By "capable of taking greener electric trains" I assume the author means routes which are equipped with overhead line equipment (OHLE) - although the wording could be read to suggest that the currently non-electrified routes themselves are incapable of being upgraded.
Installing OHLE is expensive, and we all know that budgets are under pressure everywhere (even for the A9 dualling). Recall also that down in in Englandshire the government cut short the electrification of the Great Western main line because...it was getting too expensive. This stuff costs money to get done, and certain factions want what money there is spent elsewhere (eg A9 dualling again).
(As a side note, battery electric trains are becoming a "thing", meaning that in the future OHLE may not be required for all routes to be "green".)
As for comparing the current situation against the period when Abellio was running the Scotrail franchise, that's an irrelevance because Abellio wouldn't have invested in new OHLE anyway. Their job was to run trains, not to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure. That's basically Network Rail's job, with funding from Transport Scotland eg EGIP which despite the inevitable increases over the original estimates did AFAICT eventually came in under £1billion (cf A9 dualling again). There have also been openings of new lines eg Borders Rail, Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine, and Levenmouth (none of which, unfortunately, were delivered as electric railways*) and the Glasgow-Kilbride electrification project is happening right now.
I don't know whether the business cases for electrification of existing routes, and building new routes electrified from day one, takes into account governmental net zero policy commitments, but if they aren't then they damn well should.
* It might seem difficult to justify building an electrified branch line when you want to provide through services from a non-electrified main line. But there are such things are bi-mode trains (see the Great Western main line again, and LNER Class 800 services north of Edinburgh, amongst others)...
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