is unhappy about the loss of “green” jobs this probably entails, they could less damagingly and less expensively employ workers to dig large holes in the ground, using only hand shovels to spin out the work, then neatly fill them in again.