Deputy first minister Kate Forbes has ramped up efforts to convince doubters that Scotland is enjoying a renewables-fuelled jobs boom even as industry leaders provided a reminder of the scale of the opportunities the country has missed.

Ms Forbes dusted off a familiar script at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow where she insisted the SNP Government was acting at pace to ensure the country maximised the economic potential of the low carbon energy drive.

“We are a renewables powerhouse; we’ve clearly made fantastic progress as a country not least due to Scotland’s abundant talent, our skills and our resources,” she gushed.

“We’re already more than half way to net zero, we’re a global leader in secure energy and we continue to lead the way on the creation of green jobs.”

To support the latter claim, Ms Forbes added: “In 2021 Scotland’s renewable energy industry and associated supply chain is estimated to have supported more than 42,2000 full time equivalent jobs.”

But the fact she resorted to figures about what was happening four years ago hardly boosted her case, particularly given the health warnings that economists attached to the numbers she cited.

They come from a report by economists at the University of Strathclyde’s Fraser of Allander Institute, whose authors highlighted a “moderately large margin of error” in the calculations. They cautioned against “overinterpretation of the results.”

That did not stop former first minister Humza Yousaf trotting them out in January last year when he claimed: “Rapid progress is already under way.”

The Fraser of Allander report however provided a further indication that the number of jobs created has fallen well below expectations.

The report estimated that 15,000 posts were supported by the wider offshore wind supply chain in 2021. A report produced for Scottish Enterprise in 2010 said offshore wind operations could create 28,000 direct jobs by 2020.

Speakers at All-Energy lamented the fact that Scotland........

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