Committee
Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee 03 March 2026 [Draft]
03 Mar 2026 · S6 · Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee
Item of business
Draft Climate Change Plan
Emma Pinchbeck
Watch on SPTV
I will provide an overview and I will then hand over to Emily, because there are quite significant differences in how we think about costs, and it will be worth touching on those.As you know, when we produce our advice, we publish all our costings and data tables, and all of that is available to the public and to parliamentarians.In our advice to Scotland on the carbon budgets, we talked quite a lot about where the funding would come from. We agree with the Scottish Government that it is broadly an invest-to-save model. We are talking about a significant amount of capital investment, largely going into energy technologies, and then you get efficiencies from using more efficient energy technologies across the economy.09:45In Scotland, the savings start outpacing the cost of that investment from around 2043, according to our advice to Government on the carbon budgets. As we talked about in the plan, there are also savings at household level for households that adopt these technologies, so long as policy choices are made to enable cheap electricity and electrification to come through.We also talked about how we might finance some early stage technologies. For example, in our advice, we assume a polluter-pays model for investing in negative emissions technologies and carbon capture and storage. Although we have modelled the cost to the whole economy, we are assuming that the investment for that comes from the aviation sector, which will be the significant polluter in the late period of carbon budgets when you need negative emissions technologies. Similarly, we have assumed that tree planting might be done, for example, by the farming sector or by landowners with support from Government schemes. Because it depends on policy choices, we as an independent statutory body have not said that one thing should be public financing and that another should be private financing. We have modelled the whole economy costs and savings, which we have shown as net, as well as setting out the up-front costs and savings. We have also given an indicative business model or distributed-at-cost impacts, and we have given the rough split between the public and private sectors. You can find that information in our analysis, which we have published. Some of that is consistent with what the Scottish Government has done, but it is fair to say that its costings work is not complete. As your question implies, the Scottish Government has not published its full costings data either, so it is difficult for us to say exactly how it has reached some of those figures.I will hand over to Emily in case I have missed anything technical that she wants to add.
In the same item of business
The Convener
Con
Welcome back. The next agenda item is an evidence session with the Climate Change Committee on the Scottish Government’s draft climate change plan. The purpo...
Emma Pinchbeck (Climate Change Committee)
To start with the good news, we find that Scotland’s emissions decreased by more than 2.6 per cent between 2021 and 2023. Overall emissions have now more tha...
The Convener
Con
Thank you. We will move to questions. Given that part of the questioning will definitely revolve around agriculture, I remind members of my entry in the regi...
Emma Pinchbeck
The committee will know that, because of delays to the CCP, we were delayed in being able to do the analysis behind producing our own response to the CCP and...
The Convener
Con
My concern is that we will go into recess shortly and the final climate change plan is still to be laid. Unless I have got this entirely wrong, the whole pro...
Emma Pinchbeck
I certainly understand that it would be useful for you to have our report when you do your scrutiny. You will know this, but I put on the record that there i...
The Convener
Con
The draft plan has been laid and the consultations have been summarised, and our report will be considered and debated by the Parliament on Thursday this wee...
Emma Pinchbeck
We will never do a public hearing if we have not finished our analysis. That precedent is long established in the work of the CCC. As a statutory body, we ca...
The Convener
Con
Before we leave the subject, Emma, please clarify something so that I can understand. Did the Scottish Government, as your client, tell you to give us only a...
Emma Pinchbeck
We did not get an explicit instruction to come and speak to you publicly. There was discussion with officials about what we could do on both sides and it was...
The Convener
Con
Are you telling me that Scottish Government officials said that a private briefing was the appropriate way to do it? I am sorry for pushing you on that, but ...
Emma Pinchbeck
I am the chief executive of the CCC and, in a conversation with the Scottish Government, we determined that a private briefing would be the appropriate thing...
The Convener
Con
Thank you; that is helpful.Bob Doris wants to come in.
Bob Doris (Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn) (SNP)
SNP
I will ask a question for clarity, in the hope that we can quickly move on to more substantive issues. I want to check that I am accurate in understanding th...
Emma Pinchbeck
Independence is a significant factor in evaluating choices such as this one about the appropriateness of not having a public evidence session on the basis of...
Bob Doris
SNP
:That was helpful—thank you.
The Convener
Con
Just to finish that point, before we move on to the next question: as the Government made clear, it is your client, and it therefore controlled that informat...
Mark Ruskell
Green
:I want to turn to the climate change plan itself. You will probably have had a chance to glance at the report that we published last week, in which we highl...
Emma Pinchbeck
I will give a high-level answer, and then I will bring in Dr Emily Nurse, who I think would like to talk to you about indicators.In general, we think that th...
Dr Emily Nurse (Climate Change Committee)
Thank you very much for having me here today.There are a few more things to say at the higher level. First, the climate change plan is more of an overarching...
Mark Ruskell
Green
:There are certainly a lot of hockey-stick-shaped graphs in the plan, by which I mean periods of slow growth followed by sudden shoot-ups in future carbon bu...
Dr Nurse
I will quickly say something about that, and then Emma Pinchbeck will come in. In our annual progress report, we look at that as best we possibly can. We loo...
Emma Pinchbeck
Thank you. I read the NZET Committee’s report on the CCP and noted that witnesses had suggested a sort of dashboard for indicators and that that is being tho...
Mark Ruskell
Green
:Do you have the resources to do that? If there was stronger engagement between the Climate Change Committee and subject committees in this Parliament—perhap...
Emma Pinchbeck
It would. Bluntly, our devolved funding does not really cover the statutory outputs that we already deliver across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We m...
Sarah Boyack
Lab
:I will ask a couple of questions that follow on from quite a lot of what you have just been talking about. Our committee and the Climate Change Committee we...
Emma Pinchbeck
I will provide an overview and I will then hand over to Emily, because there are quite significant differences in how we think about costs, and it will be wo...
Dr Nurse
You have covered most of it, Emma. We were quite confused by how the analysis was done on the costing side. It is clear that some bits are missed out, and it...
Sarah Boyack
Lab
:Thanks—that is useful. The challenge is going from very detailed information to actually communicating this stuff. You have talked about the invest-to-save ...
Dr Nurse
First, we need to have annual data. It makes sense to publish five-yearly carbon budgets because that is the legal target, but the pathway is indicative, rat...