£50m invested in eco-friendly transport

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Money will be invested in cycling networks, low-carbon transport and transferring freight from road to rail.

A total of £50m will be invested in eco-friendly transport over the next four years, the Scottish Government has announced.

Transport Minister Keith Brown said that the money will be invested in cycling networks, low-carbon transport and transferring freight from road to rail.

Scottish election: Scottish Green Party manifesto

The Scottish Green Party has launched its manifesto for the 2011 Scottish Parliament election.

Here is a look at all the key pledges:

Economy

- Introduce land value tax at just above 3p in the pound to replace Council Tax, to raise an extra £1bn a year, and 8p in the pound levy to replace business rates.
- Owners of urban vacant land would pay "fair share" to tackle speculative land banking.

Scotland eyes grid connection to Norway

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Scottish officials said they were working with Norway to develop ways to link their energy grids across the North Sea.
SSE Interconnector, a division of Scottish and Southern Energy, announced the signing of a partnership agreement with Norwegian utility companies to examine ways to link the two electricity grids.
"(A) European grid is essential to ensuring our resources fully contribute to Europe's sustainable energy policy," said Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond in a statement.

Scotland's renewable energy strategy praised by EC report

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Scotland's renewable energy strategy provides an example of how different offshore technologies can be combined to form a "coherent approach", a new report by the European Commission has claimed.

Scotland's renewable energy strategy praised by EC report

Scotland's renewable energy strategy praised by EC report

Authored by grid coordinator Georg Adamowitsch, the report states: "The North Sea has different conditions and potentials for the generation of renewable energy...

"To be able to use all these elements as part of a European sustainable energy policy, these Scottish renewables have to be connected to an integrated European grid," the Courier reported.

Scotland is currently aiming to generate 80 percent of its power from renewable sources by the year 2020, a target which was increased from 50 percent last year.

Commenting on the latest acknowledgement of the nation's renewables development, Jim Mather, energy minister for the Scottish government, said: "Scotland will be at the heart of plans to deliver a North Sea offshore grid to interconnect European electricity networks."

A report by the European Renewable Energy Association suggested recently that Europe is likely to surpass its target of generating 20 percent of energy used on the continent from renewable sources by 2020. ADNFCR-1235-ID-800348309-ADNFCR

Source: Low Carbon Economy

In the spirit of equality and prosperity

Sustainability isn't just about how we use scarce natural resources, says Evan Williams – one of the key speakers at Public Service Events' recent Sustainable Scotland conference – it's also about doing things differently to achieve a fairer, more balanced society

Sustainability is a much easier concept to describe than to achieve, which is why it came as something of a surprise when the UK government decided it no longer needed the advice of the Sustainable Development Commission.

It may be true that government has over the past few years become slightly less unsustainable than it was in the past. But it seems to me that we have only just started to understand what needs to be done.

Very simply sustainability is about doing things today in a way that does not harm the chances of future generations. It is easy to see how that might apply to the use of scarce resources or environmental carrying capacity, and it is easy enough to see how that might translate into economic constraints, the need to use public funds prudently and to maximise returns.

What concerns me is how we connect sustain- ability with social progress. And that has been the focus of the Scottish Sustainable Development Forum's thinking in recent months.