Population Health Impacts and Health Directorate Involvement in Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS): EIR release

Information requested

Please provide copies of all information held by the Scottish Government, including but not limited to the Directorate for Population Health, Public Health Policy, Chief Medical Officer’s Directorate, or any other health-related directorates, relating to Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), including but not limited to Mey BESS (ECU00004838) and Rigifa BESS (ECU00004897).

1. Population health impacts
Any assessments, briefings, guidance, internal reports, advice, or correspondence relating to the actual or potential population health impacts of BESS, including but not limited to:

• Lithium-ion battery fires and thermal runaway events
• Toxic smoke or gas emissions (including hydrogen fluoride and related by-products)
• Short-term and long-term health impacts on nearby communities
• Exposure pathways (airborne, soil, water contamination)
• Evacuation, shelter-in-place, or public exposure risk scenarios

2. Inter-directorate correspondence
Any correspondence (including emails, meeting notes, briefings, or internal discussions) between health-related directorates and:

• The Energy Consents Unit (ECU)
• The Directorate for Energy and Climate Change
• Public Health Scotland
• SEPA
• The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS)

where BESS, battery fires, toxic exposure, or population health impacts of energy storage infrastructure are discussed.

3. Consultation in Section 36 decision-making
Confirmation of whether health-related directorates are routinely consulted as part of Scottish Ministers’ decision-making process for Section 36 Electricity Act 1989 applications involving BESS, and if so:

• The scope and purpose of that consultation,
• The stage(s) at which consultation occurs, and
• Any criteria or thresholds used to trigger consultation.

If health directorates are not consulted, please provide:

• The reason why no such consultation is undertaken, and
• Any recorded justification or policy position supporting that approach.

4. Responsibility for population health assessment

Details of any policy position, briefing note, guidance, or internal view held by the Scottish Government that identifies which body is responsible for:

• Assessing population health impacts arising from BESS developments, and
• Protecting public health in the event of a BESS fire, toxic release, or major incident.

Purpose and format

This request seeks recorded information only. If no information is held under any heading, please confirm this explicitly in accordance with section 17 FOISA / regulation 10(4)(a) EIRs.
I request that information be provided in electronic format where possible.

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 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.

Points 1 and 2

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 says that “a request will impose a “significant burden” on a public authority where complying with it would require a disproportionate amount of time, and the diversion of an unreasonable proportion of its resources, including financial and human, away from other statutory functions.”

In this case, the costs and resources involved in complying with your request would be disproportionate because your request resulted in a vast number of search results which would take a significant amount of time to review and, where necessary, redact. Therefore, your request, as it is currently worded, would pose too much of a significant burden on the public authority.

Because of the volume of records which would need to be searched, a 20 working days extension to the response deadline (under regulation 7 of the EIRs) would still not make the request manageable. For these reasons, 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 considerations relating to the potential population health impacts of battery energy storage systems (BESS), 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.

Point 3

The function of Ministers under Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 is to determine whether consent should be granted for electricity generating stations, having regard to relevant considerations.

The Energy Consents Unit (ECU) does not routinely consult any health-related directorates within the Scottish Government as part of the decision-making process under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989, including in relation to BESS. The Planning Authority is consulted as part of this process, and through this consultation they seek a response from their Environmental Health team. This response is reflected in the Planning Authority response provided to ECU which is considered as part of decision- making.

The Scottish Government does not consider a further statutory consultation is required beyond what it already set out above.

Point 4

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 says that “a request will impose a “significant burden” on a public authority where complying with it would require a disproportionate amount of time, and the diversion of an unreasonable proportion of its resources, including financial and human, away from other statutory functions.”

In this case, the costs and resources involved in complying with your request would be disproportionate because your request resulted in a vast number of search results which would take a significant amount of time to review and, where necessary, redact. Therefore, your request, as it is currently worded, would pose too much of a significant burden on the public authority.

Because of the volume of records which would need to be searched, a 20 working days extension to the response deadline (under regulation 7 of the EIRs) would still not make the request manageable. For these reasons, 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 considerations relating to the population health assessments in relation to battery energy storage systems (BESS), 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.

It may be helpful to know that the Scottish Government will publish a call for evidence on BESS later in 2026 which will help inform a future policy statement on the technology. This is in response to the increasing role of BESS in supporting the energy transition and the need to ensure we have a clear vision for the sector and its role. It is important that the call for evidence and any future statement is informed by the views of a range of stakeholders, including communities hosting BESS. We would encourage you to respond once the call for evidence goes live later in the year.

You may also 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;
• narrowing the types of information sought.

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:
How do I ask for information? | Scottish Information Commissioner​​​​​​​

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.