Clarification on First Minister's speech on Scottish renewables: EIR release

Information requested

Speaking at FMQs on 19th March 2026, John Swinney said this:

“When this Government came to office, we had a clear ambition to massively increase the amount of electricity that is generated in Scotland from low-cost renewable sources, and we have succeeded in doing that.”

Please provide the evidence John Swinney was relying on when describing Scottish renewables as “low-cost”.

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.

The UK Government publication Electricity Generation Costs presents levelised costs for different electricity generation technologies based in Great Britain. Levelised cost represents the average cost of the lifetime of the plant per MWh of electricity generated, including construction, operation and decommissioning. While this metric does not capture all system‑wide considerations, this is a well-established and widely used approach for comparing the average costs of energy generation across different technologies.

The most recent publication can be found here: Electricity Generation Costs 2025.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

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.