Emerging Energy Technologies Fund spend: EIR release

Information requested

Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, about the £80m promised by the Scottish Government to the Acorn Project, from the last three months?

How much of this has actually been handed over/spent?”

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Regarding the first part of your request:

“Could you supply all documentation held by the Scottish Government, including correspondence sent and received (including internal), minutes/notes from meetings, briefings, analysis, about the £80m promised by the Scottish Government to the Acorn Project, from the last three months?”

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under the exception at regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIRs a public authority may refuse a request for information if it is ‘manifestly unreasonable’. The Scottish Information Commissioner’s guidance on the regulation 10(4)(b) exception at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/Law/EIRs/EIRsExceptions.aspx says that there may “be instances where it is appropriate for the Commissioner to consider the proportionality of the burden on the public authority in terms of the costs and resources involved in dealing with a request when considering the application of this exception”.

In this case, the volume of information we have found relating to your request is sufficiently high that it would not be possible for the analysis and release of information to be carried out within a reasonable timeframe, even allowing for a 20 day extension. For this reason, we consider that your request is manifestly unreasonable and so we are refusing it under regulation 10(4)(b).

As the exception is conditional we have applied the ‘public interest test’. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case, considered if the public interest in disclosing information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about the £80m promised by the Scottish Government to the Acorn Project, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the efficient and effective use of public resources by not incurring excessive costs when complying with information requests.

You may however wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order to make it manageable, such as:

• narrowing the timeframe in the request;
• specifying individual Ministers or their special advisors;
• specifying other recipients of the correspondence;

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website at:

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Regarding the second part of your request:

“How much of this has actually been handed over/spent?”

To date, the Scottish Government has provided a £2 million grant from the £80m CCUS Emerging Energy Technologies Fund to support the National Gas SCO2T Connect project.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.