Hansard

I will not be taking any interventions as I did not know that my speaking time would be reduced.

According to our Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee, the plan lacks credibility. According to the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, the plan lacks accountability and, according to the Local Government and Communities Committee, it places an overreliance on technology.

We have seen where the Scottish Government wants to go on climate change and we support that ambition, but the lack of a credible plan for achieving that ambition is more than a cause for concern.

We support the TIMES model, which has been used to inform the strategy. We agree that it is excellent, but it is unfortunate that the Scottish Government has chosen not to use it properly. Although 50 per cent of carbon comes from transport and agriculture, those two sectors were decided on outside the model, which skewed the assessment for those sectors and denigrates the model as a whole as a result. We can only hope that such omissions will be corrected in future uses of the model.

We look forward to the release of the model to universities to allow open-source examination of the data inputs and outputs. The Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee repeatedly requested that and deemed it necessary to allow the strategy to be properly transparent. That point was also noted by Friends of the Earth.

The climate change strategy’s lack of transparency is not the only problem from which it suffers. It is also clear that it is too dependent on technology and factors that are beyond the Scottish Government’s control. Transform Scotland supports that view.

When I put that to the cabinet secretary at committee a few weeks ago, she was dismissive and spoke of great advances in technology that will save the plan. Such a view might be applicable when we are talking about mobile phones, but I contend that technological changes are not as easily made in the context of large infrastructure projects such as installing district heating, repurposing the gas grid and insulating Scotland’s hard-to-treat homes. The requirement for technological improvements does not inspire confidence and makes the strategy unreliable.

Let us consider, for example, the Scottish Government’s emissions reduction pathway for residential property. It is estimated that the residential sector will account for 15 per cent of Scotland’s total emissions this year, and its share is growing, so it is vital that we get our approach right. According to the strategy, the target is to decrease emissions by 84 per cent by 2032. However, that is back-loaded; only 16 per cent of the decrease is sought in the first eight years, which leaves the remaining 84 per cent to be achieved in the second half of the period. That proposed trajectory is so tainted in its formation that one can only assume that its architects do not plan on being around for the policy’s inevitable failure.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Scottish Renewables questioned the target to supply 80 per cent of domestic properties with low-carbon heat technologies by 2025, which would require a leap from 18 per cent in just eight years. Given that almost 80 per cent of homes are currently supplied with mains gas, achieving that target will require a huge step change in delivery. I initially thought that the ambition would be achieved through district heating, but the other week, the cabinet secretary was more focused on repurposing the existing gas grid.

For members who are not familiar with what that entails, it means substituting the current methane gas with hydrogen. That is both technically feasible and desirable, but it will require huge volumes of hydrogen to be produced. If it is to come from electrolysis with electricity from renewables, that is neither clear nor, currently, economically efficient. If it is to come from conventional gas from the North Sea, with the resulting carbon returned through carbon capture and storage, that places a heavy reliance on a developing technology. Far be it from me to be cynical about such an approach but, with the Scottish Government placing all its target eggs in one basket, it is not hard to guess who it will blame for its failure.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government has not matched the Scottish Conservatives’ call for a transformational change in energy efficiency. It has failed to set a target for all homes to reach EPC band C by the end of the next decade. It is only right that I remind the Parliament of our manifesto commitment to spend 10 per cent of the capital budget on making homes energy efficient, which would have involved spending £1 billion cumulatively over this parliamentary session; the Scottish Government’s programme for government commits only £500 million to SEEP over the next four years.

The EPC system also needs reform. It is evident that the market has had no confidence in the system since its inception in 2009. The same house can receive three different EPC ratings, depending on who comes to survey it. A tick sheet is not enough to establish whether a house has proper insulation. We should be using EPC ratings as a springboard for green mortgages and encouraging investors to buy energy-efficient homes.