Scotland is set to surpass its tough renewable energy target for 2011, Jim Mather said today.

The Energy Minister was speaking at the SCDI's conference on Scotland's Energy Future, where he revealed new figures on the total amount of renewable electricity schemes either already operating or with planning permission.

He said that taken together, this figure of 5.5 Gigawatts (GW) is enough to take Scotland past the target of generating 31% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2011.

This comes after a total private investment of over £800m in green energy schemes over the last few weeks.

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Mr Mather said: "Scotland has won the energy lottery. Our renewable resources have been estimated at more than 60GW, ten times Scotland's peak electricity consumption. In 2006 Scotland produced 92% of its electricity needs from fossil fuels, renewables and pumped hydro storage - and we are still just scratching at the surface of what we can achieve in areas like marine renewables or biomass.

"That is why this Government has built its energy policy around mining this rich potential and will not make the potentially costly, harmful and damaging mistake of considering new nuclear power generation for Scotland. The Scottish Parliament has endorsed that position - our people don't want new nuclear power and we don't need it.

"One of our first acts on coming to power was to make the renewable energy targets even more stringent - pledging to ensure 31% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2011.

"Today I can confirm that if we add all the potential energy from consented renewable projects to those already operating we will comfortably exceed our target."

(GK/JM)