Hansard

Helpfully, my office has written the word “farmer” at the start of the speech, to which I have added “Not yet.” However, because we will be talking about agriculture, I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I have a farm in Moray.

I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. I thank my committee colleagues and the clerks for their work not only to scrutinise the draft plan but to produce our report over a fairly hectic three days. As I will touch on later, the process has, to my mind, been frustrating and slightly unedifying, but I am content that we as a committee have played our part well.

The committee held nine evidence sessions, a call for views and a targeted online consultation. We met young people and got out and about, with a visit to Aberdeen. I thank all of those who engaged with the committee during that process.

As the lead committee, we proposed dividing up the work on the draft plan, and I thank all the other committees involved for their work to ensure that this was a cross-committee effort. There are now four committee reports on the draft plan, including our own, and six other committees sent letters to support our work.

The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2024 followed advice from the Climate Change Committee that the targets to reduce emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 were no longer achievable. The 2024 act moved to a system of five-year carbon budgets, replacing annual targets, and moved back the date by which a plan was required.

The draft plan in front of us is the first under the changes made by the 2024 act, and the first statutory draft plan since the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019. After the end of the parliamentary scrutiny period, which falls today, the Scottish Government must lay a final climate change plan, reflecting on the views that it has heard. The cabinet secretary has said that it is her intention to do so before dissolution in just a few weeks, but, legally, it does not have to be done within that timeframe.

As a committee, we acknowledge that there has been good progress overall, with emissions having more than halved since 1990. Recently, however, momentum has been lost, and we heard that more challenging actions will now be needed across more sectors.

We agree that delivery must be the central focus of the final plan, but we found that the draft falls somewhat short as a delivery-focused document. The plan should clearly set out how the Government will use its powers to drive down emissions. Where it does not have powers, it should be clearer about that.

We found four areas that the Government should consider. First, we recognise that all climate policy is underpinned by modelling, which is intrinsically uncertain. However, we heard that the information on emissions, costs and benefits—and the latter two, in particular—does not give the detail needed to scrutinise the Government’s assumptions. The Government should welcome informed and constructive criticism of the data and assumptions that it has used, and the final plan should provide more of that. We accepted that it would be challenging for costs and benefits modelling specifically to set out where and on whom costs will fall, but we also asked the Government to reflect on whether the draft falls short in signalling to the public and stakeholders what costs and incentives there are and who will have to pay those costs.

Secondly, we discussed the approach to monitoring in the draft plan, which includes a proposal for early warning indicators to account for the fact that accurate emissions data comes with a delay. However, the draft does not say what those indicators will be. We recommend that they be published at the earliest opportunity to ensure that corrective action can be taken when required. They should also be performance indicators, and have a clear link to the corresponding policies published in the plan.

Thirdly, we noted that delivering changes throughout the economy is a complex task; it needs co-ordinated action across the breadth of Government and with multiple partners over long periods. We discussed dependencies on UK Government action, particularly on electricity, where lower electricity costs would help—and, indeed, are desperately needed in several key areas if we are to decarbonise at the pace that is being asked.

Fourthly, we noted the critical role for local government, which I am sure the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee’s convener will touch on in her contribution. We also heard evidence of the support that communities and individuals need and the role that they could play in reducing emissions.

Although we welcomed the reopening of the climate engagement fund, we recommended that the Scottish Government communicate clearly what the plan means to people’s everyday lives and work with communities and others to do that. The agriculture, land use, buildings and industry sectors were considered by the rural, local government and economy committees respectively, and we agreed whole-heartedly with their conclusions and recommendations.

I will now briefly touch on the three sectors that we considered. On energy, we discussed the reliance of the draft plan on negative emissions technologies and asked the Government to set out how it would monitor whether those technologies were on track to come online in time to meet its ambitions. The committee considers that the plan relies in large part on electrification, without laying out the absolutely vital issue of how electricity costs will be reduced. We also found the plan to be insufficient in setting out how the Government proposes to meet the substantial increase in renewable energy required to electrify key technologies, especially in the absence of an updated energy strategy.

On transport, we noted that the plan places significant reliance on the uptake of electric vehicles. There is a considerable move away from the 2020 climate change plan update, which committed to an ambitious target of reducing car mileage by 20 per cent by 2030. The draft plan now proposes only a 4 per cent reduction.

We heard particularly concerning evidence from industry that plans to electrify heavy goods vehicles were totally unrealistic. The industry instead suggested that a role for drop-in biofuels would be more appropriate, and we have asked the Government to explore that.

On waste, the committee was concerned that projections for energy from waste emissions might be underestimated, following the decision to delay the enforcement of the ban on biodegradable municipal waste going to landfill shortly before the plan was submitted.

A thread that runs through the plan is just transition, and it includes the welcome addition of just transition indicators. The Economy and Fair Work Committee led that work, but we heard evidence on it, too, and we recommend that the Scottish and UK Governments work together on site-specific just transition plans where they are needed.

I will finish on the process of developing the climate change plan. I say, with regret, that the Parliament is in the same place as it was five years ago. We are doing this work right at the end of the parliamentary session, something that I counselled against as convener when we started the process.

That has been extremely challenging for committees, but it is not the primary concern; the key issue is that the Scottish Government has only three weeks if the cabinet secretary is to meet her own deadlines to finalise the plan and meet the timetable. That is bad practice, because it lowers confidence in what should be a robust process. We must remember that the Government will have to consider all the committee’s reports and the consultations with the public and then implement all of that in the final plan.

I look forward to hearing members’ views on whether the wait was worth it and whether, in the next few weeks, the draft climate change plan can be turned into a climate change plan that will get delivery back on track.

Presiding Officer, I will just say that, on the basis of the process alone, I have been underwhelmed by, and am deeply sceptical of, the way in which the Parliament has dealt with this issue.