Former first minister and Alba party leader Alex Salmond to speak at party's conference in Glasgow

Scotland’s renewable energy should be the “people’s energy”, Alex Salmond will tell the Alba conference on Saturday.

The former first minister’s party is holding its spring campaign conference at Hampden Park in Glasgow.

He will call for the Government to have a share in all offshore wind developments, saying North Sea oil and gas fields should not be shut down “as bizarrely advocated by the SNP/Green Government”.

In the coming weeks, the party’s activists will be distributing “the wee Alba book” – setting out its case for Scottish independence.

Alex Salmond will address Alba party members at the party’s spring conference PA Media

Two Scottish MPs and a number of councillors are members of the party, which was launched in March 2021.

Salmond will say: “In this energy-rich Scotland of ours we produce all the electricity we need from renewable sources and are several times self-sufficient in natural gas.

“So why exactly are our electricity bills up 50% already with the same again to come?

“Why are Scottish heating costs already sky-high and dictated by the marginal price of world gas?

“Why are we facing huge amounts of fuel poverty in energy plenty Scotland?

“The answer is because we allow our vast resources, which by rights belong to the people, to be controlled by the pernicious combination of Westminster Government and international capital.”

He will continue: “Instead of closing down the North Sea as bizarrely advocated by the SNP/Green government, Alba say make every consented field invest in carbon capture as a condition of licence approval.

“Let us manage our resources in a way compatible with the future of the planet.

“And instead of the great billion-pound give-away to foreign capital of our offshore wind licences, which could in time produce up to five times our own electricity needs, then let us take a public share in every single field.

“Let Scotland do with renewables in this century what the Norwegians did with oil in the last – make renewable energy the people’s energy.”

In February, Salmond announced he was suspending his show on the Kremlin-backed network RT due to the war in Ukraine.

RT later had its licence revoked by the regulator Ofcom.