 Good morning and welcome to the 29th meeting in 2022 of the economy and fair work committee. I have received apologies this morning from Colin Smyth. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 3 in private. Our member is content to do so. Our next item of business is an evidence session with Richard Lochhead, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work. The purpose of today's evidence session is to discuss with the minister the Scottish Government's Just Transition plans and progress, with the intention of us doing some future work on that. I welcome Richard Lochhead, MSP, Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work, who has joined with Katrina Lang, Deputy Director for Climate Change, Division, Scottish Government. If members and witnesses could keep their answers as short and concise as possible, that would be helpful. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to the committee. I am delighted to have my first opportunity to come along and speak to you in my role as Just Transition Minister, but also with the responsibility for employment and fair work as well. I look forward to this morning's engagement. I am pleased to have the opportunities for a few opening remarks to try and set the scene from the Government's perspective. First, I would like to say that public understanding of Just Transition is hopefully increasing, but I think that we all accept that there is still a long way to go. For me, Just Transition is about the benefits to the Scottish economy, the jobs and skills, affordability, particularly clearly in this day and age for those who are least able to afford the changes that are required in the years and decades ahead. It is also about tangible benefits for Scotland's communities and people, and it is about ensuring that we achieve the fairest possible transition between now and our net zero targets of 2045. Just Transition to Net Zero will be challenging, as all change is. Here in Scotland, we have seen damage caused by rapid structural changes in the past. Many of our former co-mining communities, as you are all aware, are still feeling the impacts of what was inflicted on them 40 years ago. We now have a fantastic opportunity to harness Scotland's resources, and there is no doubt that the opportunities that we face are vast. To give a couple of examples, we have the potential to produce 5 gigawatts of hydrogen in Scotland by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045. To put that into context, 5 gigawatts of hydrogen is approximately 15 per cent of current energy use in Scotland. Establishing Scotland as a leading producer and exporter of green hydrogen could also support up to 300,000 jobs and contribute up to £25 billion to Scotland's GVA by 2045. 31,000 jobs have already been created across the UK in offshore wind, and 30 per cent of those jobs have been created in Scotland. Some signs of the progress that can be made and is being made, but at the heart of the Just Transition is the commitment to a planned and managed transition to net zero, as stressed by the First Just Transition Commission in its report. Having accepted the recommendations of the First GTC, we are now developing Just Transition plans for key sectors in Scotland. The energy strategy and Just Transition plan for energy will be published soon, and we will set out a roadmap for delivering on our energy ambitions for 2030 and lay out our vision for Scotland's future net zero energy system. We will also develop a place-based plan for the Grangemouth energy cluster, working with important partners such as the Grangemouth Future Industry Board, and we are beginning to develop sectoral Just Transition plans for land and agriculture, transport, buildings and construction. I can confirm today that we will be publishing outline plans for those three sectors next spring to support a period of intensive co-design on the policy detail for each of those sectors. Those outline plans will include draft outcomes for each of the sectors, initial policy suggestions to work towards those outcomes and will set out some of the key issues that co-design will have to address. They will also set out an evidence base to underpin each of those plans. They will help to deliver net zero on the way that is fair for all and ensure that the cost of the transition will not disproportionately burden those least-able-to-pay. We have already expanded programmes such as our Home Energy Scotland service to support those most impacted, for instance, by the cost crisis. Good planning can provide the certainty that communities, businesses and workers need during this period of change and our approach to Just Transition puts co-design at the core of planning and policy. Over the summer, we engaged almost 1,500 people to help develop our draft energy strategy and Just Transition plan. That included face-to-face workshops, surveys, digital dialogues and community events. As I mentioned, we will also be doing a huge period of engagement and co-design next year to support the development of the other Just Transition plans that I mentioned that are coming. It is really important that people are able to shape those plans as without societal buy-in it will be impossible for us to reach net zero in a fair way. Finally, we also know that some parts of Scotland are already in the process of transitioning to emerging industries. That is most pronounced in the energy transition and especially the transition of our oil and gas industry. That industry has provided economic opportunity and high-value, high-quality employment for over 50 years in the north-east specifically, or especially, and it has become a vital cultural touchstone for many communities, not dissimilar to the role that coal mining played in many places across Scotland in the past times. Again, it is a decline in resource and we have a profound and urgent responsibility to accelerate the fastest possible Just Transition to protect opportunities for workers and both of the regional and national economies. That is one of the reasons why we launched our £500 million Just Transition fund through the north-east in Moray with the first £50 million that was committed in September. That includes large-scale transformational projects, community-level action and, crucially, the testing of concepts and technologies that may be rolled out in other parts of the country. It is helping finance organisations, businesses and communities and individuals to transition, creating jobs in low-carbon industries and supporting the provision of skills. In conclusion, Just Transition is a big, broad agenda. It is a learning experience about how to deliver a Just Transition in Scotland. We are learning as we go, and it is not always easy to shift from concept to delivery, but it is clear that I believe that we are making progress. I am focused on maintaining the pace and ambition of the agenda as we head into 2023, which will be a crucial year of delivery for a Just Transition to net zero. I hope that my opening remarks help to put in context the challenges and opportunities that we face. I look forward to your comments and questions. We all have a shared ambition of meeting the goal for a Just Transition, the target is 2045, but you will know that the Climate Change Committee published a report this morning that expresses some concerns around progress. It says that the Scottish Government lacks a clear delivery plan and that there is not a coherent explanation for how policies can achieve targets and express some concern about the ability to deliver on a transition that has failed and equitable unless the targets have been achieved. Although you do not have responsibility for the climate change targets, you have responsibility for a Just Transition. Looking for a response to the comments from the Climate Change Committee this morning, how you see the challenges that are set out and the impact that will have on what you are trying to do with Just Transition and sectoral plans, given the significance of what has been said in the report this morning? Are you looking at plans being published in spring? Is it intention to review those plans or what impact does that have on the planning work that has already taken place? The Climate Change Committee's report is a clear signal of the urgent need for transformation in Scotland to achieve our targets. That is transformation across our economy and society. There are some strong messages in there for the Scottish Government in terms of the pace that is required to achieve our targets. There are, of course, some comments in there in terms of the role of the Just Transition and some pointers towards the progress that we are making in that area. It highlights the needs, for instance, for the role of skills, in terms of meeting our net zero ambitions for energy, transport, construction manufacturing and so on. It recognises some good progress in terms of the funds that we have brought forward in terms of the green jobs fund, the Just Transition fund, which I mentioned in the opening remarks, and the national transition training fund, which has been in place for some time also. Your question in terms of how we will take into account those strong messages in the formation of our Just Transition plans is a good one, because we will have to take that into account because we are, on the one hand, being told that we have to go further faster. Of course, that is getting an impact in the Just Transition debate, because that means that the radical transformation of our economy years ahead has got to happen to achieve our targets. What we will do next year is to outline our plans for construction, agriculture and land use and transport, and also the place-based plan for Grangemouth, which alone is responsible for something like 8 to 10 per cent of national emissions. We will then have a massive exercise across Scotland to ensure the actual detail of those plans and what is in them and what is co-designed with communities most affected. We will outline our initial plans to start off that debate in the spring of next year. We will take into account the need for being transformational. The energy plan is due soon, because that is a delayed plan. I might not be your responsibility to answer that one, but there has been concerns that the plans so far have been quite high-level and quite strategic. What we need to see is more detailed plans around delivery. Do you have any idea of the energy plan that is due and what level of delivery that will have in it? The plans that you are talking about in the spring will go to a co-producing phase. How long do you anticipate that phase to last? I suppose that the committee is looking at a 2045 target. Strategies and plans understand the importance of them, but we need to see action plans in place that will give delivery and make significant progress. What is the energy plan likely to look like? Once we get to spring, how long will the co-design phase take until we can start to see some concrete delivery on the ground? We are aligning our just transition plans with the Scottish Government's next climate change plan. That is because it is clear that the climate change legislation in the Scottish Parliament has a just transition reference in it, and we have to make sure that we are taking into account all the issues that we will be discussing today. We will, throughout 2023, in time for the draft climate change plan, which we published before the end of 2023. It is aligned together. Clearly, the climate change plan for Scotland has to be adopted a year or so later after the draft plan is published. We are trying to align all that. In terms of the energy plan and its detail, the draft energy strategy that will come out will be a whole energy system approach, so there will be quite significant detail in it. It will also be within the just transition elements. Just transition is always evolving, so we will have an energy just transition plan alongside the refreshed energy policy. We will have as much detail as we can, but it is always evolving. Where we are in 2022, we are sowing seeds for a hopeful transformation in the coming decades. Clearly, the picture will always change and it has got to be an evolving, living, breathing approach to just transition in Scotland as we become more aware of what is required for each sector. There is such a myriad of opportunities for Scotland, such as on-shore, wind, offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture and decarbonising buildings. It is a massive exercise in terms of gearing up the skills system for that and in terms of where the appropriate funding has got to be, not just from the public sector but the private sector. It has got to be a living, evolving, breathing approach to just transition, also with the fact that we have not been through that before. We have to continually learn lessons and adapt to see what is working, what is perhaps not working as well and move our way forward. I think that it is important to note that the previous climate change plan update did not have proper measurement and evaluation of the impact of the different activities that were set out in the plan. One of the big challenges of the climate change plan coming up towards the end of next year is that we have an obligation to set out those measurements and impacts. Scottish Government's ambitions in this space are rightly one of the most ambitious in the world. We are also ahead of many countries in terms of challenging ourselves on those issues. We have asked a company called Ricardo to do an assessment of how well we are doing in terms of impact already. We will be publishing those results quite soon and they will be challenging results, but that allows us to respond as early as possible in an atmosphere in which there is a crisis so that we know how much more we have to do to succeed in reaching our targets. There will be an iterative process. As the minister rightly says, the just transition plans have a key relationship with the climate change plans. Being able to consult on them is partly about understanding what the Scottish Government needs to do, but it is also about ensuring that the whole of Scotland understands what it has to do as well as being a whole national Scotland approach. We need the private sector, communities, the voluntary sector, our own Government to come together and collaborate on those issues. We are in a situation where Scotland has lost its lead over the rest of the UK on tackling climate change. We are, on some extent, going backwards and being overtaken. We did have high ambitions and we were making significant progress. That is starting to stall. I think that there are areas where we—it does not need a strategy to work out some of the simple things that we need to do that we are just not seeing progress on, but I am going to go to Graham Simpson, who has some questions in some of those areas. I will move on to Fiona Hyslop. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, minister. Good to see you. Before I ask—I am going to ask some questions around the climate change committee's report this morning, I just want to pick up on something that you mentioned earlier. You said that there would be a specific Grangemouth plan and I just wondered when we are likely to see that. That will be a place-based plan and that will be published alongside other plans that I mentioned in the spring. It will be very much an outline at that stage because we then want to take forward that exercise of co-design. Grangemouth, as you will be aware, is responsible for a lot of emissions but there is a lot of potential for the role to evolve of Grangemouth, the complex there, in terms of hydrogen and biotechnology and so on. Of course, in terms of industrial emissions alone, Grangemouth has an important role to play. We will see that along with the others by the end of June, I would imagine, next year. Looking at the climate change committee report, it is pretty damning. They have published a table, which is quite useful. We will just go through it. On transport, no new fossil car sales by 2030, slightly off track, 20 per cent reduction on 2019 car kilometres by 2030, that is a Scottish Government policy, significantly off track, low carbon heat too early to say, energy efficiency significantly off track, afforestation slightly off track, peatland restoration significantly off track, recycling rates significantly off track. If this was a school report for you, minister, you would be kept in after school, wouldn't you? I genuinely, notwithstanding the significant challenges highlighted by the report, believe that we are approaching in the next few years many different tipping points in terms of the transformation of the Scottish economy. You just have to look at the news of the last few days and there are various projects being announced to create new green jobs and to make a contribution towards decarbonising Scotland. I absolutely accept and the Government accepts that we have spent a lot of time, quite rightly, putting in place the frameworks, the funding, the policies and now it's about delivery and that's the clear message from the report is it's now about delivery and we have to go on with actually delivering and you know there's a lot of work taking place across Government to get to the point of actual delivery so we can start achieving many of those targets. Okay, I'm going to focus on transport because as you know that's the biggest emitter of carbon, the Just Transition Commission, they focus on transport as well but if I can, so in fact they say that Scotland's public transport network requires vast improvement and must be made more affordable, they talk about ScotRail capacity needing to be expanded, not reduced, expanded and now if we go on to the report that's come out today the Climate Change Committee is saying plans to decarbonise transport in Scotland are falling behind, Scotland has a laudable aim to reduce car kilometres by 20% on 2019 levels it's a challenging goal but current plans lack a full strategy, there isn't a strategy, there are no policies in place to achieve that, are there? Well the Scottish Government's allocated £2 billion towards transport projects in this agenda over £1 billion for real electrification, £500 million towards active travel, £50 million towards active freeways, £287 million for the future transport funds, £495 million for bus priority investments, £120 million for zero-emission buses etc so a lot of the building blocks have been put in place in the transport agenda but I think in the last two or three years we've seen various factors come into play that we were not expecting so we saw the impact of Covid when the one hand transport emissions fell in terms of certain sectors because of lockdown but now we find that people are reluctant to go back to public transport and they're still driving and you know so some of these left field issues have come into play that have affected our emissions in the transport sector particularly in terms of cars so you know we don't underestimate the challenges and this is about behavioural change as much as government's policies it's about everyone, it's about private sector, public sector, it's about political consensus, I recall in the Scottish Parliament the battle we had from the member's party and other parties over private business car parking charges in Levy's and giving local authorities the powers that other parts of the UK have and it became a political battle so what I'd say to the member and the committee is that we need a bit of political consensus if we want to put in some really game-changing measures if they just turn into political battles all the time even though we're all supposed to be signed up to go in towards net zero and reduce some transport emissions that that political consensus really help us. I accept you or not the transport minister, the transport minister has my phone number, she can ring me anytime and she knows I'm prepared to work with her on all these matters. My door is open if hers is. So if we just stick to transport and I know you're not the transport minister but your brief covers a lot of areas, if we want to get people out of away from driving petrol and diesel cars then something else has to be in place. And it's either we persuade them to use public transport more and or use vehicles that are not powered by petrol and diesel so let's say electric vehicles. Now we're doing quite well with the charging network but there's a long way to go. We've got 2,400 charging places at the moment, the aim is to have 30,000 in the next seven years. There's a long, long way to go and as we know many of them don't work. There's an unreliability factor there which is not going to persuade people to switch to electric vehicles. So do you accept that there's a real challenge there and do you accept that despite the progress that we've made that we need to do better on electric vehicles? Yes, every part of this debate we discussed today will be a massive challenge for Scotland and for society given what we're facing and what we have to do in the coming decades between now in 2030 and now in 2045. I think it's fair to say that there have been reports out saying that Scotland's got the second best electric car charging points infrastructure in the UK outside of London and other parts of the UK are trying to catch up and of course we have to do better as the member says. I do accept that of course we've got to do better and I do accept that this is a massive challenge but we again are making progress in that agenda as well. We're trying to achieve in the next few decades the transformation of our economy and our society but we've got to today, to several hundred years and we're trying to cram the equivalent transformation into the next two or three decades. So it is a big challenge and all I can say is that some of the changes that we require to reduce our emissions and decarbonise Scotland are so challenging that we just need to have that political consensus to support those measures. Before I bring in Ms Hyslop, you referred to green jobs. It was just asking for an update on there's been debate around the definition of a green job. There was ons issues raised in the autumn around what defines a job and how do we measure that. So it's just like to know where the Government are up to on that. Well it's a good question and it's a pet subject of mine because understandably we'd be criticised when the ONS were publishing their green jobs statistics despite the fact that we were aware there was many green jobs being created in Scotland. Now the ONS have accepted that their definition requires to be updated and they're currently reviewing their definition so hopefully we'll have a more accurate definition. However we have also seen independent research carried out by Skills Development Scotland working with Warwick University and Strathclyde University. They published a report just a few weeks ago, which the committee I'm sure would be very interested in, which says that at the moment Scotland is up to, I mean it may be less, but it's up to 100,000 green jobs in Scotland and they've explained the definitions in there. So is that the definition of the Government? Because you must have a working definition if you're setting targets for green jobs that is different from the full definition. So the difficulty is there's no uniform definition across the UK, across the world and the ONS has said that they're looking at this as the official statistics body. There's also, they're looking at different categories, so they're looking at green jobs that are created in emerging sectors but also existing jobs that are being greened and one of the understandable challenges is a job nowadays may involve part of its time being a green job and do you define that as a green job or not a green job because it may not be 100% of the employee's time doing green tasks and that's just a bit a sign of the fact that the world of work is changing and the green economy is emerging. So these are the sort of challenges that ONS and others are looking at but I think it's good news that we now have a report that says it's up to 100,000 green jobs in Scotland and many of those are in new emerging sectors. Okay, that other members may wish to pick this up but I'll bring in Fiona Hyslop. Minister, you referred to carbon capture and storage. The net zero committee, which I also said on, produced a report into the ACORN project on carbon capture utilisation storage earlier this year and made clear that it was a key energy transition requirement but obviously it's been put on pause. During that session, Professor Hyslodine said that it would require a five-year lead-in for building such a project and that it needed to be in operation by 2030 and he also then went on to say, so deciding now how we are going to handle that is fundamental to Scotland being able to meet or failing to meet its 2045 net zero target and clearly we've got a very critical report coming out from the climate change committee but that project has been said by the climate change committee to be vital and critical to delivering these very tough targets so bearing in mind the location of that project in the north-east of Scotland, bearing in mind that we're here to focus on just transition which is about obviously the workforce and communities and this is a transition technology that would help that bridge in a vital area for workforce skills from oil and gas to green hydrogen as a bridging technology. Can you tell us where we are with that project and how crucial it is to delivering a just transition for Scotland? I thank Fiona Hyslodine for raising that question because it's very pertinent to the climate change committee's report today and it does remind us that many of the decisions that get to net zero targets lie with the UK Government taking the right decisions and not just the Scottish Government because we don't have all the powers over all the issues obviously and it's worth also saying that the ACORN project is not just a project for north-east Scotland it's also relevant to Grangemouth for instance which we discussed recently it's an absolutely crucial project and as Ian Wood said or Ian Wood said if I remember correctly not giving the go-ahead for crack one status for the ACORN project in Scotland is like a football team leaving its best player on the bench. I'm not sure if Portugal did that last night but they actually gave quite a good score. The principle of course is an absolutely valid one because this is a project that is vital for Scotland to achieve its net zero ambitions but not just Scotland but the rest of the UK as Fiona Hyslodine says. I was at a meeting of the North Sea transition forum in London a few days ago and that forum is chaired by the UK Minister and I attend it as well and by the Scottish Government and of course if anyone had travelled down from Aberdeen but unfortunately the UK Minister had to go and answer an urgent question so I wasn't actually at the meeting so we had an Aberdeen gathering in London that's one of the things we have to deal with but someone said at that meeting that we are in danger of making the same mistakes that were made before where we have a massive opportunity to do the right thing, create jobs, new industries but we are saying too long to take the decisions and we may lose and not be first mover and other countries will get ahead of us. This has to be a treaty of a lot more urgency with the UK Government. We have to get the ACORN project given the go-ahead it is critical. The Scottish Government has put £80 million in the table to help to meet some of the demands of the project, to try and work with the UK Government to get the go-ahead for the ACORN project. There is constant correspondence and communication between Michael Matheson, the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and indeed I think Deputy First Minister as well with the UK Government on the issue of the ACORN so I do hope that soon we can get the green light for that. I've actually got a photo of my phone or I want to show the committee of me standing after a recent visit to the St Fergus Gas Terminal next to the pipeline, standing next to the pipeline that's ready to take about 30 per cent, if I recall correctly, of Scotland's industrial emissions down that pipeline and store it in an empty reservoir, recycling part of the oil and gas industries infrastructure to the golden eye field and you know we just can't get the go-ahead and we have infrastructure in Scotland ready to use, we're ahead of the rest of the UK in that regard, we've got the academic expertise also based in Scotland and therefore it's vital but final final point to make is of course the jobs point of this which is the just transition part of it as well which is that we were told that from 2022 onwards we could create up to 15,000 jobs, 15,000 jobs, getting up to about 20,000 jobs by 2030 and that is a lot of jobs and if you look at how many jobs are in the oil and gas industry in the North East of Scotland for instance just now that's a big percentage of what we've got in oil and gas at the moment so this is about jobs and it's about achieving our net zero targets. And just very briefly that might help with our discussion, my colleagues have asked about transport, I've asked about energy, you're not the lead minister of cabinet secretary particularly in those areas and you're our first ever just transition minister and I think it would be helpful if you could maybe explain how you do work with other ministers in other areas and what levers do you have to influence and push the agendas that we know will be critical to deliver just transition in areas that you might not have a direct responsibility for. So as you can imagine just obviously the vital question in terms of delivering a just transition we are mainstreaming just transition through all portfolios and all policies so I have bilateral meetings and correspondence with all other cabinet secretaries and ministers and we discuss clearly you know the urgency of in the case of transport or other areas that we support the just transition so all ministers at the moment are working on the just transition dimensions of their own responsibilities and clearly my responsibilities to help coordinate that but also coordinate the publication of the plans so you know my officials will kind of coordinate the publication of the plans but clearly the different teams across government and ministers have got the responsibility for actually populating those plans and the measures will take. And good morning thank you for what you've said so far and for being here this morning. Clearly as you said we have ambitious targets to meet in Scotland but that's part of a bigger picture of you know the idea of what we hear termed as keeping 1.5 degrees alive and that rapid shift and pace of transition has to happen. As you've mentioned with engagement and conversations with workers around job creation and that broader energy and economy shifts we'll get into some of the details around maybe some of the specific community issues when we talk about the just transition fund for the northeastern Murray a little bit later but I want to thinking about the economy more generally how is it that we can ensure that we future proof the work that we're doing and we don't lock in disadvantage we don't lock in inequality you mentioned in your opening remarks that the previous energy transition we went through has left mining communities you know still suffering how do we make sure that we don't lock in that disadvantage and we actually use this to ensure we work on equality we make it fairer for people now who aren't maybe reaping the benefits of the oil economy that we've had it for the last 50 years. Your question goes to the heart of what the just transition is all about and when people ask me what is the just transition I'm very keen to always emphasise that as we go through the economic transformation to decarbonise Scotland in the decades ahead that we use that as a window of opportunity to not repeat past mistakes and to tackle inequalities because after all if you're going to rebuild and redesign your economy you want to make it better for everyone and you want to tackle inequality so that really is at the heart of the just transition and co-design is a very important principle so I'm always emphasising to any community I visit or organisation I meet public sector private sector that and I know there's a lot more to do that any policies put in place or projects are coming forward they should be co-designed with the local communities and we want to know that it has buy-in and of course we've got the wider challenge of who pays for the just transition and that's why the government in terms of its use of public sector funding is ensuring we support people in low incomes whether it's with retrofitting their homes tackling fuel poverty you'll know where various funds have been brought forward to support people in low incomes and their hardest hit overall of course we want to ensure that everyone benefits in the just transition and the prosperity that's available to us and the tackling fuel poverty through deploying Scotland's massive energy resources is going to be a key outcome for instance of the next few years especially in light of the current energy crisis and cost of living crisis we live in an energy rich country yet people are paying through those for energy bills so if we look back in I don't know 10 years 20 years and people are still paying through those for energy in a country that's producing several times what we require for energy then the just transition will have failed and you know I'm very upfront about those tests a lot of work and challenges getting there but we have to aim for that we cannot live in an energy rich country where people are fuel pure and that's a test of the just transition and I suppose that that actually links to Fiona's question around the working across portfolios working between and across departments one of the I think I think there's been quite a lot of discussion or quite a lot of talk around you know using using a mission-based approach or a challenge-based approach that doesn't get siloed into different departments what are the challenges within the way the Scottish Government and the Parliament more generally works that in your view we need to actually change in the next decade if we're not only to meet targets we you know to do all the things we want to do but to actually ensure that we are getting that cross-cutting work that means we don't fail on the equalities measures never mind the energy measures so the mainstreaming aspect I mentioned earlier is really important that policies can't work in siloed but develop in silos they we have to take into account what the impact is you know on everyone and to ensure that we don't place a disproportionate burden on any part of our communities and we discussed the climate change report to the climate change committee report earlier in the session and the challenge that lays down and of course the solutions to many of those challenges are quite radical in terms of how we bring people with us in Scotland of some of the measures that potentially would have to be taken and if you look at decarbonising heatings and the work that Patrick Harvie is doing which is one of the biggest pillars of the of the net zero journey is how do we decarbonise Scotland's buildings and tackle those emissions clearly the public sector cannot pay for that alone if we're estimating that it's going to cost over 30 billion pounds to decarbonise our heating in our buildings and the government's brought forward a very ambitious 1.8 billion pounds for the course of this parliament towards that which is a very substantial budget but it's you know in the context of the 30 billion by 2030 or give or take we know that it's got to be the public and the private sector got to play a role as well so that's a big challenge and we in terms of the just transition have to ensure those least able to pay are not left with a disproportionate burden to pay for that so we have to support people in that context. Okay thanks and I suppose that that's even before we start to talk about the the costs of adaptation but I know other people want to talk about finance so I'll leave it there for now. Thank you before I move to Michelle Thomson who has got some questions on finance it's just going back to Fiona Hyslop's question around your role within government I mean do you as part of the conversation she had with other cabinet sectors and ministers do you set expectations on where you expect to see progress or do you have an idea of areas that should be prioritised as a new role to kind of set some of those parameters and encourage that kind of activity? So clearly I'm working and my officials are working to ensure that the various policy teams across government are now working in the just transition so there's a lot of work going on just now coordinating the work for the plans we mentioned earlier that the outlines will be published for next spring so that's happening and that's obviously I myself my team are instigating that I also sit on a lot of the various sub-comittees I mean the main sub-comittees the climate change sub-committee so as just transition minister I sit on that and clearly I'm there to bring the just transition dimension to that as we discuss some of those policies that are required to achieve our targets and I'm also there to represent the just transition dimension of that debate and obviously as well as we minister for just transition employment I'm employment fair work and all of that's got just transition element to it as well so as we tackle inequalities moving forward we have to make people of good jobs not just green jobs but good green jobs so in terms of the economic dimension of the government's work I'm feeding in the just transition dimension for that as well which is an automation people are well paid. So the reports that are coming out in spring which are for co-design will they though include these other priority areas will there be you know it'll be clear indicators of this is the activity that needs to be prioritised to make differences even though I reckon that it'll be co-design will there still be a redirection in there about this is really what we need to do at this kind of timescale and yes so clearly they're not written yet so I can't preempt everything they'll say but if you take skills each of those plans will have to have a skills pillar in it and you know skills is vital for all these areas going forward to make sure people are upskilled re-skilled and so on and so that will be in every plan and that's obviously crucial so in terms of milestones in terms of actions taken to make sure we are meeting the skills needs there'll be in each each plan to give one example. When we want some questions around finance I'll bring in Maggie Chapman and I think Fiona Hyslop was a question in this area sorry Michelle Thompson that's my fault and then I'll I think Fiona Hyslop was a question in this area and Maggie Chapman but I'll go to Michelle first. Okay good morning minister thank you for attending today but before I go into some specific questions I just wanted to kind of take it up a level and there are a multitude of figures being bandied about exactly how much finance is required to enable a just transition and some of the changes we need to see and they are quite eye-watering and it's generally agreed that globally we're nowhere near it but looking in a Scottish context the the climate change committee report I also noted pointed out that many relevant powers related to areas such as funding finance and product standards are reserved so my question to you is are you getting the support you need from the UK government to supply the level of funding requirements or are you having to take it out of the fixed Scottish budget which obviously has very near side time parameters in terms of planning how's the kind of funding that you're able to realise being managed and actualised? One of the biggest challenges is how we're going to fund the the just transition and all the steps we have to take to get to net zero and you know as the member says a lot of the different figures for different policy areas or the global figures are eye-washing. On the one hand in terms of COP26 in Glasgow there was clear signals there are enormous amounts of private sector finance available around the world so the Scottish government is taking steps trying to attract that to be invested in Scotland. I actually remember one man standing behind me in the coffee queue in Glasgow boasting to his colleague that he had $2 billion available to invest and I always regret not getting his business card falling up but there's a lot of talk at COP26 about the amount of private sector finance available. The UK Government are doing their own green finance strategy and the Scottish Government submitted to that through the consultation period and I think our concern with the UK Government would be pace. We need this urgent and we need pace from the UK Government, not just in areas like CCS and giving the Go Hetty Acorn project which would create an enormous amount of wealth for the Scottish economy and bringing private finance but also in terms of the green finance initiative that the UK Government are looking at we need quick action on that. In terms of Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government's budgets we're all familiar with the pressures on public finance at the moment so not only would we face these massive challenges of achieving net zero we're doing it at a time when public budgets are under such huge pressure and the current cost of living crisis and inflationary dimension to what's happening just now. The Government doesn't have borrowing powers to finance some of those major projects that are required so we do need the UK Government to step in where they can and we've challenged them for instance to match the Scottish Government's £500 million just transition fund over 10 years for North East Scotland Murray. We would like to see a UK contribution to that. I think the green jobs task force the UK has a year or two back suggested that kind of finance is required from the UK Government and it's not been forthcoming so there's a big role for the UK to play here. You've given a lot of flavour to that and it's potentially one route to be given more money but are you hearing the calls from across the Scottish Parliament for vastly increased borrowing powers for the Scottish Government like any normal Government who might want to undertake ambitious policies so that we can crowd in private sector funding because that's the obvious we all agree that no Government's going to be able to fund this regardless and it will need to crowd in private sector funding so I mean in your private discussions you may not be able to disclose that are you hearing agreed calls from across this Parliament for extra borrowing powers to do this sort of activity? No I'm not hearing that enough it would be great to have a political consensus that not only can we agree in the major steps that have to be taken to transform Scotland's economy years ahead but we need the powers to do that. If we're going to be held to account for not implementing radical transformational projects we need to have the support of all parties to have the powers to do that in the first place. Borrowing powers and clearly there's other constitutional debates taking place just now but borrowing powers is the office example we had political unity and consensus and you know the more I think about it and talk about it the more I realise how important it is political consensus because we've got many examples of what would be seen as yes important issues but not necessarily the big issues we're going to have to deal with but even they become huge storms in the Scottish Parliament in political battles. We have to have more of a political national consensus about what needs to be done if we want to save the planet and get to our net zero targets and save humankind and civilization and that's what we're facing. Maggie Chapman mentioned keeping the temperature increased to below 1.5 degrees but you know some people are talking about four degrees by the end of the century which has major ramifications for our children, our grandchildren, great-grandchildren so if we want to tackle these issues we need more political consensus. Yeah and matching ambition in terms of financial enablement. I noticed just a couple of final questions in the climate change committee that actually calls out risks due to where its existing responsibilities risk due to UK government action a week in action around low carbon, heat and existing homes and they make that comment about details of market-based mechanisms and associated funding and so on. I do want to explore a wee bit more about the 500 million fund that you've already mentioned and get a bit more flavour about not just the funding but how you're able to release that and to protect that given the constraints and the real terms cut in the Scottish budgetment. Can you give us a bit more flavour to that to understand some of the challenges even within that fund? Well the government's committed to delivering the 500 million pounds fund over 10 years. The first year 20 million pounds allocated however many of the projects that came forward are multi-year projects. We've actually committed up to 50 million pounds up to the next four years so because some of the projects will account for that extra money and the Scottish government will bring forward its budget in the next few weeks in terms of funding for the justice transition fund. We are committed to that and we have no plans to change that. There are challenges because that is capital funding and I'm sure many of the projects may require revenue funding and we can only do what we can do and therefore we've got a capital budget and we're using financial transactions and capital budgets. There are always challenges because there's just not enough resource to achieve what people want to achieve and we need the UK Government, Scottish Government and the private sector as well as the public sector to all play their role. I'm going to allow members who have already had questions to come in again but if I asked you to keep the questions short that would be helpful. I also wanted to ask about the £500 million justice transition fund for the north-east in Murray and obviously there have been projects already announced and I absolutely understand the importance of having community co-operation and co-design and projects coming from the communities but every single one of those 24 projects are worthy in and of themselves but it might be a fair criticism to say that they might be very piecemeal based on challenged funding and that there might be a need for a more strategic approach for such a significant element of funding. How are you balancing out the worthiness of each individual project but some of them are for private companies that may be able to finance these things themselves and how are you then making sure that this is a really strategic impact that will deliver justice transition as opposed to support individual projects and I think that's a tension I understand that so can you maybe share about your thinking about the funding mechanism process and your approach on that that's my question. Well again it's a good question that's something we've wrestled with because on one hand we want to get the fund underway we don't have time to wait several years for the perfect plan to the future especially when it's an evolving situation and we therefore chose the route of no regret decisions i.e. each decision will contribute in its own way therefore they're good projects and there's a different time, there's large projects, small projects, community projects, strategic projects, science projects, skills projects, there's a good basket of what's required for the justice transition in the years ahead but we are intending and using next two or three years to develop that more strategic approach. Now what we are funding fits in just now with the direction of travel whether it's hydrogen or whatever and obviously plugging the skills gaps that are required to be addressed in the years ahead so we're confident all the projects are robust, good projects will contribute towards a justice transition but we know we have to work in the case of that fund with the northeastern Murray over the strategic robustness that's required and to make sure that it is transformational. We have to ensure that when we look back in 10 years time that we've spent or invested £500 million of public money in transformation and that's a big challenge but some of the projects will be transformational hopefully and we'll look back and they'll have benefited not just the northeastern Scotland but the rest of the country as well. Maggie Chapman and then I'll bring in Colin Beattie who is going to ask questions around other issues but Maggie on final. I thought we'd been given a warning there. Thank you. Just following on from Fiona's question around some of the allocations of the justice transition fund obviously that's key to us even having any hope of achieving our targets but I think I am concerned and others particularly communities in the northeast are concerned that millions of pounds has already been allocated to large companies often backed by the fossil fuel industry that has seen record profits in recent months and we've seen just £4.2 million allocated over four years to community-led participatory budgeting and I think one of the clear concerns that it's not enough for money to be given to companies and to call it a just transition that actually needs to be genuine and I'm not sure that we're going to get that unless we have that strategic work that Fiona alluded to but two specific projects we know that £14 million has been awarded to a contentious project in Tory. You'll be very well aware of that. Tory is a community to the south of Aberdeen that has some of the lowest life expectancy in Scotland and over a decade lower than other parts of the city it hasn't benefited at all from from the oil and gas economy. In fact all Tory was bulldozed for the oil and gas economy and I think there's something there's a very very clear mismatch in what we term justice here. If communities like the Tory community have their only remaining green space concreted over for something that will assist the broader just transition but that's not justice for those communities that community. So how do we tackle that kind of injustice I think if we don't have that dedicated focus to that community leadership which we haven't seen in the current allocations. Thank you and it's a good challenge to put to the government and indeed the local economic partnerships involved. As a backdrop I've been clear since day one speaking to organisations, public sector groups, community groups in North East Scotland that if for instance we have what is a vital project for North East Scotland which is the energy transition and part of that is the energy transition zone and the development Aberdeen harbour but yet the neighbouring communities don't see the benefits then the just transition will have failed in those areas and I've been very clear about that since day one and I understand in terms of the energy transition zone plans there's been some good community engagement recently and community residents are involved in some of the future plans now for that area so I hope that that is productive and makes progress. We have not funded any oil or gas companies directly you can't support the development of the northeast economy without involving the offshore sector and oil and gas industry and they are a crucial part of the just transition. They've got the skills, the expertise, the investments that are going to underpin the just transition and we need their buy-in to work with the oil and gas industry transitions over the coming decades because irrespective of net zero policies employment oil and gas in Aberdeen northeast Scotland is going to decline by 2040 and 2050 substantially so the transition is super important in terms of the economic future and they are therefore part of the local economic partnerships and we will work with these economic partnerships so we just got to be careful that there's no just transition funding that was announced going directly to oil and gas companies we are supporting some economic partnerships of which the oil and gas sector clearly have to be part of going forward. Okay thanks can I have one one more? Let's break it in. Just another project one of the ambitions one of the pieces of work that the Scottish Government has underway at the moment is an independent review of how to cut climate pollution from Scotland's existing incinerators and you'll know that the net incinerator in Aberdeen was awarded some money from the just transition fund to research feasibility around carbon capture and storage putting aside the fact that CCS has never been used successfully on an incineration plant anywhere in the world I'm just curious as to whether you see there's a preemption there of the the Scottish Government's commission into how to cut carbon emissions from incinerators if we are saying actually we're going to we're going to fund we're going to fund an incinerator essentially to bake in or to bake in demand for for waste for waste generation so clearly when we put out the the call for bids for projects under the fund each application is looked at under its own merits and Scottish Government officials liais with local authority officials Scottish Enterprise in the area to look at each project and which would be worth supporting and we have to we have to support emerging new technologies in some cases to find out what contribution they'll make and so I don't think it preempts anything I think it's just a straightforward funding of innovative technology as I said before we want to see successes from the fund in north east scotland and murray that will benefit the rest of scotland as well we want to roll out some of the successes that are developed and then discovered and innovated in north east scotland to benefit other parts of scotland so it's a great place to have a laboratory for the just transitions north east scotland because of the presence of the oil and gas and fossil fuel sectors which have to transition so we have to support some and trial different technologies okay thanks okay just before I bring in Colin Beattie in terms of finance we do have Scottish Enterprise who are our main enterprise agency and the Scottish National Investment Bank that were set up with a focus on renewables so could you me say a bit about how these two agencies what they are doing in terms of drawing in finance to scotland and if there's been a reprofiling or you know what extent is this a priority within Scottish Enterprise are you able to comment on that at all well I do recall the Scottish Investment Bank are funding some just transition projects or decarbonising projects in scotland I don't have the list in front of me so they are playing their role and they've got a big responsibility to support net zero transition and it's important to say that some across the boards or enterprise companies the Scottish National Investment Bank are all signed up to prioritising the transition to net zero so they are playing a role and in peatland restoration and other areas they're playing a role as well so that might be something we follow up with the relevant minister we hope we do take evidence from the Scottish National Investment Bank but the Scottish Enterprise would maybe committee I'll look for more information on what way it's investment into projects about decarbonising in certain sectors I don't have the list in front of me because it's not my direct responsibility but they are on you know they're doing their plan of role and they'll have to do more and more of that in the future I think that maybe so just on the Scottish National Investment Bank they do have 110 million currently allocated to the net zero transition and on Scottish Enterprise we have a kind of a different relationship with them depending on funding but we do work up with them very closely so across the energy funds and across the climate change funds some of those funds are managed more in-house but with close collaboration with Scottish Enterprise and just transition fund is one of them Scottish Enterprise do actually run for the Scottish Government a range of energy funds I think as part of the resource spending review we committed to moving from a funding to finance approach and it touches on several of the questions we've already had in terms of how we work best to attract funding so of course we know that as others have said that there are eye watering amounts of money that need to be put in but there are also some massive opportunities of course for the private sector and for businesses and what we need to do is to be able to work closely with them so that we're unlocking some of those opportunities in partnership and I think it's fair to say that we've got more work to do to to maximise that and I think our partners in Scottish National Investment Bank and Scottish Enterprise will be really key in terms of making that work as well as possible. Thank you, that's helpful. Colin Beattie to be followed by Jamie Hockwood-Johnston. Thank you, minister. Clear policy is extremely important to support emerging markets such as hydrogen which are important to my constituency. What policy measures do you see need to be in place over the coming years in order to ensure that businesses are equipped to be successful in these markets? So as I said earlier on the potential of hydrogen in the future is potentially enormous for the Scottish economy and playing its role in decarbonising our country. I've spoken to people who think that Scotland could be one of the top three countries in the world in terms of a decarbonised economy if we play our cards right in the years ahead so I hope that's true because we've got a wealth of resources that could make that happen but of course there's massive challenges and costs in getting there. So in terms of hydrogen we have to, in the Scottish Government will be publishing its hydrogen statement policy in the next few weeks and clearly that will give you the committee an outline of the direction of travel for realising the potential of hydrogen for Scotland in terms of domestic roles and also export as well. The initial assessment says up to 300,000 jobs but clearly it could be anywhere between several tens of thousands and 300,000 jobs so we will learn as we go over the next few years about the potential of hydrogen. In terms of the policy that we have to put in place, clearly again the skills, we have to make sure that people are upskilled and retrained to deal with hydrogen. There's a lot of working on Scotland in the private sector as well, I mean SGN, Scottish Gas Networks, I received a presentation from them a month or two back, they're doing some incredible things in this space to investigate and explore what has to be done to re-engineer the infrastructure to take hydrogen and what we've required to do that and what that would mean for supply chains and skills and everything else. So there's a lot of work taking place in the private sector with the commercial opportunities of this as well. I mean hydrogen is obviously only one area, there are many other products which may or may not succeed, which may or may not be a large part of the economy. Are you satisfied that Government policy is keeping pace with this and providing the guidance, the infrastructure and so on within which companies can develop these products and how do you keep up to speed on it? Ivan McKee, the business minister spends a lot of time in this space as a microbathis and net zero secretary, of course, is just back from Japan and Korea speaking to a lot of large businesses over there who potentially might invest in Scotland. So ministers are doing their best to engage with developing technologies and clearly we take expert advice and we're publishing our policies. So, as I said, the hydrogen policy, for instance, we published in the next few weeks and that will take into account the latest research and technologies. So it's a challenge but we have to work with the enterprise companies. We've got a really prestigious university sector and research sector in Scotland that's helping us as well. Let me take you on to a slightly different area. We all know what's happening with energy markets and the extraordinary increases in prices and the consequent increase in fuel poverty. The prices are expected to continue to increase, I believe, through 2023. Has any assessment been done or have you any fuel as to the impact of the risk of fuel poverty on inequality in Scotland and specifically will it limit the ability of those impacted to secure improvements to energy efficiency methods or greener heating systems? What will the impact be? Ministers have been, as you can imagine, looking at this closely and, as you know, more support has been brought forward to help low-income households deal with their energy bills and tackle fuel poverty and home energy efficiency measures, et cetera. So, yes, we are extremely concerned about the impact of rising energy prices and fuel poverty in Scotland and on rising inequalities in the country as well. I'm happy to ensure that you get some information forward up to the committee about that because there's a lot of work that's been taking place. As I said before, the just transition will have failed if we find ourselves in a few years' time living in an energy-rich country but people can't afford to pay their fuel bills. We have people who are potentially dying from fuel poverty. You couldn't make it up. It's a horrendous situation. It shows that our energy policy in the past has failed. The energy market, energy regulation, reserved issues to the UK Government, but we shouldn't be in this position when we're in an energy-rich country and people are facing fuel poverty. We have to get this right going forward and the refreshed energy strategy, which the Government is publishing shortly, will address some of the issues that you can imagine. Just on a specific issue that actually affects my constituents, we are obviously encouraging people to invest in green heating systems such as solar in particular and yet, when it comes to actual planning, in my constituency, people living in conservation areas are routinely rejected in terms of their planning for solar panels, which seems ridiculous and I wonder if there's a possibility that the Government might give some better guidelines and so on to councils in order to encourage the uptake of solar panels and other green energy because they're all just being rejected. I know that Patrick Harvie is working on this at the moment in terms of some of the measures and the obstacles that have to be addressed to decarbonised home heating, so I'd be happy to ensure that your comments are passed on to him and he might respond to the committee or yourself directly about that. That's just an example of the changes that we have to consider moving forward. Before I bring in Jamie Harvie-Johnson, the minister will be aware of concerns around cuts to budgets for renewables within energy efficiency schemes. I understand what it's to do with underspend within those budgets. The money that goes to local authorities and the money that is for energy efficiency schemes is that there is a cut in this year's budget. As I said, I understand what it's to do with underspend, but what discussions are you having? It's someone who is trying to deliver in this area and we know from the climate change committee's report this morning that housing and buildings is one of the weak areas where we need to see more progress about how those funds can be retained within that sector and we'll find a way if they're being underspent, why they've been underspent and try to resolve those issues because we can't devalue the funding that is important that money is spent. How can we make sure that in the future that money is spent and that money is retained for important measures that need to take place in this area? The Scottish Government funds local authorities through the area-based schemes for retrofitting and the kind of measures in the renewable energy sector, so it's not necessarily the responsibility of the Scottish Government as to why that's arisen and it may be over the course of the last couple of years there's been various factors that have slowed down some of those schemes being implemented, so I'd really have to come back to you to investigate what the reasons might be behind that. I'm happy to do that. Okay, that might be helpful for the committee. So I think we're all in agreement that it's frustrating and needs to be changed how we have not been able to deliver against our targets. It's one of the areas where climate change and supporting people through the cost of living absolutely intersects and it is your right about demand rather than any actual cut to the budget. So recognising that in recent months what colleagues in charge of the scheme have done is firstly to raise awareness, so there's now a marketing campaign to allow people to understand what they're entitled to. Secondly, increasing the amount of support that's given in terms of fuel poverty, so responding to the cost of living crisis, doubling some of the funds that are available to people who are least able to afford it and also increasing the eligibility of the free service. So there's some strands which require people to lay down some of their own money to make the conversions and there are other strands where through social housing for instance we're supporting people directly for free and those have been increased. The other part is funding more energy advisers so that people can consult locally with what they're entitled to rather than needing to navigate through the internet. We have seen an uptake of interest as a direct result of those measures. I think looking forward that the minister mentioned before that there was a relationship between the £1.8 billion that has been dedicated to this and £33 billion that will actually cost the whole scheme over the next decade and I think we need a new way of spreading that cost to make sure that we can actually deliver it. So we're looking at regulations for when buying and selling happens on properties to make sure that we're actually accelerating the speed of the overall scheme. Javelin, sorry, do you have any details of the timescale? You said you're looking at regulations. I believe we're looking at regulations for 24-25. Thank you. Before I come to my main questions I just wanted to ask around the hydrogen side. You've talked about, I think, five gigawatts of potential production and I think you talked about 300,000 potential jobs. Where will hydrogen be used? Can you give us some detail on where it can actually be used within business domestic? So the Government will be publishing its hydrogen policy in the next few weeks and a lot of that information will be in there just now. I think there's various aspects of the hydrogen debate being looked at around Scotland. For instance, in the debate that we had about CCS a little while ago and the Acorn project, that's got a hydrogen element to it. I think that Grangemouth in particular is looking at that and how to produce hydrogen. That's production of it. Where will it actually be used? For example, can it be used in domestic boilers, domestic heating, what would it require to do that? The UK Government is in the next, I can't remember the exact timescale, they are about to take a decision in the next, I don't know if it's next year or so, on the role that hydrogen will play and that will have to guide us in Scotland because that will relate to the regulation. That's going to have a big influence on where hydrogen could potentially be used in the economy. We're waiting for that because that's to do with the regulatory side of things. As I mentioned before, SGN are doing an exercise in terms of the private sector on what it will mean for the gas networks and what potential to have for home domestic use. That's a potential route for it. Of course, we can see the hydrogen buses that are being deployed in Aberdeen and creating some jobs up there as well. Transport has got a big role to play and there's also an exercise in Scotland just now to do with the HGVs and the trucks and how we can use hydrogen for that form of transport. I'm very interested in that. If you go on Twitter or any other social media, you'll see people ruling out certain uses for it and saying that you should be using that. There's a big debate about where hydrogen could best be used. We have talked about domestic boilers being ruled out, so people will be making decisions on whether we go to another form of renewables, but if there's potential for domestic boilers to run, this is the difficulty, the detail isn't there yet. Obviously, a lot of people talk about potential within agriculture and other industries. I'm just interested because, as I said, I think that there's a lot of lack of clarity despite all the very positivity about it. You've talked about 300,000 jobs. It would be good to know where those might be. That was an statement that was issued. We can send that to the committee that was published a while back, looking at the potential for hydrogen, the hydrogen statement. I also wanted to ask about the opportunities of just transition. In previous schemes or processes like this, there have been a lot of opportunities for big business and less perhaps for some of the smaller SMEs to take advantage of it. How can you ensure that SMEs are involved in taking advantage of the opportunities of just transition? Both Net Zero Scotland and the Scottish Enterprise and the Enterprise companies generally are running schemes to help SMEs and small business to take advantage of the opportunities. There's a loan scheme run by Zero Way Scotland for SMEs and the Scottish Enterprise. Business Gateway is now giving advice to small businesses about steps that they could take for Net Zero Scotland. There's a lot more that's got to be done in this area. One vision that I have is that we have to create a position in Scotland where, when I talk about just transition plans for sectors of the economy, place-based just transition plans for Grangemouth and in 2024, we will look at regional just transition plans for regions of Scotland. It's also a situation where we would like every business in Scotland and every organisation to have its own just transition plan, so we need to work with the business community. For instance, if you're a car mechanic business that's now working in petrol and diesel, we have to find a way of supporting businesses like that to have its own just transition plan so that, if petrol and diesel cars are going to be phased out in a few years' time, the business survives and people are selling work. We have to work with the business community. At any meeting with the FSB, a meeting with Chimbers of Commerce, are they raising any concerns with you over the approaches that are being taken or what is their opinion? From my conversations, there's a general acceptance that we have to raise awareness. If you're a business, particularly in today's environment with rising energy costs and all the other challenges, labour shortages, you're probably not thinking about your just transition plan or your net zero plan for the future. How do we raise awareness and say that this is not only in your interests but a new economic opportunity? There are lots of opportunities for new companies to start up in areas. In my area, the small business that's going around homes, putting in air-source heat pumps, a private business, is overwhelmed with work. I keep thinking to myself, well, there must be a business opportunity for lots of, either for that business to expand significantly or for new businesses, so we have to capitalise on economic opportunities. Yes, I have met all of those organisations that will continue to meet them. I'm going back to what we were talking about before. My colleague Graham Simpson was talking about the transport side. Fiona Hyslop asked you about the role that you do in terms of within government. You talked about mainstreaming within government. You talked about bilateral meetings with other colleagues. The just transition minister, but as a transition minister, do you see any conflict or contradiction between meeting Scotland's climate change targets and its targets around decarbonising and delivering on manifested commitments on some of the transport policies such as road improvements, road upgrades and things like the A9 and the A96 that you'll be very aware of as the MP for Murray? Do you see any conflict or contradiction between wanting to decarbonise but also meeting those commitments? It's a really interesting question because we spoke earlier on about the challenges that we face in the years ahead and that kind of question gets to the heart of it because the just transition is about not leaving communities behind. We've got different situations around Scotland, so as we make the economic transformation, we have to be very careful to work out what lens we're looking at the just transition through. There's no easy answer to that because the just transition on the one hand is ensuring that we achieve our net zero targets to reduce remissions in our carbon footprint and play a role in the global effort to save humankind, but locally as we do that we have to take into account what it means for each individual community and indeed households and we can't leave people behind, so we've got to balance all of that and it's not easy. So the just transition isn't or meeting climate change targets isn't as far as you're aware or concerned a reason for not going ahead with these projects? I suppose that in terms of Government delivering on these projects, the need for just transition, the need to hit climate change targets isn't the reason for not going ahead with these projects? That depends on how you deliver the just transition because I know that you're trying to go with the minister, but the just transition is different things to different people and what matters is the outcomes, so if you have more equality, if you have good jobs and prosperity, that's the outcomes that you want. I can't sit here just transition minister and say to community this is the answer for you of what a just transition means for you, that's why we co-design and in the case of whether it's roads in one part of Scotland, another part of Scotland, we have to listen to communities and what does a just transition mean to them and it may mean a new road but it may not mean a new road, it may mean something else, so we have to listen to communities and that's what the whole purpose of co-design is. Okay, I've just got one very quick question on skills. I've met with a number of organisations, the number of sectors recently, all talking about skills, all talking about delivering. You're talking here about, as we said about, I know you've said it was mentioned in a previous report but 300,000 jobs, there are shortages across various sectors, whether it's construction, whether it's aerospace and defence, whether it's parts of the financial services. How are we going to deliver these, how are we going to make sure we've got enough people to train up in these and that we're going to be able to deliver these jobs? That's one of the questions, if there was to be a question that keeps me awake at night, apart from the impact of climate change, we don't deal with it, is in terms of our plans in Scotland is the people and skills issue. Why is that a concern for me in keeping, if there was one subject to keep me awake at night, why would it be this? We are in a strange position just now in the labour market in Scotland where we have low unemployment but we have significant labour shortages, particularly in some sectors, and we have enormous massive economic opportunities. The energy transition alone has the ability to make Scotland one of the most successful economic countries in the world, but we need the people and the skills. A lot of people say, oh, where are we going to get the skills from? You're right, some of the question is where are we going to get people from. It's not a question of whether people have the skills, it's really just going to get the people from. We've got demographic trends in Scotland, we've got no power over immigration policy, we've had Brexit and this is tightening things up and it's making this quite challenging, I think. I speak to companies about this all the time and, as you said, every company mentions it to you. Some companies are confident that they will get the people. If they get the go-ahead for X project or Y project, they are confident that they will have the people to deliver that. Other companies are saying that they've got vacancies. I think that we've seen Scottish Power and other companies saying that we've got hundreds of vacancies in certain areas so that we can employ people tomorrow to help the net zero transition if we have the people. It's quite a varied picture out there. One key concern that I have is if you go back to it and I'm sorry to dwell on the CCS project, the Acorn project, it's just so frustrating that we've ended up with this. If we're not first mover, the skilled people leave. You're getting feedback from the CCS sector now in Scotland and the UK, that the UK Government is taking so long with it, that a lot of skilled people will go and work in America or other European countries that are going to go and race ahead of Scotland and CCS or UK and CCS. We can't afford to lose these people, we've got to be first movers and get going because we'll lose thousands of skilled people. We'll just say, well, I was going to work over there, there's no job for me here. It doesn't sound like there's going to be a shortage of jobs. The point that you make about Acorn is a point that's been made before by other colleagues, but it doesn't sound like there's going to be a shortage of jobs because we're actually going to have a shortage of people. I suppose that in your role as a former Further and Higher Education Minister as well, do you think that the education system as a whole through schooling, through Further and Higher Education, is geared up enough to help to ensure that young people go on those pathways to things like that, to the new emerging technologies and to the other sectors that we need? Are you confident that we're going to be able to deliver at least part of this through a system that is right and ready to provide the supply of jobs, supply of sorry people? Yeah, I'm confident we'll make progress on that. I think that there's a lot of work to do. It's now underway with the college and university sector. I was very encouraged by the Fraser of Allander Institute's report that was out in November, but the first event that they had to talk about the report I was actually at, which was the net zero dimension of the report called International Scotland. They actually have a bit in there saying that Scotland's ahead in terms of green education courses in the rest of the UK, so there are good signs there that our system is gearing up, but I think there's a long way to go. Employers are now telling me that when people come, young people are looking for work or applying for jobs or whatever, because they're actually looking for people. The young people are asking what you're doing to tackle climate change, so employers are waking up to this. So it's a sign that our young people want to go into those sectors and ensure that they're in the right kind of area and not playing a role and decarbonising Scotland and tackling climate change. So I think that all those things, hopefully, will come together and young people want those jobs, will have the jobs and will be able to train people for the jobs. Okay, thank you. Minister, we had indicated that it would be a level clock finish. Are you happy to stay and answer a couple of other questions? Yes. Thank you very much. Graham Simpson to be followed by Fiona Hyslop. Well, thanks for agreeing to stay on for a bit. I think that just following up on that line of questioning, the Just Transition Commission said that there should be a skills guarantee for workers in carbon intensive industries, and I think that you committed to that as well. Do you think that we're actually going to be in a position to offer that guarantee, and how would it look if there aren't the jobs or maybe there are the jobs? Yes, there are the jobs but not the people. Well, as I said before, we have a big challenge to make sure that we have the people to realise our ambitions and the economic opportunities in Scotland, but we are working on ensuring that people have the right skills and that the actual projects are delivered. So we're at this stage now in Scotland where I think we're not far off the tipping point that I mentioned earlier on, so the supply chain companies in Scotland are excited at the future but, of course, they're waiting for the actual projects to happen so that they can keep people in work and stay in Scotland. That's a big issue you find in North East Scotland. It's a lot of excitement but they're just waiting for the fresh projects to come on stream and that should hopefully happen. In terms of the skills guarantee, we know that there is a potential to employ even more people at energy, for instance in North East Scotland than what we have at the moment, making the switch report from RGU, which the Government funded, found that. We could actually create 9,000 more jobs in offshore energy in North East Scotland. The case of protecting what we have is that we can create more jobs. We've funded, through the Just Transition Fund, nearly £5 million to OPETO, which is the offshore skills organisation, to create a digital passport to make it easy for people to use their transferable skills to move from oil and gas jobs into renewable jobs and decarbonise the energy jobs. It's looking optimistic at the moment but, clearly, we know that we've got to the projects that are actually happening to deliver business for the supply chains and move forward. I want to, if it's okay convener, just ask Katrina Lang something. Katrina, you mentioned earlier about regulations, and I think it was in relation to buildings. In the last parliamentary session, we had the Tenement Maintenance Working Group, which I convened. You'll be aware that there are huge issues with a lot of Scotland's properties, getting an agreement from owners to get work done, and figuring out how that's paid for. Those were areas that that working group looked at and produced some recommendations. It's now in the hands of the Scottish Law Commission. This is going to take years to resolve. I'm interested in a bit more detail about what it is you're working on. It's colleagues of mine that are working on it. What we're seeing and has been mentioned before is that, at the moment, the programmes are demand led, but they're not moving fast enough. What we're looking at is regulations that would make certain conversions compulsory, based on different trigger points. This is early stage thinking, so I don't want to describe too much what we'll end up with. I think that the bit about who pays is really important, because when you're talking about converting a house completely from gas boiler to heat pump and insulation, you may be talking about £14,000. In the current climate, the vast majority of Scottish people are going to find that extremely challenging to do. We need to have a system where they're partially paid for by the public sector, but we also need to have support in terms of can you attach that to your mortgage, for instance, so that you're paying for it over a number of years and that it has a nudge effect on the overall market in terms of the buying and selling price at the house, but I may already be going too far in terms of speculating about where we'll get to. I think that the point is that we're signalling at this point that regulations will be a route to make sure that the overall programme is deliverable. I think that that's really interesting. I would caution using regulations, but if you do use regulations, they're going to have to be trailed in advance, because that's a very, very controversial area when you are essentially forcing people to spend money. Difficult to do, if not impossible. A mis-line has indicated that it's an area of discussion and recognising what the issue is. I just wanted to ask about the Just Transition Commission. If you could set out what your relationship is with it, how you work with it and if you can provide evidence that you have already actioned some of the advice that they've been giving in their first report, but in their current iteration. Clearly, the Just Transition Commission is unique and it's been encouraging to hear from other countries who have said to us that they're impressed by the fact that we have a Just Transition Commission in Scotland. We've had quite a lot of good feedback from within Scotland about the people that are on it. Clearly, it's to give independent advice to the Government, but we do have a relationship. I've only met them, the new commission, once formally, and it's been just the last few months, and they'll be having much more intense engagement going forward. We've been invited by the commission to ask them for advice. Is there anything that they can help us with? Obviously, they're looking at some of these big challenges, and they're very keen to know what our priorities are, so they can give us the right advice. It will intensify the engagement. We, of course, have accepted the recommendations from their two reports and will respond to the second report and accept all the recommendations of the first report that they've done. It's a good relationship, and they'll hold their feet to the fire. That's why they're there, but they'll play a very constructive role to give advice, because if you look at the reports and what we've talked about today, there are no easy solutions or quick solutions to some of the issues that we're speaking about, and we're doing this for the first time, so I think that they recognise that, and hopefully we all recognise that as well as we go forward, so I think that they'll play a very valuable role. It's helpful, it's advice. Do you anticipate them having a scrutiny role as well as advice? In terms of accepting the recommendations from the first report, as they've been accepted, what is their published information or how much progress has been made on delivering on those recommendations? We've had correspondence with the commission a couple of times. I think that they asked us some questions to follow up, and we've responded to that. The first report, in particular, was geared around many things that we're speaking about today, which are the key principles under PIN just transition and the issues that you have to address. That's a very important first stage that we do accept, the principle of co-design. We do accept the principle of keeping a very close eye on people not falling behind or having to pay a disproportionate cost of the transition. Those general principles to get things going and set the parameters of what the transition is all about is what the first report was about. I'm sure that the detail will come and the press is more in the detail as time goes on. Just one final question that she may feel has already been covered. The Scotland auction does have considerable pledges made to the Scottish supply chain, and we've heard from the engineering sector recently. Everybody is describing a situation in which order books are full and they're just having challenges in delivering on the orders. Have you already had discussions around skills and people? Is there anything additional that you want to say around that area about making sure that the pipeline of work is clear for people and that they have the capacity to deliver? There's a lot of work going on in Scotland in this area, which is really important because in terms of the big picture, as I said before, we have got really good companies that have perhaps grown out of oil and gas or other sectors in Scotland, and now they're looking to future and thinking, right, we're now going to gear up for the green energy revolution, for instance, and they're all kind of gearing up for that, but they actually need the projects to happen. Some of those orders are now beginning to come to fruition, and the offshore energy UK, for instance, the trade body, they're mapping out the supply chain at the moment, and they're doing a really good exercise, which I think will share with us shortly, and UB wishes to, as a committee, speak to them because it's a really crucial part, because so many of the jobs are in the supply chains, and if we want to get the just transition jobs and new jobs and new industries, we use supply chains, so that's all we're mapped out by them in terms of the private sector, and of course, from a Scottish Government perspective, what we're working on is the local content agreements, the commitments from the £1.4 billion worth of business that is expected to come from each Scotland bid, of which there are 20, so that's a lot of money for supply chains and for the Scottish economy. If we get a big chunk of that, we won't get it all I'm sure, but we'll get a big chunk, but there's £1.4 billion of each project that could come to Scotland if we've managed to get that right, and finally, there's a collaboration space that the Scottish Government's pushing to bring the supply chains in Scotland together with the offshore wind developers, so they're all collaborating, and forging that close relationship before we get to the stage later on, so that we do capture more of the business, so that collaborative area is very important. Do you have time to take an additional question from David Harckwood-Johnston? Sure. Okay, thank you. I thank the minister for that. It's a really quick question. There's been an issue, certainly, in Opney, about a lack of meter installers, which is holding back house building, also smart meters, and not enough people to actually install smart meters, and that's wider than just that. I was just wondering if that was something that would come across your desk, and what opportunity it might be to be involved in training more of those? I don't know if it's an issue that you're aware of. It is an issue, and I've come across that in my constituency, and I'm sure that it's an issue to the Highlands and Islands as well. So it is absolutely an issue, and we've started discussions, both internally and with the further and higher education sectors. I think that we've probably got a bit more work to do with the private companies, because we are finding that private companies, and the big players, they're sending technicians and engineers up from the central belt to the rural areas, and they're less likely to do that if there's only a couple of jobs to do, because it's travel, time, and it's obviously, ironically, a lot of the more fuel poverty is in the north of Scotland, and it should be prioritised, so we have to make sure that we're addressing that through our skill system and education system, and so there's a bit of work going on about that. That's great, that's helpful. Thank you. Okay, thank you Minister for the evidence this morning. I do appreciate that it's been quite wide-ranging, but thank you to yourself and to Catriona Lang for attending. I'll now move into private session for the rest of the meeting.