 Fy fawr, sobydd, yn fawr, cyhoeddiant ti'r FFproducau Gwyneddfaeth, Cyfair, Cymru o enwyrno cyntaf neu transgwrs y 2022, felly dwi'n cael ei fyddem yn hwyl â'r wawr i nhw, ac ei angen â gweithio â i'r Gwm archwestafol, maen nhw i gŵr i'r gwybod i'r cymdeithasol ac amnyddio i'r cyfredinol. Aegenda item 1, rwy'n cael ei wneud o'r gwybod pobl yn dweud o gyrtaeth yma. Genda item 4 rwy'n cyfredinol i gydag ymarfer. is evidence. The agenda item five is consideration of our work programme. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you. So items four and five will be taken in private. We now move on and welcome our first witnesses in respect of our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross-sectoral partners in delivering in net zero Scotland. The committee launched this inquiry in December with the call for views that will close on 21 January. The inquiry is about the role of local government and its partners in helping to meet national net zero targets. During later evidence sessions, the committee will hear from a range of cross-sector partner organisations working with local authorities, but the committee agreed that it would be very important at the beginning in our opening evidence sessions that we should hear from councils themselves. We are therefore hearing today from a cross-section of councils representing regions across Scotland. The first panel comprises the leaders of Scotland's three largest city councils, so I am very pleased to welcome councillor Susan Aitken, Glasgow City Council, councillor Jenny Lang, Aberdeen City Council, councillor Adam McVeigh city of Edinburgh. Thank you all very much for accepting our invitation today and it is very good to see you. I believe that each of you would like to make a brief opening statement and, for the sake of simplicity, it is probably easiest to go in alphabetical order. In other words, Aberdeen, Edinburgh to be followed by Glasgow. Jenny, I will hand over to you to make your opening statement to be followed by Adam and then Susan. Thank you very much, convener. As leader of Aberdeen City Council, I am delighted to have been asked to take part in today's committee session, as it affords me the opportunity to provide some information about the part that our councillor and city are playing in helping Scotland and the UK achieve their net zero targets and allows me to provide my views on the challenges and barriers local government is currently facing in relation to the delivery of the net zero agenda. I think that Aberdeen City Council, and indeed Aberdeen as a whole, certainly recognises the cross sector and interdependent climate challenges that we all face and we have stepped up to these challenges. Indeed, having been the host city for the UK oil and gas sector for over half a century and given many of our citizens' lives and livelihoods are strongly linked to what happens offshore, Aberdeen has a unique economic and social imperative as an energy city to ensure that we make a just transition to net zero. Capitalising on our significant influence as the local authority, the council has taken the lead and this has involved us using our own very limited resources to coordinate partners and stakeholders in the development and delivery of a place-based plan, as well as pushing ahead with the delivery of net zero projects within our own organisation. I believe that the committee has had sight of our council climate change plan, which does cover our own assets and operations, but this is only a small part of the story as Aberdeen City Council in common with many other local authorities has been working diligently on these matters for many years. Indeed, we drew up Aberdeen's first sustainable energy action plan in 2015 and our city region deal, which was signed in 2016, also has energy transition at its heart. We have also developed a hydrogen strategy in 2015 and have invested heavily in this emerging technology over the last decade. In June 2020, we brought forward a net zero vision for Aberdeen, accompanied by a strategic infrastructure plan for energy transition, both of which are aligned to the national net zero targets. As part of that work, we established a net zero leadership board and delivery unit, which has a membership from across the private and public sectors, provided advice and direction on our place-based net zero approach. We are currently in the process of finalising a net zero Aberdeen route map for 2045. That, hopefully, gives you an insight into what Aberdeen City Council is trying to do on the ground in relation to net zero targets. However, that has not been easy, because whilst councils have statutory climate duties to meet for our own organisations, there are currently little or no statutory duties, guidance, support or funding for councils to act on area-wide emissions. Councils are also expected to keep abreast of and engage with in response to the extensive and fast moving legislation, policies and consultation across a wide range of sectors and subjects related to climate change with little or no support. We all accept that, if we are to achieve our net zero goals, the level and pace of action that is required is considerable, and Aberdeen City Council is certainly keen to play its part. However, I would have to argue that further development and delivery requires national co-ordination and support, as well as finance additional capacity, skills, innovation and the foundations of robust data. I am looking forward to being able to discuss that with the committee members this morning. Thank you, convener. Thank you very much, Jenny. That was a very helpful overview. You raised some issues that I am sure will explore further in questions. Let me bring in Adam McVeigh to be followed by Susan Aitken for brief opening statements. Adam, over to you. Thank you very much, convener. I did want to just highlight at the start that if we are to keep global temperatures to a 1.5 degree rise, the action that we have to take globally in the next nine years now to 2030 is quite dramatic, and that will not be a linear process. Our cities have to be the leaders of that, and cities such as Edinburgh have to get to net zero by that timescale if the world is to keep those temperatures limited to that level. I did want to say that dramatic action, while it is needed and while it is not particularly easy, and Edinburgh is members of the committee, I am sure. We will know that we are trying to take a whole host of actions that are not easy to deliver in areas such as transport, and as we face into the energy mix of how we heat homes and decarbonise heat within our city, we will see difficulties in how we develop that. However, the crucial thing that I really want to get over is that, when we put our climate strategy out for consultation, nearly 1,000 residents responded to that. It was a big, meaty consultation, so it was great to have that level of engagement, but 77 per cent of people supported the actions in it. Now, the rest were split between those who either thought that it was going too far or not going far enough, but 85 per cent of people in Edinburgh supported the vision, supported the aim of reducing carbon emissions and getting to net zero by 2030. I do just want to say that, while the actions that are needed are dramatic and while the actions that Edinburgh and other councils are pursuing are dramatic in terms of transport, in terms of increasingly decarbonisation of heat in particular, the public and people in our communities understand it. They understand the rationale of why these actions are needed. They understand why the world needs to change and are up for that change. In Edinburgh, we have spent quite a lot of time trying to build the right mechanisms for that public engagement and those two-way conversations. We have a climate commission, which I advise chair-off, and we have an independent chair-off, which provides scrutiny not just to the council but right across sectorally. In Edinburgh, we also have a climate compact, which was signed by key industry leaders right across the cities, festivals, banks and universities. The major parts of our economy that are the carbon emitters, if you like, because we all are, have signed up to that, and the next waves of those signatories keep on going as more and more companies signed up to learn to sign up to the specific actions that we need. Our climate strategy—you will be very pleased, convener—I am not going to go into enormous detail on it because it is about 100-odd actions, and I am sure that people will have read it or not, I think that we are submitting written evidence. However, the two areas that we need to focus on specifically are heat reduction and decarbonisation of heat, and there will be a plethora of actions that we need to take to do that, and in transport. Unfortunately, in a city like Edinburgh, the solutions are not particularly easy and do not respect the lifestyle that people have become accustomed to. We need to change the way we live within our communities and the way we live within our cities if we are to get to proper renewable and sustainable footing. I will just re-emphasise the point that, while those actions are dramatic, I think that the people of Scotland, certainly the people of Edinburgh, are fully supportive of the direction of travel and the actions that are needed. In what we have seen when we have discussed that in forums, we have partnered with not only key partners in the economy but the Edinburgh Centre for Evidence and Environment, a climate change institute, and we have also partnered with our voluntary organisation, Umbrella representative body evoc, to build the right citizen engagement across the board with our communities. Through that partnership and dialogue, we are building a lot of support for the tangible actions that will make progress. Thank you very much, Adam. That is a very helpful overview, again. Finally, let me bring in Susan Aitken for her opening statement. Susan, over to you. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you very much for the invitation to talk to the committee this morning. It is a very good timing, not only just because it is the first committee session of 2022, but it is two months since COP26. COP26, which is the president of COP26, Alok Sharma, said, was the start of what needs to be a decade of action. That two months has given us, I think, a little bit of time to take stock and reflect on what hopefully was a concentration of minds in this space. It is a new space for everyone to a certain degree, although there has been work on climate action on going at national and at local level for a number of years. The pace and the urgency of change that needs to take place in the next decade, and I echo Councillor McVeigh in emphasising that none of that is optional, is something that we have to do. The pace, the financing behind it, ensuring that our structures and systems are prepared to meet the change, and a just transition to net zero, essentially being the organising principle behind everything that we do at every level of government. It is a big step up for all of us. One of our responsibilities as the whole city for COP26 in Glasgow was to give voice and a platform to cities and to local leaderships on the climate agenda. There was a genuine global exchange of information, ideas, policies and solutions, a real sense of solidarity among local government and municipalities globally, and an understanding that regardless of geography or political stripe or the character of the authority that we lead, there is that shared recognition that it is at local level where the change that is required on the ground to reach net zero will be delivered. Local authorities, particularly in the first instance in this crucial next decade, particularly cities, will be the delivery vehicles for action towards net zero, and national governments are not going to be able to meet their targets if they do not firstly support and get behind local government and give local government the confidence that we need to deliver net zero, but in particular from load action into cities, which is clearly where most of the emissions take place and therefore where the greatest gains in reducing emissions are. The national targets are not going to be achieved without recognising that it will be local delivery that makes the difference. Net zero essentially will be achieved in places and with people, and that is what city and local authority leaderships do every single day, practical actions and solutions to influence and improve places and the lives of citizens. However, our democratic mandate also gives us the convening power that is required to mobilise partnerships and collaborations, and those will be absolutely essential. We are not going to deliver on this agenda without collaboration, whether that is across the public sector, with business and industry, with communities crucially, with academia, with civil society. All of those will be must play their part in delivering those practical solutions to the specific challenges around net zero. I will not go into a huge amount of detail just now about the specifics of what we are doing in Glasgow. I hope that that will have an opportunity to emerge in response to the questions. Our climate emergency action plan, with our commitment to reaching net zero by 2030, is also submitted in evidence and is extensive and substantial. I hope that committee members will have a chance to look at that. That is very clearly not just a council climate emergency plan. It is a city plan and it is supported by the Sustainable Glasgow partnership, which I chair, but which is very much a partnership with delivery hubs below the strategic board, which are focused on coordinating and implementing that practical action to get to net zero. I would also add that we are currently consulting on our Glasgow green deal, which is out for a call for ideas with communities and citizens just now. That green deal will also provide that overarching plan to make net zero the organising principle of everything that we do, not just as a local authority, but as all partners across the city. I hope that we will have an opportunity to discuss that in more detail as time goes on. It might be something that the committee would be interested in at some point in the future. Those opening statements provide a really good overview for our question session, which we move on to now. Let me start with some evidence that we heard in the last committee meeting from the UK climate change committee. They shared concerns about whether local government has the necessary resources, capacity, budget, expertise and powers to deliver everything that is being required in the context of net zero, especially in the context of recent budgets where we have seen a real terms decline in the local government settlement. Some of the opening statements address some of those concerns, so I think that those concerns are recognised by each of you. It would be helpful for the committee to understand what in what particular areas you face the greatest challenges, whether it is resources, capacity, budget, powers or expertise, and if you could let me know how you intend to address those challenges and what additional help you might need from the Scottish Government to help address the challenges that you face in the transition to net zero. Again, let's go in alphabetical order, so I'll start with Jenny, then Adam and then Susan. Jenny, over to you. Thank you very much, convener. In my opening remarks, I made comment about the various aspects that I felt we needed to address. You've quite rightly pointed out that budgets to local government have seen a decline over a number of years, so it is difficult for us. I agree with my colleagues that councils are definitely the ones that should be driving this, particularly those in our seven cities, but it requires us to have the finances in which to do that. As a local authority, we've invested heavily ourselves, as I mentioned, in hydrogen technology, but there is only so far that you can go with that without that additional help from a national level. What I would say is that we've looked at how we can take an innovative approach to leveraging in private finance from the private sector. I think that we've done that to good effect with the joint venture that we've set up with BP recently around our hydrogen hub. That is very much about us making sure that we can get that inward investment from the private sector as well as coming through government grant. What I would say is that, on another theme, Adam touched on the fact that we needed to energy within our residential and commercial buildings will be key to us reaching our net zero targets. Glasgow and Aberdeen have been looking at projects around demonstrator projects around that retrofitting, but the whole focus of ourselves and government is on those social housing aspects. In Aberdeen itself, with 22,000 council homes, we have an eye-watering target of £1 billion probably to do that retrofit within our own housing stock. What about the private sector? Where is the focus around how we actually help our own private residents to make those changes? I agree with colleagues that the public are there. They want to play their part in that net zero targets, but they do not have the means at their own disposal to come forward with those changes, particularly when the technology is not at a stage where it is comparable with more conventional means of heating and, indeed, vehicles and various other aspects. It is about us investing in technology and about us investing in skills and training within our own organisations. Quite frankly, there is more and more to put on to local councils. The Government quite rightly wants us to play our part, but we do not have the capacity within our organisations to actually be stepping up to the plate without that further investment coming and, indeed, greater capacity being built within councils in order to move forward with that agenda. There are serious difficulties when our budgets are being cut. We are looking at ways in which we can streamline our own organisations. That all results in a lack of capacity at a local level in order to bring forward some of the schemes and policies that will be required in order for us to meet our net zero targets. A prime example of that is the money that was put on the table or announced at the budget in relation to the north-east for that just transition. The money was put on the table, £20 million. It raises expectations within communities, businesses and stakeholders. However, there is no detail, there is no communication with local authority around what that money can be spent on, how it can be utilised and how it can be used. There is a lack of co-ordination between local and national government, which will hamper us moving forward. There is a lack of understanding at a national government level of the costs that are connected with delivering the net zero agenda. Until we have that communication between those levels of government, we are going to be very hard pushed to deliver on the agenda that we are all striving for, particularly in the timescales that we are talking about. Thanks very much, Jenny. You touched on a number of areas that I know that other committee members want to explore in a bit more detail. Let me bring in Adam on the same question to be followed by Susan. Adam, over to you. Thank you. Not to make it sound like a Brian Cox drama, but it is about money and power for local authorities. I would say to the committee, be mindful about where the arrows are going, the solutions that are being built and crafted and identified at a local level is what needs to be supported. Not every project that Edinburgh Council or any other council will develop in partnership or, as a stand-alone project, will be able to wash its own face, will be able to cover its own costs and build itself in that way. However, it will need financial backing and sometimes what we see is government support for projects that are crafted and imagined at government level. For me, the arrows are going the wrong direction when we get to that stage. We need to have finance available from government to support things that are, thanks to the radar of government and are built and developed at a local council level. That is where the relationships are, where the partnerships are and where the skills are to deliver it. Our city deal that we signed in 2017 has been really useful. We started that off in terms of skills, looking at two main areas. One is data-driven innovation and technology. Skills are another construction because we knew that there was a huge pent-up demand for construction projects and inward investment to deliver that in the city. We managed to use some of that construction money in the space of green skills. We have looked at how we build the skills pipeline with some of that money to try and build the kind of infrastructure that we need at a city level to try and do things such as retrofit at a bigger scale. It is an example where the money has been really helpful, but the solutions and the crafting of that has been done locally and I think that that is really important. In terms of powers, one of the major things in a city like Edinburgh and I suspect other cities as well when you look at the pie chart of our carbon emissions transport is that the huge slice of the pie transport and heat. When we look at what we have to do in terms of transport to decarbonise it, it is looking at things that will need to be taken up at a national level in terms of last-mile delivery, decarbonising college and supporting the industry to decarbonise and providing financial help to try and enable some of those last-mile delivery solutions that will need where there are city. It is also about public transport and decarbonising public transport and that is about moving to electric and hydrogen buses and it is also about zero on-street emission sources like tram and making sure that there is no prejudice against projects that will deliver mass transit in cities like Edinburgh at no carbon, but there is an elephant in the room and it is cheap and it is easy and it is not particularly easy on a door-to-door level, but we need to walk more, we need to cycle more in a city context and when you look at the traffic regulation order process that councils have to go to to redesign streets if there is opposition, which there sometimes is, let's be honest, is quite long and really quite archaic and that has to change. There is a scheme in Edinburgh, where I cycle way, route huge benefits for cycling, huge improvements to the walking environment as well. That was approved before I was council leader and I've been a council leader for more than four and a half years now and we're only now getting to the point where shovels are going in the ground to build that because of the very drawn-out traffic regulation order process. Councils have to be able to change the public realm easier, of course we have to consult, of course we have to engage with businesses, with communities, but we need to be able to change the landscape and infrastructure of our cities quicker and more effectively if we're to see the drops in carbon emissions associated with transport that we have. I'm afraid despite the benefits of EV cars, cities like Edinburgh will not be able to reach net zero by 2030 with a model that has a congested city of private cars that are petrol moving to a congested city of private cars that are electric. That just won't wash it, so we need to fundamentally change the mix and the traffic regulation order process needs to empower councils far, far more to work much more quickly, deliver change much more cheaply through the unnecessary bureaucracy being stripped out and allow us to really drive forward change for the benefit of our communities. Thanks very much Adam. I know that on the transport issues you raised, Mark Ruskell will want to explore them in a short while. Susan, let me bring you in the same opening question in terms of the challenges you face. I'll hand over to you. I'll try not to repeat what other colleagues have said and I agree with a lot of it. I think Adam has spoken very well about how it works in the context of transport and changing public space. More broadly, I suppose that we would say that regulatory and legislative approaches all have to be aligned to have the delivery of net zero happen as quickly as possible and with as few barriers as possible. That is something that has to come from national level down to local government, because local government doesn't by and large have the control over that. One other example that I would add is renewable heat networks, district heating systems, which currently carry non-domestic rates charge, which makes them very difficult for registered social landlords to pursue, for example, and can stand in the way of that. That is something that government needs to address. It comes back to this whole point about looking at everything that it does systemically and making net zero the organising principle in all of it. I think that resource is an issue particularly for capacity within local government. We found out fairly quickly in Glasgow that we were lacking particular skills. Our inward investment in economic development team were tasked with ahead of COP26 coming up with an investment plan, a net zero investment plan for the city. We did our Glasgow green print, which is quite far ahead in terms of the UK. It is something that we recognise that we needed to do because of COP26, but it is a fantastic award-winning team. It recognised early doors that they were lacking a particular skill set around the green economy and green financing. We recruited a green economy manager who is part of that team. Not all local authorities, particularly when you get to a smaller level, will necessarily have the ability to do that, but they are going to need those skills, too. We are all going to need those skills, or we are going to need access to a shared resource of those skills across local government, because we are going to have to project manage some major interventions. We need to be able to engage with the private sector at a level and at a scale that we have never done before in local government, not just in Scotland globally in terms of financing. There is a whole lot of very fast-moving technology that we need to get our heads around. There are going to be proofs of concepts and all sorts of pieces of work that have to be done that have not been necessarily the bread and butter of local authorities in the past and which we are, by and large, not financed to do or not resourced to do. However, coming back to the point of if national targets both within Scotland and at the UK are going to be delivered, then local government is going to have to be empowered and given the capacity to do that. I caution against thinking that us getting to net zero and delivering net zero is either about local authority budgets or even about national government financing or just about that, because there is no way that it is going to be delivered from that. That is about bringing the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of finance that is out there in the world. That was one of the big themes of discussion at COP26, of course. It is about aligning all of that to deliver net zero and it is about growing the capacity of local government and particularly cities to get that into our projects and delivering them. To give you a bit of context, Glasgow has been very involved in discussions around that. I emphasise that it is a new space. It is a new space for all cities. We have done some work with partnership with Bristol. We did some discussions with major organisations, Chatham House Rules but the likes of the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, philanthropic organisations such as the Bloomberg Philanthropies, a range of other, and some of the big funders that are out there, the pension funds and the global banks, who have their hands on those trillions and trillions of dollars. It was very clear that they are not used to investing in municipalities. Where all the public partnership and private partnerships are in the world, they tend not to be at city level or perhaps apart from the kind of the world's mega cities but certainly medium-sized and global-term cities such as Glasgow. We tend not to be in that space because we are talking about—to give some context, perhaps one of the biggest financial deals that has ever been done by any local authority in the UK was our equal pay deal in Glasgow back in 2018. That was £0.5 billion, but Jenny was talking about retrofitting, and Adam touched on that as well, which is one of the most important things that we can all do to get a big gain in emissions reduction. The work that we have done in Glasgow on a regional level across the Glasgow city region around 450,000 homes require to be retrofitted, and it will be about £11 billion, is the calculation of costs. That is a space that we have never been anywhere near that before. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions—it is tens of billions of pounds. The UK city's climate investment commission, which emerged from the work that we did with Bristol involves the 10 UK core cities, which is the 10 biggest outside London of which Glasgow is one, and all the London boroughs. The calculation is that to get all of us collectively to net zero will be £200 billion over the next decade. That is the kind of space that we are talking about. That is not about local government budgets, but national governments and local government have to do in partnership. The Scottish Government is, of course, hamstrung on how much it can do this, because it does not have the full range of fiscal levers. The UK Government is absolutely crucial in that. It needs to stand behind local government, and we need to be able to give citizens a reassurance and a guarantee that this is not going to be delivered at the expense of their public services, and that public services will be protected so that it is not local authority budgets that are going to be delivering major interventions, huge infrastructure projects, whether it is in heat or transport or the reconfiguring of public space. The final point that I would make on this particular area around financing is that all of us need to understand that we should not talk about paying for net zero. It is cash flowing net zero. It is an investment. It is not a money saving thing in terms of local government budgets or even national government budgets, but in the longer term what it is is transformational in the way that we resource society and public services. The benefits that investment in net zero will far outweigh the costs of it now, whether that is in improved health, whether it is in a more sustainable green economy and the jobs that come out of that, a whole range of areas. Some of the work that is being done for the UK climate cities climate investment commission, they reckon that for every pound invested in getting to net zero just now, they are delivering nine or 10 pounds in benefits for society and the economy. That is the kind of space that we all need to be in, in thinking about how we resource this, how we front load investment in capacity and in empowering where this action and delivery is going to take place most quickly and most effectively and that is at local authority level. Okay, thanks very much Susan. Let me explore further briefly an area that each of you have touched on in your opening remarks. The heat and building strategy announced a couple of months ago by the Scottish Government, which is going to be led by local authorities. As you know, this includes a target to make at least one million homes across Scotland energy efficient and convert them to zero emissions heating. The Scottish Government has estimated that this will cost £33 billion with £1.8 billion committed by the Scottish Government over the next five years. A few questions in this area and if you could keep the answers quite brief and focused, I appreciate that it is a big area but we are up against the clock. What percentage of properties in your local authority area do you think that you will be able to convert by 2030? How will that be financed and have you agreed the required financing with the Scottish Government? We will go in the same order as before, so we will start with Jenny, then Adam, then Susan. As I said, I am sorry, we are up against time, so if you could keep your answers quite focused, that would be great because we have a huge amount of ground to cover. Jenny, over to you. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have looked at some retrofit demonstrator projects to try and get an estimate on the costs that we have connected. We have some unique challenges in Aberdeen because of the vast amount of properties that are actually built from granite, which brings its own challenges. It is not that easy to provide the energy efficiency within those types of buildings. The other thing that we have in the city that is under local authority control is a large number of high-rise buildings, which you may have seen as recently. There has been some listing through Historic Environment Scotland in relation to those buildings, which will cause us challenges. I mentioned that £1 billion is what we are looking at in order to retrofit and convert and provide the energy efficiency within our own council housing stock. We have to do that through our housing revenue account at the moment. There are pots of money that become available, but I think that what I would say is that often the timescales connected to them are short. We need the opportunity to have contractors appointed various other things. I touched on the skills base and what we are seeing out there within the contracting world, whether it is the construction industry or indeed the engineers and various other professionals that are connected with projects. We do not feel that the skills base is there currently, so I think that we are really going to be very much up against the clock in order to try and provide that by 2030. I am not aware of any extensive discussions that we have had with Scottish Government or officials in relation to providing that other than some of the demonstrator projects that we have done ourselves. I note that in Glasgow there has been similar work carried out, but based on what we are doing, it is a drop in the ocean compared to what is required moving forward. What will be key is the private sector coming in. We may well have to look at how we deal with energy efficiency within our own homes moving forward. At the moment, we all own the assets generally. We buy the systems, whether it is boilers or whatever, but we may have to look, given the emerging technology and the costs related to that, to look at a different system being set up whereby it may be that the installers provide the equipment and indeed the energy supply, and we pay for that on a rental basis rather than owning those systems, because at the moment the technology is not moving fast enough to bring it down to a comparable level for the vast majority of the public to afford that when they weigh it up against more conventional means of heat. I think that there has to be co-ordination in a number of areas, not just the financial aspects, in order to achieve what we are striving for moving forward. Thanks very much, Jenny. It does sound like a huge challenge to meet those 2030 targets. Adam, the same question to you. I will try not to repeat anything before. Inveras ran some projects in partnership, but it depends on where. We have similar challenges. A world heritage site, our old town is an obvious challenge, our new town will be an obvious challenge. I am speaking to you in a granite home in Leith. There are significant challenges with the built environment, but through COP we had a carbon centre, which took the city through a lot of the projects that were happening already and some of the actions that would be needed. Some of it is financially viable on its own terms, but a lot of it is not. It very much depends on what the building is and what the interventions are. Obviously, the more expensive the intervention is, the better in terms of carbon emissions. The trade-off hits a balance point, where it does not become financially viable on its own right. It is the public purse angle that will have to pick up the tab for some of the hard-to-reach bits of that. The council is convening a heat and energy partnership. We are pulling together council, NHS, Henry University, Scottish Water, Scottish Gas, the city region deal across the partnership. We are trying to build that partnership to build the right solutions. The heat and energy master plan is what, hopefully, when it comes out, and it is fully fledged. The timeline for that is, by next few years, that would be published in 2022-23, when we start that work properly. When that is finalised, that will give us a strong indication of what needs to be funded through public intervention and what can be funded through private intervention. However, to echo one of the points that was made by Councillor Lang, the skills element is a crucial barrier to the stuff that stacks up financially in its own right. The industry sector has to change fundamentally. The gas boilers will have to shift over and be able to transfer their enormous skills into things that we will need, and, similarly, we will need a lot more people doing a lot more interventions on roofs, windows and buildings in relation to insulation to drive that forward. The skills element is the real barrier to the stuff that makes sense in its own right and tech. I will use the last answer to a previous question. There is money within a city like Edinburgh to deliver a lot of that without public intervention, but for the stuff that does not stack up and that will need that kind of partnership, wrap around support and finance, that is where the public focus needs to be on. Thanks very much, Adam. Susan, the same question to you and just a reminder that we are slightly up against the clock, so apologies. Yeah, I will keep it brief. I think I said in my previous answer, we have done a lot of feasibility work, extensive feasibility work in the Glasgow city region on building retrofit already. That is all housing stock. We are, and Jenny has alluded to this, we have done some pilots around how we would technically achieve the retrofit to passive house standard. As good as it gets really of our pre-1919 tenement stock, sandstone tenements, a brilliant urban housing model but leak heat and nobody's business, and that's where we have our biggest technical challenge and a heritage challenge as well. Obviously, at the same time as doing the retrofitting, we need to do that shift of people on to renewable heat sources as well. There's no point in retrofitting homes if folk are still using gas boilers and indeed vice versa putting folk on to heat source pumps from the river Clyde if half of that heat is disappearing out of leach roofs and windows. All of that work has to happen simultaneously. I'm very clear of the kind of scale that I've talked about. The Scottish Government is saying that 30 million for a million homes in the Glasgow city region is nearly half of that and a third of that cost. We are way beyond that already and we don't expect the Scottish Government to pay for it. We have never expected the Scottish Government to pay for retrofitting. That will be a partnership with investors in the city. Both retrofit and renewable heat source projects are part of our green print for investment. We've worked them up into investigal propositions so that we can talk to a pension fund about getting that delivered. That's not to say that the Scottish Government and the UK Government, crucially, don't have a role in helping us to do that. A lot of that is in that feasibility, in the proof of concept, in the piloting of the particularly difficult bits. I don't think that anyone can or should expect that the Scottish Government is single-handedly going to be able to pay for every home in Scotland to be retrofitted. That is going to need innovative finance models and partnerships, which, as I've said before, is going to take us into a new space and new ways of working that very few local authorities have been in before. I know that Fiona Hyslop has some questions in the finance area, so it's quite a good follow-up. Fiona, over to you. Thank you for joining us. The committee is interested in your work with partners, particularly in the relationship with private sector and private sector investment. I would first like to come to Adam McVeig, councillor for Edinburgh, councillor Janet Jay-Lang, and then councillor Susan Aiken. Adam, the Edinburgh City Council plan is quite explicit in this area. With Edinburgh being an area of financial sector expertise, what amount of private funding are you able to leverage in just now? What projects are you targeting? And what is success looking like, but what are the challenges? For Jenny, you've already talked about your relationship with BP and the hydrogen sector. Are you doing anything similar in relation to leveraging private sector funding, which has been set out by Susan Aiken for Glasgow? Susan, you've very eloquently set out the scale, ambition and the need to generate investable propositions. For you, it might be helpful if you can maybe share with us some of your thinking behind the experience of other countries or other cities that we can draw on, but I'm conscious of time on that as well. I'm sure that we might have to ask for follow-up information if people are limited time-wise. First of all, I'll come into councillor Adam McVeig. Thanks very much. Really helpful question. I think that, as a real tangible that is happening now, I'll use a project that you'll be very familiar with, and it's a different space, I think. The Grants of Waterfront project is a huge one pulling in culture and education, but it's fundamentally thousands of homes for people in Edinburgh. We've made sure that the standards that those homes are going to be built at is a high standard. We're not leaving ourselves with a legacy of even more carbon to work through. Crucially, one of the things that we're using to underpin that is a potential district heating model using the fourth. We're not quite as lucky to have the volume of water that the Clyde has running through our city centre. The water leaf, unfortunately, doesn't quite have the flow through of water to give us that scaling capacity to extract heat from it in the same way, but the fourth certainly does. So one of the things that we're building into that project right now, and we will be absolutely reliant on private sector investment becoming part of that, and there's been a huge amount of interest from those that are coming not only to build, but to build and invest in some of those basic infrastructure things as well, such as district heating and renewable district heating from the fourth. That's just one tangible example. It's easier when you build, it is easier, but one of the things—again, the other example that's come into my head is in the south west, looking at miller hill and the waste to heat energy plant and linking that in with using excess heat from that to heat new homes. We haven't quite got to the position, I don't think, where those renewable sources are connected into a transformation from gas to renewable heat within existing housing stock, and that's going to be the really quite difficult thing. But what we are doing now is proving concept, linking in the heat sources that are there to scale new development, pulling in that private sector investment to do it, and then, hopefully, building a district heating network which other existing streets and properties and homes can take advantage of and link into. We're not quite at the position where the retrofit model, although what we are doing, as I said before, is pulling in funding that we've had from City Deal, for example, to try and up that skills, basically trying to strengthen the market and the industry to try and deliver that within the city. That's entirely private sector-led, because the council's not developing retrofit companies, for example, but we are trying to make sure that market has enough skills in it that can really fly and take advantage of the business that's in the city, which is all driving down carbon emissions. As you mentioned, we have links with BP both through our memorandum of understanding, where we're working with them, like they are with cities around the world, Houston being another one, in relation to helping us to meet our net zero targets within our own organisation and providing expertise and support in relation to that. That's also led us on to also appoint them as a preferred bidder for our Hydrogen Hub Aberdeen project, and that will look at scaling up the production of hydrogen for both transportation and, indeed, ultimately around that heat aspects, as well as hydrogen for heat, both commercial and residential, and, indeed, the ultimate production and, hopefully, export of hydrogen moving forward. Aberdeen's got a long tradition of working with the private sector. We have a very private sector-led economy in Aberdeen, and I mentioned about our city region deal being very much being based on that energy transition piece and, indeed, the technology and development of technology, which will help us around that net zero targets that we've got. I think that we've shown from our city deal, which was in the region of £250 million from the two Governments, that we've managed to leverage in three times as much of that in connection with the projects through our city region deal. That has been as a direct result of that strong public-private sector working. We've also got district heat networks within the city. 20 years ago, we set up an arms-length organisation, Aberdeen Heat and Power, in order to promote that within the city. While it was set up as a not-for-profit organisation to help with fuel poverty and reduce energy costs in the city, it is also looking at how it can develop the systems that we have to meet the needs not just of our social tenants within the city but also commercial customers and, indeed, private sector owners as well. We have worked closely with them to develop those types of partnerships, so that is some of the work that is currently going on in the public and private sector working together. As we have all touched on today, it will be key that we get that private investment because we certainly cannot deliver the net zero agenda with public money alone. Can I just follow up on that, Jenny? Do you think that the financial sector in particular could be doing more in working with councils to get the investable propositions? It is an interesting one. I always think that we can work closely. You may be aware that Aberdeen actually has a credit rating. We were the first local authority in Scotland to apply for that, and we issued a bond. That has allowed us to promote and move forward with a large part of our capital programme. One element of that was the exhibition and conference centre, which we have developed in the city very much with environmental aspects attached to that. We have an energy centre that is run by hydrogen and fuelled by an AD plant. It fuels not just that conference centre but two hotels, and we think that we can scale that up to provide energy to the wider development that will take place on that site. I think that when you have propositions that are attractive that look like they will produce a commercial return for investors, you can get that inward investment. Through the Scottish Cities Alliance, we have been working the seven cities across Scotland to try and make sure that we are presenting investor-ready projects that will attract that private sector investment and try to give it as a proposition, as a collective. Scotland is a small place relatively in the scheme of things, and we have to go out with a joined-up approach in order to attract that inward investment into cities such as Aberdeen and Glasgow and Edinburgh and others in order to further the plans that we have not just around net zero but other investment to create that economic growth that we are all going to need moving forward, particularly Aberdeen as we transition from being an oil and gas city into renewable energy as well. Thank you. I thank Glasgow and the people of Glasgow and the hosting of COP, but is there anything further to what you have already said extensively on private sector investment that gives insight from your international experience? I think that that final point that Jerry made is an important one about understanding scale and what investors are looking for in terms of scale. In Scotland, Glasgow is just about we have some projects, actually not that many, that are at the scale that these investors are looking for. They are looking for the tens of billions. They want massive projects, which are for the long term. By and large, Scottish municipalities are not able to offer that on their own. The more that we are able to collaborate and to understand how to scale up investment and then to have these conversations with the financial world, the better position Scotland will be to reach national targets. That is where definitely Government support can come in around that capacity building, but also partnerships with organisations that I have mentioned already, such as the Bloomberg Foundation, for example, who are really supportive of cities in growing capacity C40 cities network, which is now chaired by Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. It is by and large mega cities of over a million, but they have been very supportive and helpful for Glasgow invaluable support that we have had from them. Also understanding that, while we are moving and having to move rapidly, so is the world of global finance. They are also having to change their mindsets and move. None of us are doing this on our own. It is not like they are just going to stay over here and we have to do all the running. They are coming towards us. They are recognising that they have to change the way that they invest. They are becoming often more activist in their investments and actively seeking outcomes, which they will be able to say, yes, we have contributed towards tackling the climate emergency and to delivering social goods and social benefits. It is probably a much more long-term collaborative relationship with investors than we might have been used to in the past. We have all been very, very good in Scotland. You will know this at bringing in direct foreign investment into Scotland. In fact, we do better than anywhere in the UK outside of London at bringing in foreign investment, whether that is for building hotels, office blocks or housing, all sorts of things. To fund infrastructure is different. That is where we have learning and to understand what the commercial returns are on that and how we shape infrastructure interventions to make them commercial propositions, while, at the same time, bringing in investors towards us and getting them signed up and aligned with us on delivering the outcomes that we want for our communities and for our citizens and, obviously, for the planet in terms of delivering carbon reduction. There is a huge amount of learning still to be done. I would say that the whole area is moving very, very rapidly and really fast. I talked about earlier the UK Climate Cities Investment Commission. That was formed in four months from early conversations between Glasgow and Bristol and those big global financial organisations. We then have an organisation emerging within four months. It is all moving very fast and our understanding of it is moving very fast as well. Thank you very much, Susan. I think that I will be passing back now to the convener, we are very conscious of time. I was interested in your city's attitude to carbon offsetting in your own plans, and otherwise perhaps we can ask your councils to follow up with that information. In the conscious of time, I think that I will hand back over to the convener, Mark Ruskell, to be followed by Jackie Dunbar. Mark, over to you. Thank you, convener, and thank you for the contributions that we have heard from this morning. I wanted to focus you on transport. You have already mentioned some of the challenges around transport and its contribution to climate emissions reduction. In particular, I am interested in what approaches you are taking to road traffic, demand and management. Do you have all the tools in the box? Are you willing to use all the tools in the box to drive down mileage, particularly to meet the Government's target for 2030? Can I start with Adam on this one? It is coming up 20 years, I think, since the Edinburgh congestion challenge referendum. If it had gone through, if it had been put in place, do you think that the city would look different now in terms of traffic levels and investment infrastructure? It would have inevitably looked different because it would have had an impact twofold. One, I think that it would have had a deterrent effect. I am not necessarily advocating it, by the way, and I point out that I was, I think, about 13 years old at the time, so it certainly was not a stakeholder then. It would have had a deterrent effect on traffic coming into the city and would have crucially provided the city with a revenue stream that it would have been able to invest in future advancements. Edinburgh is in a quite strange and unique place in a Scottish context. Obviously, we have Lonane Buses, which is a publicly-owned bus company. Edinburgh Council owns 91 per cent of the shares of that. The other shares are held by the regional authorities in the Lodians at a fairly small rate. Working to invest in public transport is not something that we have actually been used to because we have had such a successful public transport company that Lonane Buses has been able to invest in its fleet, keep fare low, and keep patronage very high. I should carry out all this with saying that this is pre-Covid, and obviously that has changed the dynamic slightly. However, the mass transit necessity of Edinburgh as I grow in the city, tens of thousands of more people—in fact, in the last 20 years—were probably close to 100,000 people more living in Edinburgh than there was a case then. Huge growth in the city mass transit is the thing that is needed now to cope with those really high-capacity travel routes. Tram is the thing that does that best. Tram, an active travel, are the things that can really speed that up. That complements and supports our underpinning bus service, which carries so many people right across the city to destinations in a very different way to those key corridor mass transit routes, and it is also very different to where people might walk or cycle. I do not think that we have the tools to get that change that we need right now. I think that we need a revenue stream to continue to invest in active travel and mass-capacity public transport. Whether that is from a congestion charger or another form of charge or additional finance from central government, because it is at a scale where the council cannot pay for it on its own—although I point out that we are paying for a tram extension right now to New Haven as a council, and we are doing that on a business case that stacks up on its own and will not, I do not think, touch public finance, because I think that patronage will pay for the borrowing of it, but that is quite unique. It is because it is going down an incredibly highly densely populated area, so patronage figures will support that. In other areas, where we still have a huge amount of people making those journeys in the south of the city and indeed in the north, we need that infrastructure. I think that it will be very difficult for patronage as a business case to make up that proportion on its own. Whether it is a congestion charge, whether it is a workplace park in Levy, whether it is a recognition by central government that significant capital funding will be needed for those kind of projects, including things like additional cycling infrastructure and improved walking and mass-capacity public transport of tram. I am not particularly fussy, but I think that the solution will need additional finance from one of those sources. Do you say that it is all carrot though? Is there a balance here? There is definitely a balance, so Edinburgh is pursuing one of the most ambitious low-mission zones in the entire country. We are trying to cover as much of our city centre as we can. If all policy constraints were removed and we were able to craft that exactly how we wanted, I think that we would have probably went for a city-wide low-mission zone, but because of the way the policy is shaped, that is not workable for our city for a whole host of reasons. We are looking at policies to try and deter some of the high-plutin vehicles, and we will look at policies to make sure that vehicles cannot get access to everywhere in the city. Our plans for George Street, for example, and one of our premier streets in the city will have access for only deliveries and people with blue badges. We are trying to decar a lot of our city centre. Our city centre transformation plan, as well, is built on putting the pedestrian at the absolute heart of those schemes and putting that space from car to people. There are a huge number of things that we are doing. Road charging is one thing that could be done, but it needs to be done in conjunction with parking charges or some access charges or whatever that is framed. We have, in our programme right now, a workplace parking levy, rather than a congestion charge. Fundamentally, the policies would do the same thing in creating a financial deterrent and giving us a revenue stream to invest in those better alternatives, like us from cyclomocking. Can I move on to Susan to get her reflections on that? I agree with a lot of what Adam Scott said about the need to have, first of all, that mass transit of whatever is the most suitable for the particular area is the answer, and we need major investment in that. Glasgow is coming from a very different history from Edinburgh and Lothian, where, historically, our bus fleet was deregulated. To use your point about the combination of carrot and stick, we already have our city centre wide low emission zone in place. It is rolling out incrementally. It will be fully in place for all vehicles, including private cars, by the end of 2023. It has already had an impact. It is fair to say that there was historic underinvestment in the bus fleet in Glasgow by the first bus of the main operator. In comparison to other places, the quality of the bus fleet was extremely poor. Bringing in the low emission zone, but working in partnership with the first bus on that, has transformed the bus fleet. The investment that the combination of carrot and stick has driven, in a fairly short space of time, the bus fleet in Glasgow is now unrecognisable. It is far, far cleaner. It is much more modern. It is much more efficient. We have had the stick of the low emission zone, but also a carrot of working in partnership, to have much more bus priority measures, for example, to try and think that the first bus rightly had a complaint that its journeys were often too long, that there was too much congestion, and that was something that was in the hands of the city to do and had never been addressed. We have now started to address that. A combination of things is improving that. However, I think that buses on their own are not going to be enough. It is going to have to be an integrated transport system. We are approaching it on a regional basis. We had the recommendations and plans from the connectivity commission that reported nearly four years ago now. We use, as shorthand, the term metro for the combination of bus of our existing heavy rail system, which is superb, and is one of the best outside London, but is also absolutely at capacity. The cart circle that runs literally right behind my house is the busiest commuter line in the UK at peak times outside of London, pre-pandemic laws, but there is also new light rail or tram on street to connect up. That is a massive intervention. We have been working and talking to Transport Scotland about how we might progress that. We are not going to say much more about that just now because it is still on-going. Just that Adam talked about road pricing, I would agree that it needs to be considered. The other thing that I would add for financing is land value capture. If we are investing in new modes of transport, and indeed through our city region deal in Glasgow, huge amounts of investment in improving land and reclaiming post-industrial land that has been vacant and derelict for a long time, all that public money is massively adding to the value of that land. We do not have mechanisms at local level to get the benefits of that to reinvest and continue to drive forward investment in whether it is in transport or continuing reclamation of post-industrial vacant and derelict land. That is another key mechanism, a revenue raising mechanism that would make a huge difference for local authorities, particularly city authorities, but that could be deployed on a regional basis, a travel-to-work area basis to a very strong effect. I have to say that I am sometimes envious of Edinburgh and Glasgow for the size of their public transport network and the variety of public transport that they have at their disposal compared to Aberdeen. That has a major impact on us, particularly as we have quite a large travel-to-work area. The reliability, efficiency and affordability of public transport has caused us difficulties in order to get that behavioural change of the public to get out of cars and on to public transport. As a local authority, both Adam and Susan have done in their cities, we have done similar things to try to make sure that it is a bit of carrot and stick where we are bringing forward bus priority measures. We are looking to work again on a regional basis, such as others, in order to get that integrated transport system that will meet the needs of the public. However, I think that the fact that we have had a desire in Aberdeen to set up a bus company of our own, because, like Glasgow, we were deregulated. That has caused us incredible difficulties over recent years, but the legislation is not there to allow us to do that. We have worked with bus companies in the city and we do that to good effect through our bus partnership. We have secured some additional funding that will allow us to look at a rapid transport system that we can bring forward, but that will take us time. I think that, if there are more tools at local government disposal, it helps us to make sure that we can prioritise some of those things. There has been a bit of a frustration because we have had some money as part of our city region deal around developing transport, particularly around rail, but that is my fire alarm going off here. I do not think that we have diverted that funding to the correct areas. When we have seen investment in local train stations and areas surrounding Aberdeen, we have seen great uptake by the public. I think that some cross-city rail links would benefit us greatly, but unfortunately the money is being diverted elsewhere and not really being channeled into the areas that I think would be most effective for local areas. Others are right around workplace levees and things like that, but I think that it should be at the discretion of local government to determine what is the best thing to bring in to benefit their local area that would provide the revenue that could be then invested in other measures that would encourage active travel and support that public transport network. What is the top thing that you are looking to come out of the STPR, strategic transport projects? Is it something like a mass transit system that might occur in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the years ahead, or is it something else? As I have mentioned before, we have prioritised bus travel and things. We are looking at a rapid transport system that we would bring along our major travel corridors. That is what is going to be required to meet the needs of the travelling public. It is about the efficiency and reliability of public transport. We have difficulties with the Covid situation and the impact that that has had to build back the confidence of the public to get on to public transport, but it is about us creating a system that is efficient. Susan touched on the standards of public transport, which is vitally important. That is why we have invested heavily in our hydrogen bus fleet to provide cleaner, more up-to-date vehicles that will meet the needs of the travelling public. We would look to see further investment in that and some of the other projects that we are bringing forward. We had commitment from both Governments to look at that when our stag appraisals and things were done around some of these transport projects. I would hope that they will come to the table when we have the findings of that and make sure that we are working together to try to deliver that for the north-east of Scotland. Next up is Jackie Dunbar, to be followed by Liam Kerr. Over to you, Jackie, please. Thank you, convener. Before I ask the panel my couple of questions I have, can I declare my interests? I am still a serving councillor at Aberdeen City Council. I thank the panel for coming along today. I will keep my questions brief because I am noticing that we are getting very short for time. I ask the panel roundabout planning within their local authorities whether the section 75 agreements are used to deliver infrastructure that is compatible with and contributes to achieving net zero. Can I go to councillor Lang first, please? Thank you, Jackie, for that question. Good to see you. I think that we have always tried to make sure that, if we have the legislation at our disposal, we can use section 75 revenue. You will be aware that we did, at one time, attempt to set up a strategic transport fund within the city, which we felt was the best way in which we could utilise the developer contributions coming from the new developments within the city, taking that into a pool fund in effect, which we felt could then help us to deliver on some of the aspects that we have talked about there about transport systems across the city and make that more effective. Unfortunately, there was a legal challenge against that, which we lost. I think that that was detrimental because I think if there is an opportunity around that planning system to make sure that the money that is coming in is spent in the right areas around the new infrastructure that allows us to bring forward and meet that net zero target, I think that the difficulty around the planning system at the moment is again about the expertise and skills that we have within our own planning departments, particularly around that net zero and climate change agenda. I think that it is necessary for us to make sure that we have suitable training in there. When our officers are looking at drawing up those section 75 agreements, they have the suitable training and expertise in which to make sure that those areas are covered and that the money is directed and channeled into the areas that we would like to see it spent. Do you think that the current balance between using the section 75 money between housing and infrastructure is about 60-40? Do you think that that is appropriate? Do you mean that the split is inappropriate? Just tell me the question again, Jackie. Sorry, I wasn't quite right. The current balance just now is that the section 75 money is being used for like 60 per cent goes on housing and 40 per cent on infrastructure, which is my understanding. I was just wondering in your opinion whether you think that that is appropriate or would you change it in any way, if you could? I think that there needs to be a degree of flexibility. It depends, I suppose, on what that development is looking like and what the implications of that development will be. At the moment when we have, I think that we are looking that we will use the planning system moving forward to ensure that we are meeting those net zero targets and things. It is much easier on new development to do that and make sure that the funding that is coming in is being spent in the right areas. When it is development that is already there and we are making changes to that, then obviously the implications around that would be different, I think, and the needs would be different. I think that there needs to be a degree of flexibility in relation to that. However, as I have mentioned, we have had difficulties in the past when we have looked to use that flexibility because the legislation is not there to support it and that legal challenge is made. Often the money is lost, which is detrimental to the local area. We need to look at how that is shaped up in order to determine some of those aspects. Okay, thank you very much. Can I ask the same questions to councillor Aitken, please? Hi. I think that the planning is a really interesting area. We have a slightly different approach in Glasgow. Sections 75 is not used in the same way as in other local authorities because where it is often used to drive and ensure that there are social rented homes or affordable homes built as part of developments. Things often happen the other way around in Glasgow, where we, as the strategic housing authority, go in in partnership with a social landlord, first of all, into areas that have previously been vacant at Derlick land, for example, or regeneration areas. We seek to attract private development off the back of our public sector, our public infrastructure investment in the first place. That is to do with Glasgow's historic combination of the fact that we have a huge amount of post-industrial vacant in Derlick land, but also very large parts of the city where there are only homes for social rent. We do not need more homes for social rent. It is more trying to get that kind of mixed tenure community and more dynamism, I suppose, in some communities. We use it in a slightly different way. Sections 75 is a tool, but having net zero hardwired into the planning system in the first place, as a fundamental requirement, is where we need to be. The National Planning Framework 4, which is obviously in draft form just now, is a massive opportunity for that. Where we make that shift in Scotland, we take the next step. I think that we already do very well in Scotland in planning around sustainability, but clearly we need to go further and we need to absolutely embed all development to be sustainable development and to be as close to net zero as possible. In Glasgow, we have unfortunately at the moment quite a coming to the end of its time, but a slightly dated city development plan that we are still working to, but we are luckily about to replace. That is certainly what we will do at local level is seek to have that. Any developer coming into Glasgow and any development that is taking place at all, the starting point will be that it is as close to net zero as possible. Where net zero cannot be achieved, there has to be offset and sequestration as part of that, although I am clear that that cannot be the main vehicle. We, like it or not, in a city like Glasgow, have to decarbonise the hard way. It cannot all be done through offset and sequestration, although there is definitely a role for that. For me, it is much more about how we yes, use the tools that we have at our disposal just now, but make sure that as soon as possible that there is a clear understanding by any developer going into any local authority in Scotland that there are consistent standards that they will be expected to comply with around delivering net zero projects and net zero manufacturing and supply chains, and everything that contributes towards the development and its lifespan in the years ahead. Your views on the current balance of what the section 75 is being used for at present? Is there anything else that you would like to see it being used for? One of the things that we are really interested in looking at in Glasgow is that we historically have a depopulated city centre, which is looking back at one of the more bizarre decisions that were made by city fathers all in those days, which has really come home to roost during the pandemic. Although we have in place very clear ambitions to repopulate and re-arbonise our city centre population, that did not happen fast enough to build the resilience into our city centre that the pandemic has revealed that we really need. I am keen that if we repopulate our city centre, we also have to have public services in our city centre, which at the moment we do not have so much of. That is an area that we really want to look at in Glasgow, which is having alongside housing development in the city centre, a doctor's surgery, because those kinds of things are lacking just now. The assumption that all of that is going to be decarbonised and that it is going to be delivered sustainably and that that is the starting point, is that it is going to be a net zero development. That is the expectation that everyone will be working from. Councillor McVey, would you like to give me your thoughts, please? Iain Brindley is a very different market to Glasgow. Our starting point, certainly for private land, is that developers are usually coming in with a massive amount of expectation because they will have paid a lot for that land. They are looking for a return in a very hot market, which we are obviously trying to build as much as we can in new social homes and affordable homes to try and bring those average rents down. We have similar to Glasgow and probably most other places where our city plan is just about to be adopted. Hopefully, it puts carbon emissions and climate change at the absolute heart of it in getting to net zero. However, section 75 is quite a small, bitty part of that. It is nowhere near enough in order to meet those infrastructure needs. That is the infrastructure needs that are on the radar right now. The gap between what we expect from cattle grant from section 75s and the needs of the city going forward is in the hundreds of millions. To put it into scale, section 75 is absolutely never going to cover that for us. It is also too inflexible. I think that you were hinting there that there are other things that are not included in section 75 that could and should be, and I think that you are absolutely right on that. Culture, for example, is something that does not play a significant enough role where we are trying to build new communities that are genuine communities at scale. We do not have access to the other cultural institutions or whatever that are near by other smaller brownfield sites, for example, in established communities. There is certainly a lack of flexibility, a lack of scale and it does not pay for everything. When the calculation is made, it is made in quite a bitty way. It is about pupil generation at schools and that sort of thing. It does not really quite capture the sum of all its parts in the demands of local authority. Land value uplift, which was talked about earlier, would be a far more effective way of us closing that infrastructure gap and being able to invest in some of the transformation to get us to net zero. So section 75 is never really going to get us there, I do not think. It is too kind of bitty a process, even if it was changed a little bit and a few more bells and whistles were added. I do not think that it can quite get us to where we need to get to. That land value capture is where we really need to harness that. Edinburgh has made representations before on things like the first payment of new builds for the land value transaction tax, because obviously the infrastructure that has been made—I think that Susan made the point earlier about some of the public infrastructure that has been made for some of those developments—if we could capture the first payments of those in Edinburgh, and then, when it has resold later on in the property's life, it has just taken us as proper national taxation, those first payments would be really helpful to local authorities in being able to create a revenue stream to fund that infrastructure that we needed, both infrastructure to create a vibrant, sustainable community and also the infrastructure that we need to transform to net zero. Back to you, convener. Okay, great, Jackie. Thank you very much. Let me bring in Liam Kerr. If I could, because we are up against the clock, remind Parliament members if you could provide succinct answers that would enable all the members to get through the questions. Thank you very much. Liam Kerr, please. Very grateful, convener. Good morning, panel. I will put two questions in one and direct them to Jenny, Susan and Adam in that order, please. You have all been clear that there is a great deal going on over some time in realising net zero, but to use Jenny Lang's words at the start, this requires national co-ordination support and finance. The Scottish Government draft budget cuts, depending on who you read, between about £300 million and £400 million from council budget. The first question is, what are the implications of the draft budget for your council's delivery of your net zero ambitions? Following from that, given the significant increase in funding that is ring-fenced over the past eight years or so, does your local authority have sufficient flexibility in its budgets to invest in the transition? Jenny Lang, first of all, please. Thank you very much. As you said in my opening remarks, I talked about the financial settlement for local government, and I think that it has a severe impact on what we can do moving forward. I mentioned about the fact that I think that there is a lack of skills and expertise within councils. I think that we have issues around the capacity for delivery because of cuts that we have had to make to our own organisations. We have had to look for savings around staffing levels within councils. I do not think that we are unique in that. I think that that will be right across Scotland. I think that because of that, we are up against it in order to try and deliver on that net zero ambitions, both from a revenue perspective but also from a capital perspective. I mentioned earlier about how we have had to raise revenue in relation to capital projects. Most of that has been done directly by the council. We have had very little funding in relation to our capital projects coming from national government. That, in itself, causes us difficulties if we need that investment in projects moving forward. The other aspect that I think that we have difficulties with—I touched on that around some of the retrofit projects—is that I spoke about the just transition funding that was announced. There was £20 million announced in relation meant to be coming to Aberdeen and Murray, but because we have very little detail about that and because we are being told that perhaps that cannot be spent on projects that are already in the process of being delivered or perhaps contained within our regional economic strategy or indeed our net zero plans that we have brought forward, we are looking for new projects to come forward for something different to be put on the table. It is very difficult for us to work those types of things up and provide the projects to meet that funding, because, often, the pockets of funding that are made available are done on a short-term basis. We have, as I have mentioned, the resource within councils and the expertise. Indeed, the expertise out in the private sector is not there at the moment. I do not think that a major national training programme will be required if we are to get people up to the required levels that we need. Because of that, I think that there will be difficulties ahead with local government playing their part in the delivery of the net zero goals that we are all striving for. We need to have that co-ordination because the other aspect is that we are all out there because there has been lack of cohesion coming from the centre, developing our own carbon tools, our policy positions, our procurement services. There is lack of legislation around some of that, and our hands are tied. There is lack of flexibility in relation to that, but it is also about us, the research that is going on. All of this is happening in small pieces around the country. It needs to be co-ordinated properly so that we are not wasting the limited resource that we do have at our disposal. There are a number of ways in which local and national government can work together, along with the private sector, to move things forward. However, at the moment, the financial aspects are causing, certainly, our council difficulties and will do in the future for us to try to bring forward the projects that will be required to meet that net zero ambition. I repeat the point that I made at the outset. We are not going to deliver net zero from local government revenue or capital budgets for that matter. The delivery of net zero is not just a national but a global scale, an entire shift in the way that we organise economies and societies. Local government has an enormously important part to play in that, and certainly, the existing budgets that we have and the existing way that we do things all have to be reconfigured so that every penny that we spend is done in a way that is sustainable and that contributes to net zero and to us essentially running our economy, our society and our public services within planetary boundaries. However, the interventions that we have to make and we have to deliver are of such a scale that they are beyond not just local authority budgets, they are beyond the Scottish Government's budget, they are beyond the Scottish Government's settlement. We have to look to the UK Government and we have to look to the private sector. I would also say that the UK Government is massively underestimating the cost of that. I mentioned already that the UK core cities in London alone, the estimate is £200 billion of what it will cost to get us to net zero within the next decade. The Chancellor came up with £90 in his last budget. The UK Government clearly has far greater capacity to generate resources to literally print money that the Scottish Government does not have. I would agree with a lot of what Jenny said about co-ordination. I think that there is a job for all of us to get our heads together and to understand what is being delivered at national level, what is being, what is the role—it is not even a delivery—and I am clear that the vast majority needs to be delivered at local level. What are the respective roles of the UK Government in this case? They clearly have a very important role in this, because they have the purse strains for the interventions of the scale that are required. What is the role of the Scottish Government? What is the role of national agencies? What is the role of our regional economic partnerships, our city region deals, our growth deals? What is the role of cities? What is the role of local authorities more generally? I deliberately make a distinction between cities and local authorities, because, as we have all said in this session, cities, at least in this crucial next decade, are the key. We need to be out there in front delivering on this. There are issues about capacity and understanding what we need at local level in terms of our skills and capacity for engaging with the private sector at the level that we need to, which, as I have said, is a new space for all of us. Even those of us who are very good at inward investment, and we have all touched on Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, all have our successes to point to in that. That is on a different scale and at a different pace. There is a job for us to do collectively in partnership with Government. I think that COSLA has a big role to do in this, where we collectively understand what our roles are and what capacity we need to deliver this. We do not have a lot of time. It cannot be a long conversation. It needs to be a quick conversation, because 2030 is not that far away. I believe that, working together collectively, we can come to a clear understanding of what capacity we need, what tools and resources we need and then get out there and do it collectively as much as possible. Adam McVey, if you would not mind, just if it helps, the question that I asked was about the implications of the draft budget for the council's delivery of net zero ambitions, just if that is a useful reminder. To be clear, our policy agenda and our prospectus and our carbon strategy is not going to be deviated by the most recent budget announcement. You will have seen from our current strategy that it points out quite a number of things that are relevant to the Scottish budget, such as the bus infrastructure fund and things of that that we are looking to take advantage of. Certainly, those things are helpful in driving forward the actions that we are relevant for. I echo one of the points in relation to resource planning. It is a challenge with a city like Edinburgh with 62,000 EU nationals. Brexit has been an incredible thing to negotiate, and I am not saying that it has to negotiate that any more than anybody else. That has been a huge challenge. Covid has obviously been a dominating force for the past two years, and we are trying to deal with the negotiation of how we get our economies and our cities to a net zero position in a very short timescale, only another nine years or nine years. All of that in terms of resource planning is difficult. We will maintain our planning resource within the senior management team, but my time as council leader, the time of my chief executive, the time of my chief of planning, finance heads and all those other senior people, every moment that they spend on trying to find a budget saving within the organisation is a moment not spent trying to drive forward those other parts of the agenda that are so important. I would say, though, one thing in counter to that, and it is pertinent in not that many areas but in a few. Imbra is also working with Police NHS, a host of other public and private, well, mainly public sector providers, but some other providers as well, about co-location of assets. That is an example where it will drive budget savings and it will also reduce the collective carbon footprint of the public sector within our cities and free up useful money that we can then use to retrofit the other buildings that are being retained. There are some solutions of collaboration that the financial squeeze provides an opportunity to encourage partners to work together and come up with financial savings and carbon savings at the same time, but there are few examples that I can point to where that is driving that kind of success, but it is encouraging some of that collaboration. Fundamentally, we all acknowledge on the panel that you have heard today that cities are very well placed to lead that engagement, the partnership and pull together the right projects, whether they are public sector or private sector, to drive forward the change that we need. It is worth saying that it is left to us as councils to resource that. Imbra, we have certainly prioritised it and tried to resource it as best we can, but more flexibility and more resource for that strategic planning and delivery in the city would obviously be incredibly welcome. Thank you all. I have one small extra question, which I will direct to Jenny Lang, based on something that you said there. Jenny, you mentioned the just transition from oil and gas as being key to net zero, to getting to net zero. You also mentioned this just transition fund and 20 million in the budget. You suggested that there was a lack of detail around that. Can you help the committee to understand how much engagement has the Scottish Government had with you on this just transition fund? Specifically, when you say there are no details, have the Scottish Government been engaging with you to find out what is going to work in the North East and what the council can be doing to contribute to that just transition? Jenny Lang. Thank you. We obviously had the announcement by the Cabinet Secretary around that 20 million. Since then, our officers have had very early discussions with Government officials, but there is a lack of detail around what that money can be spent on, what projects may actually be qualified for the funding that is there. The difficulty that we have is that when big announcements are made, they raise expectations both with business and economic stakeholders in the region about that money coming forward. There appears to be in the initial discussions mentioned that perhaps projects that we feel may be beneficial that could be brought forward at pace would not qualify for that money. They are looking for new ideas and plans to be drawn up. All of that takes time. What we understand in the North East is that, just transition, in my opening remarks, I mentioned about the number of people that we have who are dependent on the oil and gas sector within this region. With the best will in the world, I have talked about our hydrogen projects and things moving forward. Even if we are successful in bringing that to fruition, the plans that we have by 2030 will provide 700 jobs. We have in the region of 70,000 people that are dependent on oil and gas. On that basis, we realise that we need to make sure that that money is going out and being channeled to the areas that are required in order to make sure that we do not reach that cliff edge in the North East, where we move away from those fossil fuels without anything to provide employment and economic growth for the area that we are moving forward. My concern is that big announcements are made, but there is no co-ordination and co-operation between local and national government to make the spending of that finance beneficial for the people and businesses in the North East of Scotland. Let me bring in Natalie Dawn to be followed by Monica Lennon. Natalie, over to you. Hi all. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the panel for your comments so far. They have been really, really useful. I just want to touch on some issues this morning around waste and circular economy. It has not been touched on too much already. Given that 3 per cent of Scotland's total emissions came from waste and circular economy in 2019, strategies around that are going to be really key going forward. I know that a few of you have already mentioned collaboration with local people, and while not solely dependent on that, I think that there is a need for the public to really buy in to understand and support new practices and change attitudes in terms of their waste and recycling and circular economy. What are the main challenges and opportunities in your area in reducing emissions from waste management and meeting forth coming 2025 waste and recycling targets? In what circumstances do you consider that the energy from waste infrastructure will be compatible with your net zero target? I will also ask the second question and you can take it in turn if that is all right. What is being pursued in your area to support the development of a circular economy and who are the key partners involved in that? Are innovative local economic models being developed and supported in your area around, for example, reducing waste, re-using, repair and recycling? If I could come to Councillor Aitken, then Councillor Lang, then Councillor McVeigh, please. Thank you. I think that it is a really important question and there are a number of elements in there that I will try to tease out as quickly as possible. On circular economy, I am glad to say that Glasgow is seen internationally as a leader on this. We have been doing work for a number of years deliberately led by business, so although the council is very closely involved, we worked very closely with our Chamber of Commerce, who has been a key player, to develop our circular economy route map in Glasgow, which we have got as many partners as possible signed up to and which we delivered to the Sustainable Glasgow partnership that I spoke about earlier. Business and manufacturing in particular, I suppose, has been involved in the development of the circular economy right from the outset. We have done a lot more work recently with the support of C40 cities and we have joined their network of cities, where Amsterdams is probably the best-known example, which uses the economic model of working in having everything in your city work within planetary boundaries. Obviously, the circular economy is a huge part of that. In some ways, the donor model is the next step in expressing how the circular economy would work, taking it the next step further. We have joined the network of cities that are actively implementing the donor model, which is the Professor Kate Rayworth model of planetary boundaries and social boundaries, making sure that everything that you do happens in the sweet spot between the inside and the outside of the donut. We are doing a lot of work on that and we were invited by C40 cities to be part of that because we are recognised as having made a lot of progress on it. Having said that, in terms of our own waste management, we have a huge amount to do in Glasgow. We are way behind on recycling rates. Historically, they are woeful—I have to say that they have not been good at all. We are starting to see a difference. We have made some changes to the management of waste services in recent years. Adam was talking earlier about how some of those are difficult political decisions, because not everyone likes it when they do not like an impingement on either their lifestyle or the lifestyle that they have come to expect or the way that public services are delivered. However, we are going to have to make those changes. We have no choice but to take on some of those challenging decisions. We in Glasgow very belatedly did what a lot of local authorities—I think that most local authorities in Scotland have already done—reduced the number of general waste pick-ups. We went from a two-weekly to a three-weekly pick-up. It was not popular. There was quite a lot of kick-back against that. However, we have started to see the change. We have seen a 12 per cent uplift in recycled material coming through. We can see the difference that that is making. We are able to go back to folk, to residents and say that this is making a difference. It is helping us all to consume less by literally showing you how much you are throwing out. It makes you think more about it. It makes you think more carefully about what goes in your recycling bin rather than just automatically chucking it in the general waste. There is a huge piece of work to be done there. Of course, that is one of our core public services. It comes back to this thing about the part and parcel of the way that we work, the way that we operate as local authorities. We have to think about what we do in our day-to-day and how we organise, manage and transform that in order to make that sustainable, to have that aligned with our net zero plans and to support net zero delivery. A lot of it is very challenging. It is a difficult conversation to have with local people, but it is essential. We have a relatively new waste management strategy for the entire city, which we are calling a resource strategy. We are trying to make people think that this is all planetary resource. We are trying to have that in the round. We all think collectively about what we consume, what comes out at the other end and, in the context of what we throw away, what we recycle and what we reuse. Alongside that, you talked about reuse. That is an enormously important part of our circular economy approach. We are supporting a network of reuse sites across the city. There has been some fantastic work done with old IT equipment being repurposed and reused and used to help to deal with the digital gap in the city. We are looking at the potential of a circular economy village being located in one of the forthcoming developments. That is a very early stage of discussion, where we can very closely with Zero Waste Scotland on how we might deliver that alongside the businesses in the Chamber of Commerce, for example, who are already really and closely involved in our thinking about circular economy and the doughnut model in Glasgow. I hope that that gives you a picture of where we are, but, more importantly, where we are trying to get to. There is a lot of work to do, and it is very challenging, but we have a clear path ahead of us. The difficult bit is, I suppose, bringing people along with us and helping them to understand why the way that public services have been delivered in the past cannot always be the way that they will be in the future if we are going to do our bit to tackle the climate emergency. Thank you, Natalie. I am conscious of time as well. Like Glasgow, Aberdeen has been working closely with our Chamber of Commerce around the circular northeast project that we have in relation to the circular economy. I mentioned at the beginning that we were working on that route map, and we are about to publish that in a few weeks' time. The project manager from the Grampian Chamber of Commerce has been the theme weed around our net zero Aberdeen circular economy strategy that will come forward as part of that route map, which designates some of the projects and things that we are involved in. I will not go into detail, because I do not think that we have got the time today, but that gives us a flavour of what we are doing with that partnership working. As Susan mentioned, within our organisation and dealing with waste in our local authority, we have been very proactive in recent years. We opened a new recycling centre in the city about five years ago. That is where we pick the waste up at Carbside, and it has sorted multiple different types of waste that are sorted in that new facility. That has definitely helped us to increase the levels of recycling that is happening within the city itself, which I think is pleasing. We are also around garden waste and things like that. We have separate collections for that, which I have to say that the public have bought into in a big way. You mentioned specifically about the energy from waste, and we have a new facility, which will open later this year in the city. That is a collaboration between three local authorities, Aberdeenshire Murray and ourselves, and indeed Suez, where we will look to that residual waste that we have left over. We will go to the energy from waste plant rather than go to landfill, but it was important to us to make sure that the energy that was being produced by that facility was used to best affect in the city. That is why we have located it next to one of our regeneration areas, where we had the highest levels of fuel poverty, probably in the city, so that we can make sure that that, and we are in the process of pulling together that heat network, which will take the residual heat from that facility and actually allow us to provide it to the homes in that regeneral phase of that network to lower their energy costs and help with that fuel poverty agenda. We also hope that we can roll that out across a wider area to take in both residential and commercial properties moving forward. That is some of the initiatives that we are currently going on in the city, but, as Susan said, we are always striving to do better. I hope that that strategy that will come forward in the next few weeks will help us to do that, both public and private sectors working together to get that circular economy really embedded in the city. The other aspect that Susan had touched on was the three-use aspect, and we have done a work around some of that. Again, it has been around that old IT equipment and things. It is very pertinent at the moment with the Covid situation and the need for IT equipment to allow people to work more flexibly and from different homes and various other things, but we have been doing that work through our responsible business links through community planning to make sure that we are tying up businesses along with communities to ensure that we get the reuse of equipment and other things that businesses have, and we get that being utilised to best effect within our local communities. That is just a few of the strands of work that are on-going in Aberdeen City in relation to the circular economy. I will try not to repeat that much of what my colleagues have said, because in Edinburgh, similarly, the Chamber of Commerce leads the circular economy work. It is really important that business leads that. To go right to your final part of your question, energy from waste is compatible with getting to net zero by that 2030 landscape. The carbon emissions from that versus the carbon emissions from landfill for those modern clean facilities are good. They are not zero carbon, though. It gives you questions, residual questions about offsetting and what you do with the residual. However, the partnership approach to Edinburgh has been a huge partner with Zero Waste Scotland, a partner with EVOC, as I said earlier, and our future Edinburgh project to engage with citizens about the change that we will need, and to engage them with partners such as the Edinburgh Remakery, to take things such as laptops and redo them, and hoovers and a whole host of other things to get that reuse agenda going strong as well. I would say that, going back to the difficulty of some of this, Edinburgh has just got £7.7 million in Scottish Government support for our communal waste review, and that is tenements. We are sitting with a lot of tenements and a lot of on-street bins. They are not the prettiest things in the world, as MSPs will know walking around the city of Edinburgh. That money is part of a bigger programme to really change the landscape of that, really shift from the big black containers that are general waste and shift that towards a much bigger capacity of local recycling facilities for people that live in tenements. The main complaint that we have been getting for years is that people are feeling forced to put more into landfilling than they otherwise would because their local recycling facilities are just not adequate and they do not have means and they do not have cars to get to the local recycling centre, especially in areas such as Leith, where car ownership is less than 50 per cent and there is obviously a huge crossover between those that do not have cars and those that live in tenements where there is not that much on-street parking. As part of that scheme, we are also looking at putting in that kind of recycling infrastructure in our city centre. It is a world heritage site and there is no getting away from it. There is an element of difficulty saying to people who previously had gull-proof sacks as a model of working, but the recycling rate was appalling in that community. We have let that community down by not providing the facilities in our city centre that they need with a huge amount of challenge, but bringing in that change is controversial and difficult. It is really important that we do the juice as much as we possibly can and that we recycle as much as we can and use as much as we can, but getting there, some of the solutions are quite difficult. Obviously, one thing that we are all working to is a recycling rate that is improving in Edinburgh, similar to Glasgow. It has been really difficult to get a recycling rate up to where it needs to get, but the overall tonnage is still falling, so there is good news in the reuse agenda and in the reduced agenda, but that is not quite reflected in the overall percentage recycling rate. We are doing all that we can on those three agendas, but it is quite difficult to drive that change. However, it needs a lot of political will to force it through, because otherwise communities will be let down and they will not have the facilities that they need. To circle back to the punchline question, which was about energy from waste, the amount that we send to those types of plants, even though they are modern and much cleaner than the alternative of landfill, we need to reduce as much as we possibly can going to those facilities. It is great that we have them. I think that they are compatible with our net zero agenda, but we still need to be mindful that they are not just a place that can deal with absolutely everything that we need to embrace the reduced reuse and recycling. Okay, great. Thanks very much, Natalie. Let me bring in Monica Lennon for the last line of questions. Monica, over to you. Thank you, convener. I think that I will stick with this topic, because it is a really important one, and the committee has keen to do an inquiry to find out how councils are working with partners to promote recycling and that shift to circular economy. We have heard from our council leaders today that the business sector is really important. I was struck by what councillor Aitken said about Glasgow being seen as a leader on circular economy. Not to sound too negative here, but for the reality check, Scottish household waste, recycling rates are currently the worst in the UK, and only 42 per cent of household waste was recycled in 2020. Glasgow sits pretty much at the bottom of the lake table, so I am interested to hear what lessons are being taken from other parts of the UK. In a previous session, we heard from Zero Waste Scotland that Scotland's waste system, to a certain extent, is fragmented. What are councils doing to share best practice with one another and to look at some of those challenges? I think that we have heard already why the rates have been low in what needs to change. I might be able to get you to talk a little more about your own experience, but if I can also ask that issue about energy from waste facilities and incinerators in particular, we did hear from Zero Waste Scotland that incineration is not low-carbon and that we are too reliant on incineration in landfill. Do each of you and your councils support a moratorium and potential ban on incinerators? Is that something that you are engaging locally on in consultation with communities? Can you start with Susan Aitken, first of all, and I will come to Adam McBee? I am absolutely clear that we have a gulf at the moment between ambition and achievement in terms of the circular economy in Glasgow. It is one of the reasons why we are working with C40 cities and getting that learning, not just from other cities in the UK but from places such as Amsterdam, Barcelona and elsewhere, which have really made a lot of progress on that. Obviously, Scandinavian cities are very good at that as well. We are instantly going to come back to waste energy. Waste energy is standard and has been for a long time with it. A big part of its way of working and it is, by and large, constantly ahead of us on the journey to net zero. We have touched on some of the challenges that we have around the built environment in Edinburgh, which are replicated in Glasgow. There are huge numbers of tenements. Over 70 per cent of the population of Glasgow live in flats. The challenge around the collection and management of waste is giving people the opportunities to recycle in the way that Adam talked about. They are definitely challenges and they need innovative solutions. We are very clear that we know what the ambition is and how we then get there. There are a number of challenges on the way, but working in partnership with Zero Waste Scotland, for example, we can start to break those down and start to look at what is standing in the way of people recycling. We also have overconsumption in some things. We do not talk enough about the reduced part at the beginning of the reduced reuse cycle. I remember going into COP26 when the prime minister had said that the three big issues that the UK was going to focus on, and I disagree with them at all, were coal, cars and cash, although I said that coal should have been fossil fuels altogether, but it would not have given them alliteration. The other big alliteration that he was missing was consumption, because consumption, of course, is at the heart of all of it. We need to address that, and that needs to be part of what we are doing in Glasgow, as I suppose going right back to basics, before we even get to the recycle bit. How do we reduce consumption in the first place? That is a difficult conversation to have in a city where a lot of people live in poverty or live with financial stress. I have always been very clear that a lot of the discussions around net zero are about people changing their lifestyle, and I am not going to be doing that with people who have their choices constricted by poverty. It is a different kind of approach there. It is about opportunities, it is about creating systems that allow people and enable people to live more sustainably. On waste of energy, and my apologies to Natalie Dawn, I forgot to pick up on that bit in my answer to her. We have a plant in Glasgow already there, which involves an element of incineration, but it is contained, and it is a pyrlizer, I think that is what they call it. With the full range of processes that deal with different kinds of waste in different kinds of ways, we have considerably reduced our landfill as a result of that. It was a very, very challenging capital project. It was under way for years and years before, and it opened very, very late. It is missing the bit that Jenny talked about, which is the crucial bit that we are putting energy now into the grid from it, but it is not going into homes. When it was built, it did not build the heat network part of it, so that is our next task, to get that energy directly into homes rather than just into the grid and get local benefit. We think that there is quite a considerable area neighbourhoods of the city around Palmydine, Gorbls and Govan Hill that would benefit from that, and indeed it is one of the projects that is in the investment green print. We are not expecting to build another one of those, because we have already got one in the city. I would echo what Adam said. We know that it is not perfect, we know that it is a creator of carbon. It is much better than sending stuff to landfill, and it has reduced our landfill impact in the city, definitely. However, it is not a solution on its own, and you have to take those steps back. You cannot just say, oh great, we have got that facility now. We will just throw everything in the one bin and send it to that facility. When that was planned for being built, I think that maybe there was a view that that could happen, that somehow that will be the solution and we will just send everything there. Clearly, that cannot be the case. We still need to go back and create the facilities for people to recycle, create the facilities and the opportunities for people to reuse and crucially have what needs to be a society-wide conversation about rates of consumption and reducing how much we consume and how much we throw out in the first place, even if it is recycling. Recycling itself uses energy, of course. I do not think that any of us are under the illusion that there are very easy or quick answers to this. Excuse me, it is a long term. Sorry, I will just leave it there. I will let you get some what-it. Before I move on then to Adam and Jenny, if Susan can recover our voice, I have a brief supplementary for Susan and the others can hopefully pick it up, because we are trying to get into real granular examples of the practical decisions that people make every day. Last year, I did some research looking at the amount of nappies that go to landfill in Scotland. I think that there are 160 million nappies every single year, but only five local authorities in Scotland out of 32 have a real nappy initiative. I think that North Ayrshire council has the best example of that. Is that the scheme that Glasgow City Council and others should be looking at? We know that nappies that are expensive but to buy cloth nappies can be quite pricey. Is that something that is discussed through your networks, like in Coesla? That could make a real practical difference. I do not know if Susan is able to speak right now, but I will back that back to you. I apologise for that. I am at the tail end of a cold. The short answer is yes. We need to look at all those things. It is about creating systems and opportunities for everyone to reduce their consumption and to live in a sustainable way as much as possible. We need to look at our entire systems across the board and what we are able to offer there. I know that there is one of the boards in Coesla, the environment and economy board. There is definitely sharing of best practice that goes on there. Different local authorities are at different places. Some of them will have one project and somebody else will have another kind of project. What we need to do is get to a point where we are consistently all delivering these services. Some of them might be on a regional basis, so some of them might be shared between local authorities. Particularly where there are smaller authorities co-located together, that is something that should definitely be looked at. The short answer is that we need to look at every single opportunity and every single bit of best practice that is out there. It is always the case, sadly, that it is an inevitable outcome in some ways of local government and local responsibility. We make local democratic decisions and prioritise different things at different times. However, getting to net zero and meeting the national targets and global targets of what we need to do to keep 1.5 alive will require much more co-ordination than perhaps we have done in the past. Like I said previously, Coesla and organisations such as the Scottish Cities Alliance have a really important role in helping us to co-ordinate. As Adam has touched on, perhaps sometimes take that step back from the day-to-day pressures that are always there in local government. We are constantly focused on the operational thing to take that strategic overview on a national basis along with all the partners that we require to deliver that. I am going to pass back to the convener. I am getting a message that we are running out of time. I do not know if I can hear from Council McBean and Council Lang, but if not, perhaps they could follow up and write any points that need to be covered. I will pass back to you, convener. Thank you very much, Monica. Sorry, we are very much running behind schedule. If Council McBean and Lang could follow up with Monica Lennon's questions in writing to the committee, that would be very much appreciated. That certainly brings us to the end of our allotted time. Let me thank our panel members for taking part in helping us to set the scene for this very important inquiry. We have obviously covered a huge amount of ground this morning, so your time is very much appreciated, and we will no doubt be in touch with you as this inquiry progresses. I will now suspend the meeting briefly for a changeover of panel. Thank you once again. Welcome back. I now welcome our second panel of witnesses for this meeting of the committee, comprising representatives of two predominantly rural councils—Councillor Marco Davidson, Council Leader Highland Council and Simon Fieldhouse, Environment Manager Dumfries and Galloway Council. Thank you both for joining us today and apologies that we are running late this morning. We will move straight to questions, and I will begin. If you had the chance to look at panel 1, I have the same two introductory questions as set out in panel 1. The first relates to evidence given by the UK climate change committee when they share concerns about whether local government has the necessary resources, capacity, budgets, expertise and powers to deliver everything that is required in the context of the transition to net zero. Do you share some of those concerns about local government, capacity and resource? If you do, it would be very helpful for the committee if you could explain what particular areas you face the greatest challenges in. Let me start with Margaret Davidson and then hand over to Simon Fieldhouse. Margaret, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, convener. I will do my best to crack on. Can I just make one comment before we start? We might be running late, but I have no problem with that, because this morning's session was really interesting. I listened to it all, and I am sure that, like the panel, I gained a lot of knowledge and insight from it. Thank you for the ability to do that. Going back to the question that you have set me, I think that what you see is absolutely nothing wrong with our national ambitions. They are good. They are unambiguous. They are very clear about what we do, but we have not got that strategy at local level. It is a real gap because we are all getting on as best we can. We all realise that this is going to be something of a scale and speed that we have never dealt with before. So, what I think is missing is what Jenny Lane articulated really well. It is about the resource within local government to respond to this as best we can. Again, quoting another one of my colleagues, Adam, he said, every minute that we spend worrying about budgets, and this year's budget, is a minute not spent doing the really vital work that we need to do. That is where we are right now as we speak that. It is about having the capacity to deliver. You think of Inverness as a city in the highlands, but most of our population lives outside the city, very small towns, lots of villages, rural scattered communities. The cost of doing everything is always much higher, and it is much higher to get. It is more difficult to get senior officers on occasions and managers to prioritise thinking about lowering the carbon footprint at the same time as trying to make ends meet and fill the cotholes, keep the schools open and all the rest of it. The other big gap we have, and I will just make a quick comment on how the Government can help us, is around training and employability. We have astonishing prospects in highland, astonishing opportunities that we have never had, and I hope that I can come back to that as we go on. We need what we had when oil and gas arrived. We need a pipeline of people coming on, being trained, being ready for the industry. We have not even yet properly articulated what some of the green jobs are going to be. We need a lot of Government backing on that, but I think that what the Government needs to do is talk to us more and not just have us bidding for projects. It needs a team of people, of peripatetic people who are all around Scotland, talking to us about what we are doing, going back and offering us the help that we need to get there. The speed of movement at the moment is astonishing. I have never seen anything like it in my long lifetime. Government should be helping us through support and helping us to catalyse all this action. A lot of it will be private sector, so there is no doubt about that. However, Government could give us an awful lot more strategic help and just help with listening and delivering what they can. Thank you very much. Margaret, you raised an interesting number of points. I am sure that we will explore them in further detail. Simon Fulton has the same question to you, please. I thank you, convener. Listening to the discussion today, a lot of the points have probably already been covered in terms of some of the similar issues around resourcing that we seem to face. What is not on the same level in terms of the population pressures as the first three panel members this morning? We, as colleagues from Pylon Council, have a significant challenge with the reality that we face. It brings both challenges and opportunities when we look at net zero, but the resources come back to the fact that we do not have enough in place at this moment in time in terms of the funding to move this forward at pace that is required. All the expertise is something that has been touched on already in terms of the skillset that is required both within council officers and how we can support our external partners. We are aware, obviously, within Dumfries and Galloway that what we are looking at is not just a council trying to be net zero but how we can support the region. That requires significant interface with our public sector, private sector communities, third sector, to ensure that they are moving at pace and are able to exploit and identify opportunities and have the right skills and expertise to back that in terms of making the right choices when we look at net zero. It is a dual approach that we need to be effectively trying to identify those resources both in terms of the budget and the staff and the skills that they need to move that forward at pace. That would be good given the predominantly rural nature of the areas that you operate within to hear what particular challenges you face in the context of that rural setting, because panel 1 was very much three city councils. The second question that I had in panel 1 is the same question that I would like to raise now in relation to the heat in building strategy, the target of 1 million homes across Scotland to become energy-efficient and have zero emission heating by 2030. What challenges does that present you with in terms of the rural setting? Margaret, you mentioned the question of finance, presumably the question of how that is going to be financed. It is still an open question. You mentioned a lack of strategic discussions between local authorities and the Scottish Government. Is that an area where further strategic dialogue needs to take place? I would like to ask you both those questions with a particular emphasis on the required financing and how that is all going to be financed. Again, Margaret, perhaps start with you and then Simon. It is the front of my mind. Most days, except from keeping people warm, all of our attention has been focused on fuel poverty this winter. This is at the core of what we are doing. Everyone says that it is going to be hugely expensive. We are going to have to find better ways of doing this, or else it will not happen by 2030. It is the biggest challenge that we probably have from the point of view of delivery. You can put up an offshore wind farm quicker than we are going to solve this one. That is for sure. We have 15,000 council houses. We can make a start with that, because we have the housing revenue capital, and we are investing that. It is not enough. If we do what we need to do for retrofitting, it means that new bathrooms and many other changes that people want in their homes are going to have to take very second place. However, that is the most important thing that we are doing. We are making a start on that. However, in the private sector, there is very little to help people out there. I look at my own house, a post-Second War austerity. I think that a lot of people up in Highlands call them Doron houses. It is the old one-warm room model that so many people have with their older houses. When I look at what it is going to cost to upgrade our insulation to an acceptable level to do this retrofitting, it is going to cost us a hell of a lot more money than we can ever bring in. This is not for the Scottish Government, but for both Governments. What really gets us is that we are becoming and will become massive energy generators in Highlands. Our renewable energy is just taking off at an astonishing pace. We want the Scottish Government to give us a hand looking at how we can build a renewable energy fund, a fuel poverty fund. We can call it what they like, but we need to be taking some more of the profit of the energy that is leaving Scotland and moving from Highlands to everywhere to investing in our homes. Fuel poverty is the biggest thing that we can do to help our householders, cope with their bills and cope with their lives and their health. I would like to see the Government stepping in and looking at how we can raise money from all the renewable energy that we are producing or make us partners in it, whatever we have to do to get some money towards our householders. Thanks very much. I have the same question to you, Simon, please. I think that the comments that Margaret MacDonald has raised already resonate with what we have across the region. When we are looking at new builds, life becomes a lot easier in terms of how we can look at the effectiveness of making those houses fit for purpose, energy efficient and as carbon-negative as possible. Given the reality, we have a significant spread of disparate communities that are not necessarily all on the existing gas network already and significant fuel poverty across the region, which aims and contributes to some of the issues that we are facing. Looking at how we would retrofit those communities and those issues in buildings is a significant one that creates a significant drain on resources. Obviously, we have things such as our strategic housing investment plan, which will support the delivery of housing stock being retrofitted and moving forward. We have invested significant sums of money through our council committees to look at how we can support some of our registered social landlords who would look after our housing stock across the region. However, the scale of that is going to be quite fundamental. I do not have an exact figure in terms of how many social housing we have in D&G, but to give a bit of an indication, we had nearly £2 million worth of funding that supported 210 houses in terms of upgrading their solid wall insulation. Therefore, that scale multiplied out is going to create a significant drain on resources that we have. Obviously, we are looking at how we can work with our key public sector partners to offset some of that or find new and innovative ways of looking at how we can look at district heating, which we do not have any in D&G at this moment in time, but trying to find ways that the recapturing of heat for other purposes could be offset and utilised to support how we can heat people's homes. It becomes a significant challenge as we move forward. Those 210 homes that I referenced earlier were anticipating that those measures would save around about 8,200 tonnes of carbon in their lifetime. That also helps to offset some of the fuel costs that those residents are facing and to tackle some of the fuel poverty. However, in essence, everything is all linked together. We are aware, obviously, of the targets that we are trying to work towards as much as possible, but the resources and how we can get significant resources allocated in to support this monumental challenge is going to be quite significant. Thank you very much. A very brief supplementary for me. The sounds lie without putting words into your mouth. The 2030 heat and buildings target is going to be very challenging, if not impossible. Would that be a fair summary? I think that that would be a fair summary without shadow of a doubt. All of this is going to be very challenging. It does not mean that we will not rise to the challenge, but it is going to be sure that we need to push this up the agenda and make sure that it is factored in to everything that we do. Margaret, would that be your overall conclusion on the targets? I think that this is going to be one of the hardest targets to hit. Although we need some milestones, we need to be watching what we are all doing and trying hard to find solutions to this. Concentrating on the fabric and retrofitting is where we have to be. Thank you very much. Let me bring in Fiona Hyslop. Fiona, over to you please. Thank you. That is for your patience panel. I would like to ask about any concerns around carbon off-setting and the purchase of commercial carbon credits and the implication for land use, particularly in your vast geographies. I want to come first to Simon, if you are at your house. The Friest and Galloway Council has a stringent target next year, where it is 2025, but you say yourself that you need to consider off-setting residual emissions. So, could you comment on whether that is appropriate, but have you got any concerns about mass forestation, for example, or other use of your land in your area, and what that might mean for net zero and your plans? I will then come to Margaret and Margaret Davidson. I can really ask you whether you have any concerns about other councils or other organisations, private companies, et cetera, and their use of your land in the Highlands region and the transparency and accounting of that, if there is specific desire to meet the use of the land capability of the Highlands to meet net zero targets of other organisations. I will come to you first, Simon. Yes, thank you. Off-setting is something that we are looking into in how we can move things forward. You are quite right. Friest and Galloway, we have got a significant benefit, I suppose, and an opportunity with our land mass in terms of how rural it is, the amount of forestry, the amount of peatland that we have. Obviously, what we also need to know is that we are quite a significant agricultural sector, particularly within things like dairy, that obviously have quite a high emission when we are looking at these things. One of the key things that we are looking at locally is how we can look at integrated land use to allow us the opportunity to identify opportunities for either investment through that being, using natural capital solutions to look at how we can sequester carbon better through rewetting some of our peatland or looking at making sure that we have the right tree in the right place in terms of our forestry moving forward. There are significant drawbacks, I suppose, when we are looking at how the region could, and if you take for example our energy production at this moment in time, produce significantly more energy like Highlands than we actually use in terms of our electrical generation from the onshore wind farms and offshore wind farms that we have, our hydro schemes. Obviously, our local residents are not getting the local benefit, but we are supporting Scotland's targets and the UK's targets to be a green energy producer. Margaret mentioned earlier how we can tap into some of those benefits and bring that back to look at how locally we can generate better opportunities for rewilding or supporting our residents to become much more net zero on the whole. If we look at corporate or the opportunity for capital offsetting at a more corporate market, we need to look at how that would be regulated and how we can make sure that carbon accounting means that we are not double accounting from our perspective. There is support that we recognise and would like to think that there would be a national standard that would be brought in on those things that would allow us to make that a much better system, a much more robust system, for when we get to the point of identifying what carbon offsetting could be undertaken. I thank you and I can come to Margaret on land use and perhaps on that idea of a national standard in double accounting. Yes, that's an interesting one Simon, thank you. Right, hello Fiona, good new year to you. Right, okay, if I could just make a very quick statement before we start. There is absolutely no way that Scotland is going to get towards net zero without what is happening in our rural areas and of course we've got the biggest rural area. What we've got is land in quantity and what we've also got is renewable energy in quantity. It's extraordinary what's happening just now and we're going to have that and the hydrogen that that will be producing in huge quantities. This is about real importance for Scotland for getting towards net zero so we really do need to concentrate on this. What is happening at the moment is that carbon offsetting is starting. Private firms are already going to some of the biggest dates and they are getting tree planting happening, maybe some peat restoration but we need to do this in an ordered way and again we need to get some benefit for the local people who are seeing this all happen around them whereas they still pay more on their electricity bill than anywhere else in the country. So this is crazy and we do really need to make that just transition work because if we don't this will become solid capitalism. Estates and rich men will get richer and people living in our cities and in our very poor rural areas sometimes will get much poorer because we're not doing this in the strategic way that we need to do it. Highland has a massive offering here but we do need to do it in a way that supports people and we also need to make sure that the standard is good because you can't have greenwashing. If you're going to give money to people to do carbon offsetting you need to be sure that they've got a plan to actually reduce their carbon footprint to zero and not just buy their way out of it. That is a standard that is really important. I want to pass back to the convener Dean Lockhart now but if there is anything additional the two councils want to say on their relationship with the private sector and financial services in particular maybe they could follow up in writing if there's something they want to add to our interests in that area. Back to the convener. Thank you very much Fiona. Next up Monica Lennon to be followed by Natalie Dawn. Monica, over to you please. Thank you convener. I want to pick up questions on the circular economy and recycling like I did with the last panel but councillor Davidson I was quite struck by what you said in your opening remarks. You said we need more strategic help from central government, from Scottish government and we need more listening. I've been following a bit of a row in the press where I think all of the council leaders wrote to the First Minister pre-Christmas to ask for an urgent meeting. I understand that meeting hasn't been granted. Can you elaborate by what you mean about more listening and can you give an example of where you would like to see more strategic support from the Scottish government? I think what is happening is in Scotland at the moment and it is different in different areas. There's no doubt about that and I think it's really important for the government to give us that strategic underpinning that we need so that when we're dealing with say for instance the wind generating section that we actually say at the moment they don't have to give us anything they don't have to give the community that they that they take their energy from anything that all they need to do is pay a rent to the landlord most of them are generous enough to do community benefit but it's peanuts it's absolute peanuts so we need to get to a point where actually the government needs more than just encouraging them that we need to get to a point where there will be an expectation that when they get their planning that there will be an expectation that they actually invest locally that they actually contribute to a fuel poverty fund or whatever we end up doing I think this is the sort of listening that we need to do and we need to go back and talk about it it is the big things we don't want to be controlled but we do need the strategic support so that we can get out there and and do these things ourselves and that is a miss that is a miss thank you and I wonder if I can put that issue to Simon from an operational point of view because councillor Davidson talked about you know not just bidding for projects we need to give a move beyond that I know we get lots of money for for pilots and then maybe the the sustainable funding isn't there I wonder if Simon if you could comment on that from an operational point of view and if you agree with councillor Davidson a more strategic approach would be helpful in terms of the net zero journey I certainly I think without a shadow of a doubt from an operational perspective that the more strategic linkups we can have the better when you look at net zero it can't be just looked in isolation it covers a significant range of different services pretty much every single council service we have obviously will need to obviously be playing its role to support our journey on to sort of towards net zero therefore obviously you know if you just look at sort of the different council services from waste to transport you know we need to have a much more strategic interface with with the national government to ensure obviously that sort of the targets of the opportunities are not being missed the opportunity bidding for pilots and funding is fantastic don't get me wrong that's always appreciated but an example where that doesn't necessarily sort of all I suppose sort of follow through would be the the new regional land use partnerships that we've got that obviously we've been identified as the south of Scotland as a pilot area so there's funding being put into place but to actually realise the aspirations of the pilot scheme significantly more funding should have been made available but hasn't so obviously and this is looked at as being short term yet obviously this focuses land use integrated land use how we can obviously make differences in terms of how we can work with farmers with the stakeholders to actually look at how we might be in a position to influence their management of the land which obviously has a benefit for sequestration and everything else so I think the opportunity for a much more strategic dialogue to allow us to obviously all be very much inputting into this journey that we're making towards sort of net neutral for Scotland by 2042 is really of critical importance given the timelines that we're looking at. Thank you that's really helpful. I'll put it back to circular economy and recycling because you know that it's part of the inquiry where you need to understand how councils are working with a whole range of partners on those aims. We heard from our city colleagues earlier about the challenges around recycling and I wonder why you both think rates are quite low what you think needs to change and given there's a lot of focus just now on the the role of incinerators and the waste hierarchy what is the the view of there is one at the moment in your own authorities if we do see a moratorium or a ban on those types of facilities and maybe come back to to market first of all on that one. Okay thank you Monica. Everyone wants to recycle more that's absolutely right but we all need to be cutely aware of what's happening to our recycling when it leaves us and we also need to be far more aware of the practicality of dealing with more. I want Highland to deal with Highland's waste. I don't want to be tracking it down the road which is what we have to do at the moment. We're still doing landfill along in Aberdeenshire and paying through the nose for it and we want that to stop but what's the alternative for us? Right we get our recycling rate up, right we get our reuse and repair rates up and we do a fair bit like that we're doing a big I don't know what the term is my waste terms are not great but it's really a sorting place a big place so we're going to be sorting our recyclet bulking it up much more efficiently so that will improve things this will all improve things our recycling rate at the moment is around 45 46 and that's a challenge in itself imagine what you do if you're up at tongue in north west sutherland with your recycling and where you get that so that it can be shipped down the road it's not it's not simple and it's very expensive and transport is a massive issue for us but we're now looking at the prospect of if we don't do an energy from waste plant to to deal with what we have we will be trucking our waste down the country when there's a landfill bank to the north of england that will be a seller's market not only that it goes against every grain in in my body it absolutely does and we need to find solutions and we haven't got long to do it we've been around this one time and again we were very impressed with the the modern energy from waste plants we have got areas very close to where we were thinking it could be to do district heating schemes but we've got to return every stone over to do this but i don't want to be in five years time trucking waste down the a nine to the north of england that is not what we want to do uh but if we can't make that circular economy work in five years time that is what we will be doing thank you very much councillor davison i'll turn to simon now when margaret's touched on the the polluter page principle um but again just if we can put the question back to you simon from ad infusion gallery perspective please hi thank you i mean i think obviously we've we've kind of i suppose come come to this table slightly late um we did have obviously sort of uh what we classed as an echo deco plant um that obviously sorted most of our waste previously but obviously we've we've just recently changed our our recycling systems in dunfries and galloway following a pilot um in the west of the region so our recycling rates are probably significantly lower than than the sort of the average across scotland but they are improving and increasing so we've obviously worked very hard um as part of the consultation phase we've obviously engaged with people like local groups of friends of the earth and others to ensure obviously that our recycling regime and our waste collection regime um are actually sort of fit for purpose so we are now seeing a significant uplift in terms of our recycling rates for plastics for the paper for card for um for the tin cans obviously we've also sort of put over 90s sort of communal sort of glass bins across the region to ensure obviously that we can we can ensure and increase our recycling rate on these things those rates are going up um there's anecdotal evidence that we're sort of where we are increasing significantly following this the somebody being introduced i think since last september so we are moving in the right direction um i would echo the sentiments of margaret i would love to see and be in a position to understand that obviously the waste created in dunfries and galloway is reused but i think fundamentally when we look at obviously sort of the circular economy which i think you mentioned earlier one of the key things we need to look at doing is trying to ensure that we can find ways of reducing the amount of waste that actually enters that system by reusing in the first place so from that perspective we've actually sort of we're working with um a community sort of third sector group within strunrar called the strunrar reuse centre where we're obviously looking at providing sort of additional support through some of the funding that we have available to us to look at obviously how they can increase their their opportunities to support their local community so they will repurpose you know cookers repurpose sort of bikes and everything else to ensure that these things are not entering the waste chain at that point so it's a question of reusing and looking at how we can obviously we can continue their funding so those models are there from a community perspective that's been identified in terms of how they would like to see things moving forward and obviously through our involvement we'd like to take that and look at that in terms of how we could obviously support other groups across the region who might wish to do or might wish to undertake a certain sort of facility I think there are from a personal perspective and from an operational perspective there are other examples out there both within the UK and across Europe in terms of how cities or municipalities have the the real opportunity to look at waste as a opportunity as a real cash value to these things. If you look at Copenhagen obviously their their waste collection is run on a just-in-time system in terms of their sort of their their street bins but obviously they also created a fantastic facility which houses a ski slope climate frame and cafe on top of basically their their waste incineration plant which obviously provides sort of district heating to a significant number of residents I believe around about 60 000 homes have heating from that so we there are lessons out there that we can learn from I think one of the issues that we face is obviously scale that we're a significantly wide very rural region and obviously our waste collection is is quite fragmented and obviously we need to look at obviously how we can maximise those systems to ensure that we're we're not wasting any energy either in collecting waste or in terms of how we process and deal with that. Thank you Simon and Councillor, do you want to pass back to the convener? Thanks very much Monica, let me bring in Natalie Dawn to be followed by Mark Ruskell. Natalie over to you please. Thanks convener and thanks again to the panel for your attendance today. We looks like Natalie's having some technical issues so why while Natalie tries to come back online can I pass over to Mark Ruskell to ask his questions. Mark over to you. Yeah okay thanks convener okay so I wanted to ask you both about transport I'm sure we could do an hour on transport but we don't have that time but perhaps if I could just sort of break it down a little bit. I mean the first panel talked about very much an urban context how we get you know road traffic reduction within that urban context issues of air quality. The situation that your two councils are obviously different in that you've got urban centres but you've also got a wider rural population so what you see is the kind of the biggest reduction where can you get the biggest reductions of emissions in terms of you know climate policy transport policy within your areas what are you really focusing on for those urban populations but also for the rural populations as well what are the kind of infrastructure projects partnerships and quality approaches that you're taking to get the the carbon reduction for both those types of settlements within your area. Can we start with Mark Ruskell? Yes okay thank you I wasn't sure if you'd asked right thank you right it is. What you have in a huge rural area like Highland are failing systems sometimes. Public transport doesn't work very well out in the out in the country. School transport costs us an absolute fortune we get within our annual grant around £5 million for school transport home to school transport it costs us 13 million that every year we are subsidising that because we have to get the children to school and we'd love to get to a system where we've where we've got a more efficient rural transport this is this is the big one. Inverness itself is slowly coming around difficult my gosh all of us in Highland and I include myself in that are very wedded to old four by fours or diesel cars and it's going to take some doing to get people out of it in fact they're always going to be here for some areas but we need to get moving on the electrification we've got some really good programmes of putting in the EV charges you'll know the famous north coast 500 right around the top of Highland and back down and we've got a scheme for putting EV charges all the way around there and hopefully if we get levelling up money that that will help us electrify the route because we're really wanting to get people out of their cars into at least electric cars but the big one the big game for us would be if we can get hydrogen fuel into our big HDVs our big transport our rural transport around doing the linking in then it's hearts and minds and that is the really difficult bit of getting people to use public transport to use some sort of communal transport organisation but it's absolutely vital otherwise we will continue to have a disparate population absolutely dependent at this time of year on gritters getting to their door or they're stuck so what we have at the moment is not sustainable but we want to sustain our communities so this is going to be community by community hard thinking and it's not going to be cheap so we do need to get ourselves that green finance officer like crikey we do and in terms of the the road traffic reduction target for 2030 i mean is that how would you interpret that target as a council would you see that as primarily falling on reducing mileage within the cities or would you focus in on trying to reduce the the more long distance mileage across the region yeah well the easy hit is the city and we will make progress there i've got no doubt and some of our bigger small towns if you like like nan tain say for instance um these are um furzo these are places where we can make a difference but the big gain is from the long distance transport the woodlorys the waste vehicles the the oil the oil loris delivering to every corner of the highlands and because we're we're hardly any of our our of the highlands is on the gas network so oil is the predominant fuel just now the big the thing that's going to make the big difference to us is the move towards electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel and what we've got to do as a council is to think of the infrastructure we need about that and try and make it work as best we can ev charges we're on the way um hydrogen fuel way to go okay thanks and can i get out done for you some gallery perspective as well please yes certainly i mean i think i'd echo an awful lot that that margaret's kind of already said one of the key things that we're finding is obviously is that when we look at where we need to be moving forward it is about trying to create that infrastructure so we've looked at obviously our provision of ev charges one of the things that we are trying to do at the moment is obviously look at how we as local authority can reduce our own i suppose sort of carbon footprint through through our fleet so we have a plan by 2025 that obviously all of our light fleet and sort of cars that we that we have as part of the pool will all be electric and we are working obviously we've got a couple of electric sort of waste collection vehicles that operate within Dumfries at this moment in time and we are moving towards obviously sort of you know ultra low emission sort of vehicle framework for our larger fleet and obviously sort of trying to work obviously with our with our bus providers but we are aware obviously and i recognise the comments Margaret made around obviously sort of how public transport you know struggles within sort of large rural regions and we have an awful lot of obviously people use sizing obviously their own cars and hence obviously the the need to obviously look at that infrastructure charging network across the region to ensure that people feel comfortable and confident that if they're traveling from Strunrat and Langham in an electric vehicle that there will be adequate electric vehicle charging points along the route or at the destination to ensure that they are able to make that transition from diesel or petrol across to electric we're aware obviously at this moment in time that you know that that requires further investment and and we're pushing that at this moment in time to move that on forward one of the key issues that we've got obviously is with the trunk roads in the region the a75 the 76 and 77 and obviously the a1m that passes through the region there is significant emissions that obviously come from the freight that moves along sort of the euro route and obviously we are would love to be in a position to look at alternatives Margaret's touch on hydrogen obviously there is a necessity to look at whether we can create a hydrogen hub in the south west to obviously facilitate and look at providing the the heavier goods vehicles the opportunity to move on to a hydrogen base all we need to be looking obviously at other alternatives such as the rail network and whether there is opportunity to push more freight on to that which could be then either electrified or utilise hydrogen but i think the challenges that are that are there they are significant just because of how people obviously live in in very isolated pockets and it is about obviously how we can facilitate that transition to electric vehicles in relation to the point made about obviously sort of meeting the 2030 targets i think as as Margaret's kind of said obviously it will be easier within the towns and cities look at obviously how we can change people's patterns how we can put in sort of additional cycling and walking ways how we can obviously ensure that people obviously use the car as a last resort and how we can obviously make the bus network and links within the town much more sustainable easier to use and obviously sort of lower emission vehicle how we tackle reducing manage out with that is going to be very tricky at this moment in time okay thank you much great thank you mark Liam Kerr please thank you convener and uh good morning panel I I'll just ask the same questions asked earlier i put two questions in one and I'll direct them to Margaret and then Simon dim wedi ei cw��iaeth i gael ran hwn hon addysg arwyr, dodw i'r rheswm ffond九 i ddiwyll i i gael edry erwyrwyr. Mae'r dim invitellol, mae'r gwbl самаeth a phai ni'n ymgyneud am comliedat.�fall ηw ar ddigwuchau a endealt i d studentiau yn dd Januarylu. Mae gweithio, fel cynnig, gan eu gwaith Yneedd, ond y rhaglion yng ng tastingrach yn ë calcium ysgogo升 mlyned arrogance. have sufficient flexibility, nevertheless, to deliver on its net-zero ambitions. Okay, thank you. What is it? It's a headache. It is a challenge. What we've done over the years—remember, we've had 10 years or more of this cut to local government—we've got to the point where we've got really thin layers of management and senior managers, and it just gets harder to deal with anything. We're needing to do quite a lot of strategic work on our net-zero plans, and we're wanting to do what we call the highland adapts, which is—we can't do anything unless we do it in partnership. We're absolutely crystal clear about that, but that needs people to deliver that strategy. It needs people to keep the partnership going and to service it. We don't have that staff at the moment, and what the budget does is it just makes it harder and harder to be able to do this sort of catalyzing and leadership that we want to do within the net-zero arena. It just makes it tougher. The ring fencing is a significant increase, if you like, in local government funding this year, but it is all increased. It is for specific purposes, so we can't use that to work with our carbon footprint. There's nothing in there that will help us with that, so we carry on. What I want to do is look at ways that we can help government—help us—because they have their challenges. They can't borrow as much as they want to. UK government funding this time round was reasonable, but we've got a long way to go. I'm really keen that we look at some more revolving funding. I'll give you an instance. We have, with the biggest taker uppers in the country, a revolving fund that is being used for low-carbon projects—I'm trying to remember the name of it. It begins with an S. It'll come to me. That's fine. We're taking that money, we're investing it, we're going to be paying it back, but we've got the ability to borrow it again. We've done that with a lot of development projects. We've got a revolving land fund, we've got a revolving infrastructure fund, where we can move things on that are stacked because they need to build around about, and they pay us back as the houses are built and all the rest of it. This is one way that we've got round some of the big stoppers. I'd like the Government to look at that again, and that would be helpful. The other deal for us is our city deal. We're one of the older ones, and our city deal is two big roads, one of which we need for the development in East Inverness. The other one, we can't get Transport Scotland to seriously move along on it, change of the focus and get us to where we are. All of this takes office of time, and it takes a knowledge base that it's really difficult to build on with the cuts and squeezes that we get through local government. As a local budget settlement this year, it is supremely unhelpful. Simon, any comments on this? I'm sure that my chief finance officer would have significantly more comments to make. All I would say is that I'd echo some of those comments that the issues that we've had in relation to constant budget reductions and a reprioritisation of our settlements make life very difficult for us to deliver at the pace that we would like to move at to ensure that we're meeting the targets and contributing towards ensuring that we don't top over the 1.5-degree threshold. The budget settlement effectively means that we've still got the range of activities that we're looking at, but we're going to need to bring those to committee and look at how they're prioritised against other budget pressures that we have. One of the key points that Margaret touched on is that we as a local authority and the region, we have just under 1% of the total emissions come from our council and the council sort of operations. It's about how we can then look at reaching out and working with our partners and obviously that requires the opportunity to look at what funding might be available, how we can fund feasibility studies, how we can get people on board and come with solutions, which obviously requires resources to be available and present, which are maybe not necessarily there in the quantity that we need at this moment in time. There are some white. Obviously, we've got the regional growth deal for the region, which is the boardlands deal, which has the energy master plan as part of that, which we'll see, I believe, around about £14 million worth of investment looking at solutions and a whole life system approach to our energy management and demand for the south of Scotland. Obviously, even that recognises that that's phase 1, that's very positive, but it's phase 2 that brings in the additional investment and it's how that is not yet clear, quite how we will fund that one moving forward. Obviously, the resources will create a bit of a headache if we're not in a position to align those with the aspirations or the minimal requirements to ensure that we can move that forward. Thanks very much, Liam. I believe that Natalie Dawn has been able to reconnect, and if so, Natalie, I'll hand over to you for your questions. Thanks, convener. I'm very sorry about the technical issues that I've had this morning. The answers to most of my questions have been covered in your responses to Monica, however, I was wondering if you could elaborate on the efforts that are being pursued in your areas to support the development of a circular economy and the key partners that are involved in that. So, are there any innovative local economic models that are being developed in your area around, for example, reducing waste, reusing, repair and recycling? And Simon, I know that you had already touched on this a little bit in one of your previous responses, so if I could put this to Margaret first, and Simon, if you've got anything to add, that would be great. If I was brutally honest, Natalie, I'd say not enough, it is being done just now, and we need to go back to it and concentrate on it. From one month to the next, various priorities are there, but at the moment we're trying to balance the budget, as I said, it was unhelpful, seriously trying, whereas we should be out there thinking about, okay, if we're saying we want a waste-o-energy plan, is there any way we can avoid it by doing more ourselves and getting the systems set up for a circular economy? Difficult in a big scattered rural area because you do get infrastructure failure. Being able to send lorries up some of our croft roads, it just isn't going to be an option. So, you do get failures and you do need to cope with those because you can't abandon people. Therefore, we need to learn from others. I'm not going to flannel you any more. I think that we've got a hell of a lot more to do. We've got some very good officers who are doing their level best, but I think that that needs to do. It needs to bring in the private sector, the local community sector, as much as we can. Our strength has always come from community growth and community initiatives, and it's time that we got back out there. Thanks, Margaret. All right. Simon, I'm not sure if you've got anything to add on to that. Just a couple of quick points. Obviously, the circular economy is something that we recognise as we move forward. It needs to play much more of a role. We're just in the process of undertaking our roads review. One of the key things that we've made is to put in is obviously the need to look at what happens with the raw materials and, I suppose, the waste materials from that in terms of how we can look at utilising those at a much better level locally to obviously avoid some of the carbon footprint with moving those. We are hoping, obviously, that more ideas such as the Stranraer reuse and project will come out of our engagement through our citizens panel, which we're in the process of setting up now. We're identifying key players across the region, and we're obviously looking at utilising them to provide additional support, community engagement and opportunities around key areas that they would like to see moving forward. Obviously, I do think that it's about how we take our partners with us on this, but we as a local authority can do so much. Obviously, I believe that it's how we can embed that idea within the community and get people focusing on that to come up with local solutions that are going to provide the best results in the long run. Thank you. It's been very interesting to hear the different difficulties and impacts based on the rural and urban settings, but that answers all my questions, so I'll hand back to the convener. Thank you. Thank you very much, Natalie. That brings us to the end of our allocated time. Let me just thank Margaret and Simon very much for taking part and for your insights today. It was an extremely helpful session, and I apologise again for running late, but I'm also glad that you were able to watch the panel 1 and enjoyed the panel 1 witness session. Thank you again and enjoy the rest of your day. You can leave the meeting by pressing the red telephone icon at the top right-hand side of your screen. The final agenda item today for the committee is consideration of a proposal by the Scottish Government to consent to the UK Government legislating on devolved matters using powers under the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018. This is in relation to the following proposed UK statutory instrument that pesticides revocation EU exit regulations 2022. This notification is a type 1 consent notification. The committee's role in relation to type 1 notifications is to decide whether it agrees with the Scottish Government's proposal to consent to the UK Government making regulations within devolved competence. I refer members to paper 3 and to the private legal and policy briefing members have received with their papers for this meeting. The question for the committee now is whether we agree with the Scottish Government that the environmental provisions set out in the notification should be included in the UKSI. Before I put that question to the committee, I will ask if anyone has any questions. There are none. On that basis, do we agree with the Scottish Government that the environmental provisions set out in the notification should be included in the UKSI? That is agreed. Thank you very much. The committee will write to the Scottish Government accordingly and on that basis I close the public session of this meeting. Thank you very much.