 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second meeting of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee. Before we begin, can I remind members that social distancing measures are in place in committee rooms and across the Holyrood campus? Can members and other staff please follow those social distancing measures? Natalie Dawn MSP has sent her apologies to this meeting, and on behalf of the committee, let me congratulate Natalie on the birth of her baby boy. Collette Stephenson MSP is attending this public part of the committee meeting as an individual MSP. Welcome, Collette. Today's main business is an evidence session from the UK climate change committee, but first, as item 1, we have consideration of whether to take agenda item 3 in private. Item 3 is consideration of the evidence session we have this morning. Are we all agreed? That is agreed. Item 3 will be taken in private. At agenda item 2, the committee will take evidence from the UK climate change committee. I welcome the right honourable Lord Diebin, chairman, Chris Stark, chief executive, and Professor Keith Bell, Scottish representative. This committee has a very important task ahead of us in this session, scrutinising matters within the wide-ranging remit of the cabinet secretary for net zero, energy and transport. To help us to determine priorities for our first work programme, we are therefore spending the opening weeks of the committee hearing from many key stakeholders in this area. The Government-led response to the climate emergency is going to be an issue of crucial importance in this parliamentary session, and it is entirely appropriate that the climate change committee is therefore our first witness today. We are delighted to have you here today. Thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule. Before we begin, some very brief technical information. For our witnesses who are attending remotely, broadcasting will operate your camera and microphone, and please allow a short pause before being called on to speak to allow broadcasting to activate your microphone. Lord Diebin, I understand that you wish to make an opening statement, so we will hand over to you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. I just thought it would be perhaps helpful to the committee, as it is a new committee, just quickly to go over the history. We are appointed as a committee of parliaments, the UK Parliament as a whole, by the Climate Change Act, which was passed with support from all parts of the House, so it is an unusual circumstance. I think that there were eight people who voted against it, so we have a commonality, and we have protected the independence of the committee. As chairman, I am appointed not by the Prime Minister, but by the Minister in the United Kingdom Government responsible for climate change, the First Minister of Scotland, the First Minister of Wales and the First Minister of the North Island, so one has a situation in which there is no party political input. Indeed, if you looked at those together, the only things they weren't were conservatives. That was what I was. I consider myself an independent in these circumstances. So we have very clear rules from Parliament, which is that we are to produce the budgets that will drive our fight to reduce our emissions. Of course, to start with, it was 60 per cent that we were going to reduce, then it became 80 per cent, and now we are committed to net zero. We do the work in a way that is first and foremost based on the science. Nothing is more important to us than the fact that we have an international reputation for getting the very best answers on the science that we have, not pressing particular theories or projects. We are not an NGO. What we do try to do is to give the best advice possible. Of course, when the advice is given, Parliament, whether it is the United Kingdom Parliament, the Scottish or Welsh Parliament, they then decide on the budgets that they will support. Once those budgets are passed, they therefore become legally binding. We have a particular relationship with Scotland about which we are proud and which we hope will continue to grow. We advise the Scottish Government separately that the Scottish Government acts under its own legislation. I am pleased to say that it looks as if we should be able to make the relationship even closer when we are able to open an office in Scotland, which will emphasise the very clear difference between what we do here and what we do in the rest of the United Kingdom. The last thing to say is that I am particularly pleased with many of the steps that Scotland has taken, because it has given me the opportunity of saying to other parts of the United Kingdom why do not you do it as well as the Scots? Professor Bell is our representative as far as Scotland is concerned. His job is, and I must say that he carries it out very well, to remind us at all points when we are dealing with things, whether they are United Kingdoms a whole or whether we are talking to countries outside the United Kingdom, that we must remember the particularities of Scotland. I am very pleased that he has been able to join us. Of course, our chief executive is a Scot and previously was working for the Scottish Government, so I hope that your committee will recognise that the Scottish voice is certainly not still in the Committee on Climate Change. I end with just reminding us of how serious matters are. The recent report from the IPCC has only underlined what we knew before, but given even more sharpness to the situation, we really are faced with a fundamental threat to our planet and to humankind. I think that one should never be prepared to understate how serious the matter is. However, at the same time, we have the confidence of knowing that if we act immediately, we can in fact win this battle. We have no time to lose because we have given the timetable to climate change. Until we recapture our control, we will have to work at its demand. I am afraid that its demands are very considerable. When I listen to people saying, well, perhaps we can put that off, I have to say that that is not in our gift. I much appreciate the Scottish Government's decision to set up this new committee and indeed the changes that it has made in its own structure, and we would hope to work very closely with you in the coming years. Thank you very much for those opening remarks, Lord Daven. As you will be very aware, COP26 will commence in eight weeks' time, and my first question is in relation to COP26. What role does the Climate Change Committee have in preparing for COP26 and advising the UK Government and the Scottish Government in preparation for COP26? What will be the key criteria and outcomes to look for in order to benchmark success at the conference? The central issue has been that we had to prepare what was the mechanism by which we could reach net zero, which was our response as a nation to the results of the Paris agreement. The first time in the history of mankind that every nation on earth signed up to it, does not mean that they will all do it and the rest of it, but it was absolutely unique in the fact that they signed up. The British Government asked us to say, could we reach net zero? If we could, what would it cost and what year could we reach it at? We answered those questions, and the Government then agreed to that programme. Our first contribution was to set the format for Britain in COP26. We then produced the sixth carbon budget, which in effect provides a programme to reach net zero, because by the time we get to the end of that budget period, we will have set ourselves absolutely directly in line for net zero in 2050. It is after that that the Government accepted in effect the full budget and the very demanding challenge to dates for emission reduction in 2030 and in 2035. It has set a real example for the rest of the world. I am a believer of congratulating people when they get it right, and this is as good as it could be. The problem is that the programme for making this happen is at very best piecemeal and actually very often non-existent. What our role is at the moment is to press the Government to deliver that programme, to show how it is going to do those things, because unless it does that, when we come to COP26, people will not actually believe that the targets that we have set are real. They only become real if you have shown that you have got in place the mechanisms to achieve that. That has been very much the way in which we have talked in other circumstances to the Scottish Government, to the Welsh Government and now to—because we have had an interruption, of course—now to the Government of the North of Ireland. That is how we have tried to do that. We are keeping that pressure up. I am talking to senior ministers from each department, pressing upon them the detailed things that they have to show that they are going to do in order to make COP26 a success. Success is difficult in advance to define, but I think that there would have to be three elements in it. First of all, the great nations that rely on fossil fuels will have to reconnect and be prepared to increase their commitments. There is a good start to that. Coming of Joe Biden has been very important. It is also true that South Korea and Japan—most of the industrialised world—has already shown that it is prepared to move further and faster. I am afraid that Australia is not in that camp, and one of the big pressures will have to be on Australia and one or two other countries that feel that the rest of the world can do it, but they do not have to join in. That is not something that we are going to be able to deal with. I am using Australia as an example. Brazil is another country. We really have to make some big changes if the rest of the world is going to be able to make its own commitments, because that is a global decision. The second thing that we will be looking very close to is the commitment of the rich countries to make it possible for the poor countries to reach net zero. What has to happen with them is very much what has happened with mobile telephony. They have not gone through the system of landlines. They have jumped from landlines to mobile telephony—from low-terrifolds to mobile telephony—without having landlines to a large extent. They are going to have to jump from developing status to the better world that they rightly demand without the intervening stage of dirty production. We, who have benefited from that dirty production, will have to pay for it. That is why I have to say that I am deeply sorry that the British Government has reduced its aid from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent, contrary to the commitment of the Conservative party in the election, and something that undermines the belief of the developing countries that they will get this money. We will have to work very hard to show that, as far as climate change is concerned, we will keep our word. The third area that we should be looking for as far as success is concerned is that we will need to show from other countries also the mechanisms by which they are intending to achieve the ends to which they are committed. That will be a very important thing. There will be some others. For example, at the moment, China is committed to the reduction of emissions to zero, but not until 2060. It is important that we all come to 2050, because only in that way will we be able to have a chance of keeping the increase in temperature down to the 1.5, which must be our aim. Thank you very much for that comprehensive response. I am sure that members of the committee will want to follow up. The follow-up question that I have is in relation to targets that you mentioned. As you will be aware, the Scottish Government has set a target of net zero by 2045, with crucial interim targets of 75 per cent reduction by 2030 and 90 per cent by 2040. Some of the annual targets in recent years have been missed for various reasons. I would like to ask the committee what you think the key challenges are in reaching those targets in Scotland, what sectors need the most attention and what areas of policy will be critical in achieving those targets going forward. Well, I would like to ask Chris to say something about that. But beforehand, can I just say this? Scotland made a decision that was different from the United Kingdom in having annual targets. I just want to say that it seems to me that there are huge advantages of annual targets because it keeps the feet to the thighs. I am not criticising them. One does have to realise that annual targets are always difficult because if you have a very cold year, you look much worse. If you have a very hot year, you look much better. It is very important to recognise—sometimes the NGOs do not recognise—the need to do a bit of levelling off. We have always been prepared to be absolutely direct with the Government and to support them, where the changes or the failure to succeed have not been because of policy failures, but much more because of those interim facts of differences between years. But Chris might like to continue this. Thank you, Lord Daemon. Good morning to the new committee. It is great to be able to speak to you today from my home in Glasgow. I word on targets before I go on to the plan, perhaps, that we would need to meet those targets. We advised back in 2019 that Scotland should set a net zero target for 2045 and that the UK as a whole should set a target for 2050. I really wanted to make this point clear this morning that they are the same target. In effect, the achievement of 2050 net zero for the UK rests on Scotland getting there five years earlier at least. The reason for that is not because we think that Scotland is in a different political position and willing to make these ambitious statements, because, really importantly, Scotland has a greater capacity to do some of the things that we will need to see happen across the UK to get to net zero. In particular, we will be in a better position to store carbon in the natural world. It also has some industrial advantages that allow us to look to a world that is getting to net zero earlier. That 2045 date is very important. It is in the right place to be compatible with the Paris agreement. Something we will be talking a lot about this year at COP26. It is some 25 years ahead of when the rest of the world will need to hit net zero if we are to be on track for the Paris pathways for all greenhouse gases. It gives you a sense of how ambitious Scotland is and how ambitious the Scottish Parliament is in signing up to that kind of target. Beneath that, of course, there are a set of decade old targets. The one that matters more than any other is the 2030 target that the Scottish Parliament has named, which is to reduce emissions by 75 per cent from its 1990 levels. That was set higher than the advice that we gave to the Scottish Government. That is clearly an ambition that the Parliament has to achieve that kind of emissions reduction. It is going to be very, very challenging to meet. Give you a sense of that. It took 30 years to have Scottish emissions from 1990. We will need to do that again in less than a decade if we are to meet that target, so that gives you a sense of how much the pace needs to change now in cutting emissions. One key part of the armoury emissions has been completed. Prior to 2019, Scotland's targets were met particularly by closing coal-fired power stations. That is a journey that we have completed in Scotland ahead of the rest of the UK. We expect the UK's final coal-fired power stations to close in 2024. That means that, looking forward, we need to see action in other areas of the economy. Crucially, we will need to see Scotland lead on some of that if it is to meet its 75 per cent target by 2030, because that 2030 target is ahead of the path that the rest of the UK will be following. I make no bones about that, because I think that that is an important point. Scotland is going to need to work really hard and, in some areas, it will need to be ahead of the journey that the rest of the UK nations are making. That puts into sharp perspective the plan that the Scottish Government has for cutting emissions. We have given some advice to the Scottish Government about what needs to be in the plan and where the priorities lie. We have seen an update to Scotland's climate change plan this year, which has lots of good things in it. My main criticism of that plan is that we could not get beneath some of the commitments that are outlined in the text to understand the numbers. It is a crucial opening part of this to say that we need to, in the coming months, in a much better sense, see the emissions reductions taking place across the economy and, crucially, what the numbers are and the policies that will drive that in every area of the economy. We have said to the Scottish Government that they should prioritise reducing emissions from buildings—the heat and building strategy that is promised—must include a set of regulatory targets and frameworks and trigger points that allow us to understand better how Scotland will decarbonise buildings across the country. A crucial part of the transition, which is notably absent at the moment, is a route map for agriculture for farming, which is so far being quite resistant to cutting emissions. We know that there are lots of things in preparation in the Scottish Government that might allow us to peer at a different kind of plan for agriculture, but we have not yet seen that change of agriculture minister, too. That might indicate that we can see more progress in the future on farming emissions. The other point that I will raise as a priority at least is the strategy for cutting transport emissions. Transport is the biggest single sector for emissions in the Scottish economy at the moment. There are really big commitments in the climate change plan update earlier this year from the Scottish Government to cut emissions from surface transport. That will rest on a host of policies that we have not yet seen and which, of course, may change under the new relationship between the S&P and the Greens. It is really interesting to see how that comes about. That needs to be a much stronger focus, because the challenge of cutting transport emissions faster than the rest of the UK involves doing things around walking, cycling and public transport that other parts of the UK might not be pursuing. The important part of the transition is that it cannot just rest on moving to electric vehicles. The final point that I will make on that, because I do not want to go through every sector, is that a big part of the Scottish plan is by 2030 to have lots of what we call negative emissions technology. That is ways in which we can actually take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester that away. That is a sensible thing to do, because the Scottish economy has an advantage here because we have infrastructure that would allow us to take that carbon dioxide offshore to be stored in where we previously had oil and gas reservoirs. We need, if we are going to make that 2030 target, to happen in large part in Scotland. The UK-wide plan for greenhouse gas removals will need to concentrate on investment in Scotland as a whole. That is a big part of what I will be looking out for over the next few months. There are lots of other things that we can talk about, but those are probably the priorities for the next 10 years at least to get emissions down in Scotland. Thank you very much, Chris. That was enormously helpful. Let me bring in Fiona Hyslop. Thank you for joining us this morning. I would like to talk about pace and trajectory in terms of meeting those very challenging targets. You have emphasised that the Scottish Parliament has probably not taken your advice but gone harder on the 2030 targets. The model scenarios that you talk about in terms of headwinds, balanced, widespread innovation, widespread engagement and tailwinds. I am interested in the role of new technologies in that space and investment. I am interested if you can explain that a bit more. What pathway are we on and in terms of the investment that we have required to deliver on that? Obviously, there have to be priorities and choices made, but what do your model scenarios mean for Scotland, particularly for the UK? My model scenario is that we have done all our work in the context of realism as far as new technology is concerned. One of the things that we have been very careful about, Deputy Convener, is that it is too often that the place of politicians to go for silver bullets and we are very keen on that. That is why, when we talk about hydrogen for example, we really do try to talk about it in the context. It is a very important contribution but we have not overcome a number of the problems and we must not think about it as something that is just going to solve our problems. I want to put the context. We have been very careful not to rely on things that we did not have pretty good evidence about. Obviously, there is a good deal of technological improvement, which we know is on its way. We know that we can do carbon capture and storage. We know that there are things that we can do and that, as we knew, we could get the kind of wind power that we have been able to get. We have only dealt with those things that have that degree of certainty. The next thing to say is that the story of wind is absolutely key to this because you do not get the investment that you need unless you set the context in which that investment is possible. We see the Government, both of the United Kingdom and the national governments, their role in creating the atmosphere in which private enterprise will do that investment. Private enterprise is going to have to carry the majority of the cost. As you know, we have said that the cost will be about 1 per cent of the gross national product. We have certainly—that is a conservative estimate. Many would say that it will be less than that but we have been very careful not to overstate the improvements in other ways that that will bring about. Most of that will come from private sector. The big issue is how does the Government create the circumstances in which the private investment comes to Britain and makes this an advantage for Britain in being out there ahead? Scotland is doing some very remarkable things and it needs to get the benefits from that. We are very clear about that. We want it to be not only that the Government sets the parameters in which people can invest but that that investment brings jobs and technological advance to Scotland and to the rest of the United Kingdom. However, the trajectory of the way that we are on, as Keith Brown will say to you, is what we call the middle road. In other words, it is a road that is based on the principle that not everything will go right. We might be able to do things better if everything goes right but we are afraid that I have been around long enough not to believe that you should rely on that kind of trajectory. Keith Brown explains how we have made that trajectory decision. Thank you, Lord Eamon. Good morning, everybody. I am very pleased to meet you all. Of course, what trajectory do you think you can go on in meeting your emissions targets across all those different sectors? Chris talked a few months ago about what are the priorities. They are all the priorities that you have to work in every sector. The pace in which you can go in a particular sector depends on the costs of that relative to the costs of others, even though all of them have to get their revenge. Our modelling and assessments will depend on what assumptions we can make about the availability of different technologies, their state of development and how the costs will reduce. As we have already noted, the kind of commercial environment that is established by the Government can help investment and help to drive down costs. We have seen that very dramatically in terms of offshore wind, for example. We have opportunities in respect of offshore wind in driving down the cost of floating offshore wind, which gives us access to other resources in deeper waters. There are also ways in which costs can be reduced. For example, new refrigerants in heat pumps, which mean that retrofitting of air source heat pumps into existing heat distribution systems in buildings can be done more cost-effectively. Cost reductions in electrolyzers for making hydrogen from electricity. There are all sorts of opportunities. The one thing that we are not saying is that there will be new technologies that we have not heard of yet that will turn up to save the day. We do not have to take action in all sorts of other sectors. Those different scenarios are looking at how things can accelerate and how things might be going a little bit more slowly. The other thing that is the key dimension of our scenarios is the extent of public engagement. The way people and institutions, companies, public bodies and so on, change their way of doing things. They are more willing to take up particular options, and technology can enable those options and make them easier to take up and give people confidence. However, there are also active choices that people need to make. I might ask about how we pay for this on the basis that we have to do all of it, but it might be at a different pace for different sectors. Chris Stark talked about what we need to look at in terms of budget investment from the Scottish Government, and I appreciate your advice as to what we should be looking for in terms of getting underneath that investment and similarly for the UK Government. Your chair talked about the private investment that is required that most of it would need to come from the private sector. In terms of the Scottish context, what does that mean, particularly if most of the technology investments to meet those UK targets have to come from Scotland? Before you do, Chris, I want to make the point about how we pay for it. At the centre of this is the need to have a just transition. When we are thinking about how we pay for it, it is not just the totality, but it is also how the costs fall upon different sectors and different groups of the population. I want to make it clear that, as far as the Climate Change Committee is concerned, when we talk about the issue, we only talk about it in the context that the Government has to make sure that we are able to make this transference in a way that does not fall upon the poorest, which means that the community as a whole has to make this a fair transition. The details, Chris. Perhaps a word on the overall economic challenge, if I might, on this. It is a worthwhile piece of context. First, we see achieving net zero as being entirely achievable and, crucially, it can be done in such a way that it is not a major cost to the economy. If we prioritise the investment over the next decade, especially when we are expecting there to be some fair capacity in the Scottish economy coming out of Covid, it is likely to be a significant boon to the Scottish economy as we go forward over the next decade. It is mainly an investment challenge, and it is really important to say that. What we need to do to get to net zero is not just about investing, but it is mainly about investing in new capital assets across the economy that progressively move us from a situation today where we are using assets that burn fossil fuels—think of the cars that we drive, the gas boilers that we have, think of the plant machinery that is used in industry and in farming—so a situation where we are progressively replacing them, preferably at the end of their useful economic life so that we are not creating a major cost, but replacing them with something that is zero carbon as quickly as we can to get to the point by mid-2030s when we are increasingly comfortable as an economy and a society with using those assets, those technologies, as a matter of course. It is really important to think that way about it, because the really important fact is that if you buy a fossil-fuelled asset today, then the useful economic life of that asset is between 15 and 20 years. If you buy a boiler today, you will be using it to heat your home for probably around 15 years. There are some assets that are longer. That is really important when we think about Scotland's 2045 net zero target, because you have to knock that 15 to 20 years off that target to understand the date by which we have to stop selling, installing and buying those fossil-fuelled assets. That points to 2030 as a really critical date, the date by which we have to be ready to start that big, big economy-wide investment and make that transition happen as quickly as we can. If we look at that transition over the next 25 years for Scotland, what we see is, again, it is a big investment challenge. We are adding probably about an eighth to the total investment that Scotland would be doing in any normal year, pre-pandemic. That is probably adding about £5 billion of extra capital spending each year in Scotland. That is a big number, but the crucial piece of economics that goes with that is that that gets us to net zero, which is great news, but it also brings very significant energy efficiency improvements. Think about something like an electric car that is much, much cheaper to run than a fossil-fuelled car. It is a much more efficient technology. You find that across the piece because most of the technologies happen to be mostly electrified technologies. That kind of efficiency, the fact that we are not spending money on fossil fuels, is a saving to the person who is using that technology, that asset. When you knock off the saving from the major investment cost, you get to a very low net figure, so that is the net resource cost, as we call it, which is less than 1 per cent of Scotland's GDP in every year between now and 2045. That is a brilliant position to be in. We were not talking that way about it just a few years ago, but it rests ultimately on making sure that we put the policies in place to guide investment as quickly as possible towards those things that we know will reduce emissions quickly. That means that, especially in the next decade, the term that we are in for this Parliament, the term that this Scottish Government is planning for right now, is absolutely critical in putting in place the policies that will deliver that investment outcome that I have just talked about. If we do that in the right way, back to my opening point, a package for net zero looks a lot like a Covid-19 recovery package. If the Scottish Government especially is spending on infrastructure, skills and training, new job creation, then there is a clear win-win between the recovery needs of the Scottish economy and net zero overall. We will see that the especially infrastructure investment flow to those areas that we need it to, especially in transport, the continuing need to grow our power system in industry as well, a big challenge for Scotland. As I mentioned earlier, in homes, which is the biggest challenge of all from my perspective for decarbonising homes across Scotland over that period, we will get that win-win that I have just talked about. The private investment, if MG wants to comment on how we maximise private investment? I can pick that up. Just to say that, just as John says, that there is a real need to guide private investment, it cannot be done solely with public investment, not least because the resources will not be there in Scotland to to to to amass the kind of public investment that we would need, but we can pave the way for that with a couple of things. There is a need for private investment, particularly in the infrastructure that we will need across Scotland in transport. We will need to see some public investment in supporting the decarbonisation of homes, but we need to accompany that with a set of incentives and regulations that help guide that. The most obvious of those is the transport transition, so the date by which we stop selling fossil-fuelled cars and vans, which I hope will be 2030 across the UK. That is a regulatory policy that guides private investment very clearly. We need to see similar policies, especially for decarbonising homes, so people in homes, whether they rent them or own them, need to understand the date by which we will begin the replacement of those gas boilers that presently make up about 80 per cent of the heating that we have across Scotland. We need that combination of regulatory policies with policies through the tax system and some subsidy support to help those who are least able to pay. John was entirely right in his last comment that the majority will be guided by private investment, which is corporate investments to make homes and offices more energy-efficient, and new electric vehicles alongside the public investment that will grease the path. I believe that Liam Kerr has a supplemental in this area. Yes, thank you, convener. Two or three questions on the back of what I thought was a very interesting line of questioning from my colleague Fiona. Your report puts a figure on the investment of £50 billion. Low-carbon investment must scale up to £50 billion each year, and you then go on to say that, in time, the savings council at the investment costs entirely. Later in the report, you say that it is an ideal time for the UK to invest, but then, of course, as we have heard, you say that private investment is the key. The question that arises from his line of questioning is, how much of that £50 billion is going to come from Scotland and the taxpayer, and how much of that £50 billion is private investment, and is that private investment part of the £50 billion, or is the £50 billion just the public investment and the private investments on top of that? No, the £50 billion is the total investment, so it is really important to say that. That is a combination of private and public, and of that £50 billion, we expect that around £5 billion in Scotland would be the figure that is necessary. The politics then comes in, so what proportion of that is shouldered by the state directly? What proportion of that is handed more directly to consumers and citizens? That is something that is difficult to make a firm view on, although we have some sense in some sectors about the way in which that balance would need to work if we were going to be successful. That £50 billion is the total additional capex across the UK economy, of which we would expect about £5 billion of investment to take place in Scotland, and again, a mixture of private and public investment across each sector of the economy. Thanks for that, Mr Stark. If I can press you on that, because I think it is a good point, because your modelling shows that there are savings to be had in surface transport and energy, but that there will be costs to homes and industry. In one of the earlier answers, it was suggested that we should prioritise buildings. I think that that might be in yourself, Mr Stark. Do you take a view on how those costs could or should be addressed and that they would mitigate it? Who is going to pay for the buildings that you rightly flagged? Let me respond firstly by just confirming the premise of that question. When you look across the economy, there are some sectors where we now see a cost saving, and the most notable of those is transport. Again, just work that through. That is because the energy efficiency of the vehicles that we will be replacing in the future of these electric vehicles especially is so much better that you get an actual saving in using the car. Eventually, the unit cost of the car also comes down. That is true of cars and vans. We see that saving playing out over time, and we also see a saving over time playing out in the energy system. It is really important that we expect that green energy, especially renewable energy, will be cheaper than fossil fuel energy now, so that means that you get this kind of double benefit for any sector that can use that cheaper power in the future. There is still a lot of investment to do there, and there are still some costs to come through, but that is a really exciting part of this transition. Those two parts of the assessment make it easier, I suppose, to get to net zero, but we cannot duck the fact that there are some sectors where there are real costs. You mentioned two of them. They are the most important. They are buildings and especially homes and industry, where we expect that you would need to do a lot of investment that would not happen in normal times to decarbonise. Those are real costs, and that means that we have to have a discussion about how those costs will be allocated and crucially what role the state will have in protecting those consumers in those sectors. That is people living in their homes and industries operating in the economy from the costs of that transition. I have not got a figure that I can quote to you about how much of state support would be needed, but I can say that that is the critical issue. There will be some costs that can be levied on decarbonising homes, especially and in decarbonising industries, but we will need not be successful in this transition unless there is some state support to protect industries and consumers and people living in their homes from some of those costs of decarbonisation. The final point that I might make on that, is that the really important part of this is the point that I opened with, that there is a saving somewhere else in the economy. The exciting piece of policy making that can be done is to capture some of the saving and move it across to those areas where you have a cost. That points especially to the need for strong fiscal policy. Some of those fiscal policies will, of course, sit with the chancellor in Westminster. Some of them are within the gift of the Scottish Government to change as well. Think of the property taxes that could be levied in the way in which you could use the property taxation system there, or council taxes. The challenge overall of shifting the burdens of moving the savings that you see in some sectors to help to meet the cost in other sectors is the critical component in achieving a fair transition overall. I am very grateful. I strongly agree with you, which is why I am just going to press one final question, if I may. You rightly, Mr Stark, talked about the fair transition and, indeed, Lord Diebun brought it up earlier. I just want to press that. Lord Diebun said that the transition must be fair, but what does that mean specifically in the context of the oil and gas workforce, for example? How does the Scottish Government—how would you expect to see the Scottish Government—insuring that there is a fair workforce transition for in particular the oil and gas workforce? What would you expect to see them doing right now to ensure that that is delivered? First of all, we have to learn the lessons of the past, which is that we have allowed in the United Kingdom the changes to take place without taking seriously the effects on localities and communities. For that reason, I strongly believe that there has to be approach in the way that you, Mr Kerr, actually think of it. You have to look at the industry and say, now, what things can we do to ensure that there are alternative jobs? How are we going to use our ability to have carbon capture and storage, for example? How are we going to make that part of the transition? It is not just a question of a fairness between people of different economic abilities to pay, but it is also a fairness in terms of regional development and regional concentrations of many of the jobs that we will lose. Absolutely, part of the role of Government will be to seek to find ways with the private sector to make that transition as fair as is possible. It is also something that I was going to just suggest that we have to remember. Can we please stop making it worse? If I have a disappointment about the Scottish Government, it is that the Scottish Government has not said to the United Kingdom Government that we are fed up with the situation that we are building houses that we are going to have to retrofit, and we are going to insist on all houses being built to a standard that does not need retrofitting. We are still waiting for the United Kingdom to put into operation a nationwide scheme about new houses. We have built a million houses that we are going to have to retrofit, and all those people who have bought those houses have been given the unfair burden, which could have been put right, had the house being built properly in the first place, and the costs then would have been considerably less. It is not just a question of fairness in what we do for retrofitting in this area, but it is absolutely getting on with the job of making sure that everything that is newly built does not give people a cost that they should not be having. Mark Ruskell, to be followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you, convener, and good morning to you. Nice to see you again. I just wanted to pick up on the back of Liam Kerr's question about just transition. In the SNP policy agreement that is being presented to Parliament today, there is a line in there about understanding better what our fossil fuel requirements will be as we are making the transition and how that relates to the field development and the ore fields and gas fields that are already being exploited and may come under licence. I am just wondering from your perspective how you would see a programme of work like that to better understand the speed of that transition, how that could be done and what the role of the UK CCC would be in coming to a conclusion of how much fossil fuel resource do we need to meet our domestic needs and how that is going to change over time. We have done the initial work on that, and we would be very happy to work with the Scottish Government on that particular project, which is really important. It is important to try to keep rationality into that, because all of us would love to move from today to tomorrow and have no fossil fuels in between. Of course, we would like to do that. Those who are particularly exercised about the damage and serious nature of climate change tend to talk as if that were possible. I am very much in favour of making the fuss because it helps to get the rest of us in the right place, but we cannot do it just like that. We have to be clear that there will be a need for fossil fuels. We have also to be clear that we must not allow that to mean that we retain fossil fuels for a moment longer than we have to. Of course, that is another technique that some people will use to try to undermine the whole process, or, indeed, very often for their own financial interests. Laying that down clearly is going to be very important, and it is also pretty difficult. When you have to ask yourself about two other issues, which are, first of all, is there any case for extension or new sources? The international view is that there is not. The national view may be that you could argue that by controlling the way in which those things are produced, you will have a better chance of ensuring that the emissions are reduced. The problem with that is that it is not always possible—indeed, I cannot think of occasion when it has been possible—to mean that if we do more, someone else will do less. It does not work like that. Those sort of decisions really have to be thought out very seriously. I must say that I much appreciate the Scottish Government's determination to apply logic and reason to all this, which is really very important. We would be very happy to join in the logic and the reason, even though what might come out might be politically quite difficult. Thank you very much. I am a big fan of logic and reason. Can I turn on to hydrogen, then? Lord Devon, you were perhaps hinting a bit at hydrogen and the different pathways for the development of hydrogen. As a committee, you previously said that blue hydrogen is a necessity, not an option. However, there are concerns out there that if we invest too heavily in solutions, such as putting blue hydrogen into the domestic heating grid, we could be extending the life of fossil fuel reserves. We could be extending our dependency on fossil fuel reserves. It is a difficult balance to get. I am wondering what your thoughts are on blue hydrogen at the moment. Do you think that we are at a point where we are building in dependency and locking in emissions, or is that an effective stepping stone towards green hydrogen and a completely decarbonised use of that technology in relation to domestic buildings? You are where you are, aren't you? First, you have to accept that we are where we are, not where we would like to be. Where we are, we have said that blue hydrogen is a necessary part of the transition that we have to have. However, like all transitions, we have to have constantly to realise that it is a transition and that we are not doing that in order to get stuck at a point in that transition. You are absolutely right to say to us that this is not very easy. I am not suggesting that there is an easy answer here. We need to keep absolutely in front of us all the time the need to move away entirely from fossil fuels. However, that does not mean to say that we do not have to recognise that it is not going to happen overnight. Therefore, the role of blue hydrogen in helping to make that transition is very certain. I always talk about it with that caveat that it is not an answer. It is a transition necessity. If one keeps that in mind all the time, then the way the investment is done, the mechanisms that we use will not be those that fix blue hydrogen in the system. It is the investment mechanisms that we have to be very careful about, which is one of the reasons why when we had to give some answers on tracking, for example, or we made very clear that one of the things that we have to think about is that we do not make investments that make it very difficult to stop doing what you are doing. I think that that is exactly the same and we come to deal with blue hydrogen. Do you think that that balance is right there? We saw a couple of weeks ago the UK hydrogen strategy, which I think mirrors the Scottish Government strategy in many ways. Looking at putting 20% into the gas grid, 20% hydrogen into the gas grid and 80% natural gas, are the right policies in place at the moment? Is that going to build in the dependence? Does that meet your tests? No, the right policies are not in place at the moment, but what is in place at the moment seems to us to be a reasonably good beginning. It does not answer a whole number of the questions, and I am sure that Keith will point those out. Again, we have to recognise that we are on a journey, and in journeys you are at different points at different times. This is the first point. Thank goodness that we now have a hydrogen strategy. In general, that hydrogen strategy, both the Scots and the United Kingdom as a whole, is not a bad start. We would have some comments about it, but it is not a bad start. We have now got to make sure that as it moves on, it meets the problems that you yourself have outlined. If Keith were allowed to point out one or two of the issues, which I think will illustrate that, I think that you will be helpful. Yes, thank you very much. A 20 per cent blend of hydrogen is by volume, but in terms of energy, that represents only 80 per cent. It is not really much of an answer. It might be something that is part of getting the demand for low-carbon hydrogen going. The question is, quite rightly, raised issues on the production side of blue versus green hydrogen. Where is the hydrogen coming from? The fact that blue hydrogen is not entirely zero carbon cannot capture all of the emissions associated with it. Until you decarbonise the electricity system, then making hydrogen from electrolysis is not perfectly zero carbon either. There are those questions to be raised, but how do you create a demand for low-carbon hydrogen? Where does it come from? A demand can be created very quickly in the millions that you just talked about, about blending into the existing gas system. Trials are showing that that should be perfectly possible and that it should be safe. However, it is only a small amount of energy. Growing the demand for low-carbon hydrogen subsequently in terms of industry is another part of the picture. One of the commercial mechanisms that do that is that low-carbon hydrogen will be in the short term more expensive than high-carbon hydrogen, depending on what you do in terms of carbon pricing. What the future is and what the existing gas network is going to look like, for example, or whether it is entirely repurposed, depends only on what that demand is going to be and what the alternative sources of energy are in the different sectors. For example, in buildings as well as in industry. I have scenarios where the balanced pathway, for example, and reduced for the six-carbon budget shows ramping up of use of electrolysis for production of hydrogen through the 2040s in particular, late 2030 through to the 2040s. As the electricity system becomes entirely decarbonised, we made the recommendation that there should be no use of fossil fuels in any other baited way, production of electricity from 2035. That gives you the platform for electrolysis being entirely zero-carbon. As Lord Diebun has said, you do not want to lock into the capital stock that causes you to be doing high-carbon things or even modestly high-carbon things subsequently, so there is a limit to how much you want to build in that infrastructure for production of blue hydrogen. Although some of that infrastructure in terms of the carbon capture and the transport and storage of the CO2 will be shared with other parts of industry, so, for example, there is an opportunity for bioenergy carbon capture and storage, which is one of the negative emissions technologies that Chris talked about earlier. Lord Diebun, you referred to the recent IPCC report in your very wise opening remarks and emphasised the need for immediate action. You also said that your committee tried to give the best advice possible, which is reassuring. What is the best possible advice that the Climate Change Committee can give to Governments and key decision makers on new oil and gas developments, including the proposed Cambo oilfield of Shetland? Given that there is no time to lose, how should new oil and gas developments be considered in light of the IPCC report? First of all, I talked about rationality and how difficult it is to bring this into account. If you have this daily reminder of how serious the matter is, your pressure in yourself is always to do everything at once and do it like that. One has all the time to apply that to the realities of life. I think that, where I have to say, that the justification for any new oil and gas exploration or production has to be very strong. I cannot say that I have so far seen any such friends. I think that we really have to face up to the issue that there may be some occasions—I have never been an absolutist on this—where we think that development could be of a kind that would help our move towards net zero to such a degree that it is worth doing. However, we always have to remember that, the moment you do any of that, you are setting an example that will be quoted throughout the world as showing that this kind of development is acceptable. I think that we have to take into account the fact that there are Governments, such as Australia, that do not appear to need any example to take those kind of steps. I judge it as being a very rare occasion, and we would have to be very, very sure before we allowed an extension. There are all sorts of edges around that that you may have to think about, such as your contractual obligations and other things, but it still comes back to the matter that we are fighting a battle for our existence. If you do that, you cannot make short-term decisions without thinking of the long-term implications. As well as Governments, individual citizens are having to make decisions on a daily basis. I was struck by Professor Bell earlier on talking about public engagement and the active choices that people need to make if we are going to change the way that we do things. Having a good example from Government is clearly very important. At this committee, we are obviously looking closely at the citizens assembly and the recommendations contained in that report. Is the Climate Change Committee also considering those recommendations and will it make a formal response? We have been very involved in those and we are very strongly in favour of the effect that the citizens assembly had. We thought that it was an experiment of enormous strengths and power. It shows very much that, whatever their background, if people are immersed in those issues, they come to very sensible and acute answers. The problem is that we cannot immerse everybody in the country to the degree that those in the citizens assembly were immersed. Many of them would tell you how much it mattered to them to learn as much as they were able to learn and ask the questions that they did. As far as their conclusions for the most part, you will see them very much mirrored in what the Climate Change Committee has put forward. We are very much in favour of that kind of operation. Indeed, we have pressed the Governments, all of them, to take a very much more high-powered effort at not just public information and education, which is the way that they should think about it, but public involvement so that people can understand not only why Governments are doing certain things but also what things they themselves can do and make their contributions as to things that they have thought of, which I think is a crucial part of the spirit of the citizens assembly. If I might add, Lord Dieben, I was a participant in the UK-wide climate assembly that took place last year and the Scottish one. Both processes were fantastic. I do not mind admitting that I went into the UK one that came first with a bit of trepidation, because I was not sure how the process would work. I echo everything that Lord Dieben has said about the value of those processes, because you immediately see that there is a need for them to understand better some of the changes that need to take place across society. I also understood very quickly in both the Scottish and the UK assembly that there is lots of public support for those changes once they are understood and once the importance of them is understood. It is very important that Governments across the UK take time to explain to citizens in the UK why those changes need to take place. I believe passionately that the support will be there for them if that can take place. Just to go back to the technical work that we do in the climate change committee, we had the opportunity to use information from the UK climate assembly. We did not, I am afraid, have that opportunity for the Scottish one, because we have not had the results from it yet. We have used it in the very detailed work that we published last December on the sixth carbon budget, which printed these five different scenarios for achieving net zero across the UK. Some of the information that came from the climate assembly was absolutely dynamite. It was fantastic to have it. We have not got that kind of information and data before. Issues like the preference for changes in travel, the extent to which people are willing to see changes in the home, for example, changes in industry, changes in diet even—those are really important for us data that we have not had before. We used them as wherever we could in the technical modelling that we did. Wherever we had an uncertainty about the extent to which there could be behaviour change, for example, across the economy, we could turn to the climate assembly and use the numbers that had come out of that work. I expect that we will be able to do the same with the Scottish climate assembly and to then use it in our modelling as the major way in which we can support that work. Liam Kerr has a supplemental in this area to be followed by Jackie Dunbar. I want to pick up on something that Monica Lennon asked. You said that the justification for new exploration and production must be strong. One wonders, presumably given that demand for oil and gas-related products in the UK is not changing dramatically and does not seem to show any signs of it. The impact on UK security of supply, sourcing location decisions and the fair transition that you rightly referenced earlier could be thought to provide that justification. Is that the case? The problem again in making that kind of question is, of course, that you have a second question to ask. That is, by producing more here, are you actually adding to the total because those already producing, when you are not buying it, will still be producing it? There is a real issue about the balance between the fact that this is that we have our interests as a nation, but we also have our interests of the fact that climate change is a global problem and we have to have a global answer. Therefore, in those circumstances, it has to be a very strong argument to overcome the simple argument that we have all got to stop using fossil fuels. That means that we have all got to accept that we are not going to produce more of them because we are not going to use more of them. If we produce more fossil fuels, only if other people reduce their production, can that be genuinely a contribution to what is happening in the world as a whole. It seems to me that, so far, we have not paid enough attention to the fact that some of the proposals that are being made are actually additional to the amount of fossil fuel that is produced in the world. We cannot afford additions, which is what, after all, the world authority on fuel has said. That is why it has said that there should be no further extension in our production facilities. Thank you for coming along today. You have certainly given me a lot to think about. I would be interested to hear from you in regard to the Governance moving forward. Will you be able to tell me where you think the strongest policy action should be taken, not only in reserved areas but also in devolved areas? I am sorry, but I did not catch the last sentence. Where you think the strongest policy action should be taken in reserved and in devolved areas? We have said that the area where policy action is most urgent and necessary, which covers both of those areas, is in buildings. That is where the largest and most important next stages are. When you are well down the programme for decarbonising the electricity system, this is the next one, particularly now that we are on the way as far as much of the transport system is concerned. That is where the major issue is. There are a number of areas where the devolved powers can be used. As I said earlier, I have always been sad that the Scottish Government has not used its powers to insist on house building being ready for the future quicker than the rest of the United Kingdom, which itself has been disgraceful in the speed. The Government's decision to cancel the zero-homes policy in 2017 was a very major failure, and we are going to pay a lot for it. There are those million householders who are going to pay a bill that they should never have had. There are things that can be done like that, and I would see that as a crucial part. Indeed, a challenge to the rest of the United Kingdom on the reserve matters is also true that the United Kingdom could set those standards, and that would make a significant difference. The other area where we have really got a major battle to ensue is on land use. Here I do think that there is a very real issue for both reserve matters and for the devolved matters. It is a very tough change that we are going to have to make, and there are good ways of doing it, which we have to do together. I keep on going on saying that, of course, we are going to have to eat less, because we all eat too much. One of the things that we have to eat less of is meat, but we have to eat better meat. That is British meat, because British meat has the lowest carbon footprint of all meat. That is something that we should be doing together. That is what I said to the Scottish quality meat producers when they had a conversation with them. Really, this is a good thing if we get it right, but it means that we have to do that. Together, we also have to say that if our farmers are going to be asked to do the things that we know they have to do, we cannot allow the import of product that does not meet the same standards, which is why we have very strong objections to the proposed way in which, for example, the Australian deal is being put forward. We cannot ask our farmers to meet the standards that we will need if we are going to get to net zero unless you are prepared to say that those are the standards that you are going to insist on for the market as a whole. Those are things that we have to do through reserve. The Scottish Government has some very important role to play in how, together, we can help the Scottish agricultural industry to change sufficiently to make its contribution. It is different and, if I may say so, we all suffer from the fact that we are urban societies and very often the issues of the countryside are not understood. We have to understand them if we are to get those changes that we need. It is buildings and land use. I think that it was touched on earlier that electricity is one of the ways to go to replacing fossil fuels. Can I ask if you think that the current taxation regime for the electricity generation is supplied? It is fair and appropriate at present and should changes be made to ensure a level playing field for low-carbon power going forward? It is not sensible for the whole of the green cost to be on the electricity bill and not on the gas bill. It is not sensible and it is not fair. Quite a lot of the people who only have electricity are poorer than those who have a dual terrace. Therefore, it seems to be not very sensible to make more expensive the thing that you want people to use and less expensive the thing that you want people to stop using. That does not seem to me to be logical. Therefore, we think that it is very necessary to change the way in which that is done. Frankly, it is not for the climate change committee to say whether it would be better to do that on general taxation rather than on the bills. That is not a role that we properly have, but we do have it properly role on fairness and on sense. It cannot be sensible to run it as it is at the moment. That does not mean to say that I am not constantly saying how much we owe to the decision to allow the money to be spent of £6.5 billion to make it possible for us to have an offshore wind system. Whatever else may be said about that Government, I have attacked it quite strongly just earlier about its housing policy. The fact that it did that was really important. We now have a chance, I think, to make a change, which is to change the way in which the support mechanism works and, at the very least, shift it on to the gas bill rather than to the electricity bill, which, for many people, would not be a huge change because it is paying both. For some people, it will be a really necessary one, and the difference between the two will encourage people to change. Mark Ruskell has a very brief supplementary in this area to be followed by Collette Stevenson. I am wondering to what extent you feel that the changing remit of off-gem, particularly incorporating climate change into its remit, will make a big difference to the way that our whole energy system is being regulated and investment is being incentivised. I am much encouraged by the change and their attitudes. We have had meetings with them already. We are going to work very much more closely with them. I think that their announcement today is a very good harbinger of what may happen in the future, so I am very much encouraged. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning and thanks for all your contributions. On Friday, I had the pleasure of visiting a facility within my constituency in East Kilbride, which is TUV-SUD. It had the first-ever transition from a gas domestic metre to a hydrogen one, where it was actually calibrating it. It was really impressive to see and it was great to see something tangible in place. I was really impressed by the work that they were doing. The question to you is, from a consumer point of view, when can we start to see the roll-out of those and the speed in which they are getting carried out? One of the questions was raised, believe it or not, recently at the Citizens Assembly by a householder on that panel asking that question. I think that that is key to the climate emergency and folk seeing changes taking effect. It is, if I may say so, very pleasing to hear what you have seen. It is always better to see it and feel it in a tangible way. However, the problem is that it provides a partial solution. It contributes to the total solution, but we have very many problems to overcome before it can be rolled out. For example, the point that Keith made, which is that although, by volume, you can use a significant amount of hydrogen, the actual energy contribution is much less than that, so it is very marginal. It may be important, but it is marginal. We cannot produce it in an entirely environmentally friendly way. There is a cost problem that we have not overcome yet. I see a whole series of mechanisms that we are using at the moment to try to find the best way forward. There will not be just one way forward, but there will be a number. Part of the reason for doing what we are doing at the moment is, as Keith said, to create some sort of market for this, because otherwise we are not going to produce the material anyway, so we have to do that. I do not see a likelihood of a very rapid movement to roll out, so to speak, but Keith will be able to put some more bones on that, I am sure. There is still an open question about, as we said earlier, the role of hydrogen in particular in heating in buildings. The gas system, as a whole, provides enormously valuable flexibility service. It has the capability of storing a lot of energy within the pipework, within what is called line packing, and that helps to balance out the variations of demand for energy through the course of the day, quite through the whole year, but it gives you that that is really useful. Can you get the same flexibility from the electricity system, not on its own? Other forms of storage are more expensive. Until we have resolved how much of the gas network is still going to be used in future for the transport of low-carbon hydrogen, it seems sensible, at least through a great option, as far as possible, when this touches on your question. Where we come up to replacing a gas boiler and the sort of distressed customer that your boiler has given up when you are approaching the winter or even in the winter, have you got available on the market for at most a modest extra cost, hopefully no extra cost, one that is already hydrogen-ready, got that flexibility to either use natural gas at now, or if your local gas supply is changed over to being low-carbon hydrogen, you do not have to replace your boiler. That is the kind of an example of where the market hopefully can develop and sort of bootstrapping the market in a way to get that product available and make sure that it is for no extra cost wherever possible. I just wanted to touch upon fuel and the actual come back on hydrogen fuel pumps. Again, I get the opportunity to actually see a fuel pump and the actually even receipt in terms of how much hydrogen you were actually using, but in terms of reality, and again going back to consumer behaviour and expectation, is electronic cars versus hydrogen vehicles. For instance, for me, I could probably use my electric vehicle because it gets me around the town, gets me off my daughter and whatnot. Maybe hydrogen as a vehicle could get used for longer trips, but the supply and demand, how do we get that and how do we work with the private car producers in order to see how that is going to go forward? Maybe I can pick up to begin with. Electric vehicles, the battery, a lot of it comes down to how you can carry the energy around when you have got something moving like a car, a bus, a lorry, whatever it is, and how heavy is your energy store that you are carrying around with you. The energy density of a battery per unit weight, how much energy you can store, is not that great. You do not want to have it on a very heavy vehicle where you need a lot more energy to carry around with you just to get it moving. To scale a bit for a car, the battery as a way of storing the energy that it needs looks really good. The cost of battery has come down dramatically over the past 10 years, and we are now getting access to improved access, but it is not good enough. This is a big challenge—charging infrastructure. You can be confident as a driver of an EV, of getting access to charging at a reasonable price where you need it, depending on whatever kind of journey you are making. Chris talked earlier about big part of transport policies reducing the need for getting around a car in the first place. If you have access to local services, you can do a large part of your job at home, and you can do all that. It is a really important part of the bigger picture. Hydrogen, on the other hand, seems to be really important as a fuel for bigger vehicles, for heavy goods vehicles, for shipping as a fleet stock, for fuels, for aircraft, for example. There are manufacturing challenges around that, and energy efficiency challenges. However, it seems to have a mixed economy of using electricity directly for part of the demand for energy. Using low-carbon hydrogen, which was talked about earlier, in the future, will be an indirect use of electricity, where direct use of electricity does not seem to be or effective. We have a couple of minutes left over for some very brief questions. I would like to come back to something that Chris Dark mentioned about policy cohesion. The Scottish Government has created this cross-portfolio remit of the Cabinet Secretary to focus on net zero. Given the importance of policy change and delivery in this parliamentary session, I would like to give views on how we, as a committee, can perhaps do things differently or what our priority should be in terms of taking that cross-portfolio view of net zero. I might just answer that, since I raised the point earlier. Listen, it is incredibly helpful to have a Cabinet Secretary who is responsible for net zero. That is a hugely welcome development. It means that there will be a single point at least in ministerial terms for the committee to talk to, but it is really important to say that it is not going to be achieved by any one minister in one single portfolio. What Mr Matheson will have to achieve is something that I am afraid so far has not been achieved, which is a genuinely cross-government programme, where you have got every bit of government. Certainly, those bits of government have any responsibility at all for what you might think of as infrastructure or the built environment. They will have to have the idea of getting to net zero as quickly as possible as one of the central requirements in everything that they do. Every single decision needs to be seen through that prism. My encouragement to you, as a new committee, is to think in the same way, so to think in a really expansive way about the changes that need to happen. We in the climate change committee can be your friend on that. That is the way that we are set up to work. We try to think in a very integrated way about the changes that need to happen over the course of the next 25 years in the Scottish economy. We can be that critical piece of evidence that we can use as a means to challenge ministers on what is happening. My main point to you is that please do not imagine that it is just Michael Matheson that needs to be brought before the committee. I can encourage you at all to take the opportunity to call other ministers in other portfolios to come forward to hear from them too, because that was what did not happen successfully in the last session, nor the one before it. It will mean that we will fail on this journey to net zero unless we have that critical appraisal of what is happening across Government. If your committee is not doing it, I am afraid that it will not happen. Let us together, the climate change committee and this committee, if we can, on bringing forward those policies and putting the pressure on ministers to do that in this term. It has to be this term, although we will not make that 20-30 date that I talked about and, by extension, we will miss the 20-45 date that Scotland is now signed up to for net zero. This is the critical Parliament. Thank you very much, Chris. Mark Ruskell, very briefly, if I can mark. I have a final question from Fiona Hyslop. Given what you have just said, Chris, I am just wondering what the next points are in terms of your analysis that will come to the committee. You mentioned the green SNP policy programme earlier on. Is that something that you will be doing analysis on? Are there other points in the next year where you will be providing us with analysis so that we can examine the work of Government critically? Yes, there will be. The two important things to look out for over the next few months are related to COP26. We are planning a new CCC Scotland progress support. We will publish that after the COP, partly because we want to accommodate what happens in the COP, partly because that is a better time for us to produce that analysis. In that, we will be making a pretty hard edge to praise of where the Scottish Government stands on its policy programme for net zero. We will also be looking at adaptation over the course of the next few months, which we have not had time to talk about today. That is the main meat, I suppose, for your committee over the course of the next few months. We will be producing that by the end of the year. The other thing that we will be producing, which is also very relevant to the discussions that you will be having in your committee, is an appraisal of the UK's net zero plan. There are plans afoot in Whitehall to produce a new net zero strategy in the weeks before COP26. I think that is the right time for ministers in Westminster to be producing that new strategy. I hope that it will be one that is fully supported by the UK Treasury in a set of fiscal decisions that will be made by the chancellor around the same time, in a spending review and a budget. We should have, fingers crossed, finally a comprehensive plan in Scotland and a comprehensive plan at UK level as well to appraise progress on. We will be doing the numbers on that, which is the thing that we have not been able to do, running the numbers on it, which is something that we have had to make informed guesses on to date. We should have numbers, not just from Scottish ministers but from UK ministers as well, that will allow us to make an appraisal of how well on track we actually are. The final thing that I will say on that is that it is my ambition over the course of the next nine months that we turn the analysis that we have already in place about the technical pathways that need to be achieved across the UK into something much more real world, not just looking at greenhouse gas emissions, slightly kind of ethereal concept of greenhouse gas emissions, but looking crucially at what real world changes need to be happening today to be clear that we are on track for the targets that have been set at Bollywood and Westminster. How many cars are we going to see on the road that are electric? How many heat pump installations will there be? How many installations of energy efficiency improvements in buildings? The progress that we need to see in industry? The progress that we need to see in farming and agriculture? The progress that we need to see in changing land use? I want to turn, if we can, to producing real world metrics of progress that will allow us to eyeball more accurately whether we are actually on track for these targets, because I think that ultimately is what is critical now. It is not setting new targets, it is delivering on the ones that we have. I was very struck by your comment that if the world could mobilise the same fiscal transfers of our, I am assuming, contrived using as we are done for a Covid emergency, why can't the world do something similar in relation to the climate emergency? So what is your view of the prospect of success at COP26 and what would your benchmark for success look like, bearing in mind if the world can and has moved so much on the Covid emergency? Why can't we do it on the climate emergency? My benchmark for success is that we have the world accepting a much tougher programme for each single country and showing real evidence that it intends to do what it says it's going to do. Now, we won't get it, but we'll get, I think, much nearer to it than some fear. My other benchmark for success is that the world recognises clearly that this is a global issue, and therefore it has to be solved by global solutions. That means that we rich countries that have benefited from pollution and have caused the climate change we are fighting do have to come up and spend the money that is necessary to solve the problem, which, if we don't, will destroy us as well as the poorer countries. I should be looking very, very closely at the commitments and the determination to prove those commitments real from the rich countries. I think the last thing one will be looking for, and I believe that we can see it, will be a reflection among ministers of what is obviously happening in the world, which is a total change in the way in which people are looking at this. We really are now in a world in which the public are ready to be led, ready to be informed, ready actually to make changes. My worry, if I have a deep-seated worry, is that politicians will not rise to the occasions, because this is the moment for leadership, and we live in a world in which that is a very scarce commodity. I am looking for leadership. That brings us to the end of this evidence session, and I think that it is very appropriate that that was a challenge laid down by Lord Diepin. It is a challenge that we will try our very best to meet in the months and years ahead. Let me thank the panel once again for joining us today for your very valuable insights. It has given us a tremendous amount of material and areas that we will focus on going forward. I am sure that we will be hearing from you in the weeks and months ahead. Let me wish you all the best in your work ahead and thank you again for joining the committee this morning. We will now move into private session.