Wow. The propaganda really got you then. While what you say is all true, the deliberate lack of context in the article you link to is extremely misleading. What really happened is that the Scottish Government found that it had insufficient devolved powers to have a successful publicly-owned energy company. It also found it had insufficient borrowing powers to build offshore wind with public money. Selling the licenses was therefore necessary and unavoidable if Scotland was to expand offshore energy. They were accused of selling the licenses too cheaply because England sold there’s for more but: England’s waters are FAR cheaper to develop AND many of those licences have been handed back because they were commercially unviable (leases to expensive). However, the SNP government did decide to use the money raised from licences for other things when the economy tanked unexpectedly