Hansard

Happy new year, Presiding Officer.

Scotland has some of the world’s most ambitious targets when it comes to making our country a low-carbon economy. It goes without saying that I am, as convener of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, passionate about making sure that we meet those targets. As a rural MSP, I am equally passionate that in doing so, rural communities are not disadvantaged and should always be at the heart of just transition decisions. If rural communities are not included, we will simply not get there.

In the past decade, we have made huge strides in increasing the number of ultra-low-emission vehicles on Scotland’s roads. We had about 10,000 in 2018, compared to 495 in 2011. I am one of the drivers who has made the leap. I drive a Kia Niro—one of the lowest-emission hybrid vehicles one can get. My aim is to switch to a fully electric car once my lease is up and the charging infrastructure is in place in my rural community, as part of the Government’s investment in charging stations.

The Scottish Government’s objective is that the need for petrol and diesel cars and vans will be phased out by 2032. That is a laudable goal, but for those of us in areas that are ill-served by public transport, life without a car would be nigh on impossible. There is but one railway station in my constituency, in its largest town—Inverurie—and it is 25 miles from the second-largest town, which does not have one, and nor do any other towns in my constituency

Rural areas need greener options. A person should not have to live in a city to be part of the carbon-reduction revolution. For my whole working life, I have wanted very much to be part of that revolution. However, in 10 years of commuting into Aberdeen with small children and babies in the back of my car, when I had to get to nurseries and childminders as well as to Aberdeen College, it was simply impossible for me to use public transport—and that was as a person who really wanted to do that.

In October last year, I was in Iceland and spoke to the Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, Guðmundur Guðbrandsson, about his Government’s decision to ban registration of all new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, with a view to the country being electric-only from 2050. As a small independent country, Iceland can take all the legislative and policy steps that are necessary to make that transition, but it is still an ambitious policy and a brave decision. The action is ambitious, but if it is not done carefully, it is potentially inequitable—especially for low earners. In order to achieve our shared carbon-emissions ambition, Governments must ensure that they make it financially possible for all motorists to move from petrol and diesel vehicles to ultra-low-emission vehicles.

In the constituency that I represent—Aberdeenshire East—the public transport system is very radial. The vast majority of buses head in towards the city of Aberdeen. People who commute between the towns of Ellon, Turriff, Oldmeldrum and Inverurie, and mums and dads dropping their children at nursery or at school, cannot use only public transport to do that. The bus routes either do not exist or have a skeleton timetable.

My son has recently moved to Edinburgh. As a child who had to use Aberdeenshire buses for his entire teenage life, he says that one of the best things about studying in Edinburgh is the buses. Unreliable buses in Aberdeenshire messing up their day has been part of life for him and his friends. When I was first elected, the greatest case load that I got from him and his friends seemed to be about the buses.

I will move on to my nearest city. The Scottish Government has committed to making Aberdeen one of four low-emission zones in Scotland. The proximity of the harbour to the city centre means that freight lorries often account for a large percentage of the city’s traffic and cause most emissions. It is hoped that the new Aberdeen western peripheral route will massively ease that congestion by moving the majority of heavy vehicles out of the city altogether. The cabinet secretary will be pleased to hear that we are already seeing the benefits of that. Not having to sit in traffic in a city that one does not even want to go to in order to travel between two rural locations north and south of Aberdeen does not just improve journey times—it also makes a big difference to emissions.

Aberdeen has been using hydrogen buses for a number of years. Last year, a new hydrogen refuelling station was opened to the public, which allows for refuelling of cars, vans, trucks and buses.

We know that transport contributes more than a quarter of Scotland’s greenhouse-gas emissions, with the road sector accounting for the largest proportion of those emissions. In 2015, cars, lorries, vans, buses and motorcycles emitted 9.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.

We need to tackle the problem. Like Iceland, the topography of our country means that we cannot live without cars. Low-emission vehicles are the future for communities such as mine. If we are to achieve our goals, those vehicles must be affordable to all motorists. I look forward to seeing how we, as a nation, will be a leader in that regard, and to our consigning to history carbon-emitting cars for commuting.