 Good morning. Welcome to the fourth meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, can I remind everyone to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private today, and to consider further evidence in the committee's reports on the draft climate change plan, deer management, and our response to the Parliamentary Reform in private at future meetings. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. We move to agenda item 2, which is to hear further evidence on the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan, RPP 3. The meeting represents the second of our oral evidence sessions, and we have been joined by a panel of stakeholders to discuss the overview of the plan and climate change governance. I welcome Richard Dixon of Friends of the Earth Scotland, Dr Rachel Howe, who is a lecturer in sustainable development at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, Andy Kerr, the Executive Director of the Edinburgh Center for Carbon Innovation, and Fabrice Lavecchi, the Climate and Energy Policy Officer for WWF Scotland. As we have a lot to cover this morning, I appreciate if members and witnesses can keep their questions and answers as succinct as possible. We move immediately to questions. Alexander Burnett. Thank you, convener. Good morning and welcome. It is just a nice general question to start off proceedings. What benefits and challenges of a new approach do you see compared to RPP 1 and RPP 2? What contribution did you have to the scenarios in the times models and what is your view of the outcomes, and particularly the variation in sector reductions? A nice general synopsis, please, of your view of the process. Richard Dixon. Thank you very much. How many hours have we got? You do it. I think that you will probably hear from all of us that we think that the use of the times model is a very good systematic approach. A model is only as good as the data that you put into it and the way in which you treat the results, but it is a very good way to try to make the process more systematic and to make sure that departments, which perhaps in the past have had little scrutiny on them, have more scrutiny so that we try to make the distribution of effort more fair. It is more fair, but it is still not very fair in terms of the outcomes. The challenge that that has brought, though, is that the times model has taken a very long time to get up to speed and working and producing useful results, which has meant that some other parts of the process that were initially in visage did not happen. There was initially a big plan for public consultation, major engagement with stakeholders and almost none of that happened. There was one big stakeholder event in December when most things were already decided. Because of the level of effort that had to go into the times model, that has held up a number of other things. In terms of the overall output, the model has been useful, but of course the model has limitations. For instance, it does not cover transport in any systematic and detailed way. It relies on transport Scotland's model to feed numbers in. It has not been able to say, why do not we do something more progressive? It is just basically to be able to say, there will be lots more cars, let us make them electric, that is lower carbon. It does not say, let us get some of those people out of cars and get them to do something else. That is up to transport Scotland to suggest or not to suggest. To me, that has been one of the big limitations. Clearly, there have been trade-offs between ministers and cabinet secretaries, discussions at cabinet, as you would expect and as is right. The end product of that, of both the deficiencies of the transport side of the model and those discussions, is that some sectors have still got off much more lightly than others. You will see in my paper a graph that shows you that the big sectors, which include transport and agriculture, are actually going really slowly in terms of the 3% a year changes that we need over the next decade and a half, whereas some of the small sectors are doing lots more. The big sectors where you would try to look for big gains, we have not really found those. To be fair, transport has done almost nothing since 1990 or since the bill was passed in 2009. The fact that it is now doing something is progress, but I would like to see it do a lot more. I hope that at the end of the committee's, well, four committee's scrutiny, those areas of transport and agriculture particularly will be tightened up. Rachel Howell. I have not been working in Scotland for very long, so I have not contributed to the scenarios. I have been paying attention to some of the stakeholder engagement processes that are fed into this, for example, the climate conversations that have been held with the general public. I think that one of the benefits of this plan is the use of the ISM model, which is a strong improvement over other models that focus solely on rational choice. I am glad to see that the model has given more understanding of how social material processes shape behaviour, but I do not think that the model is being used very well. I am hoping that I will get a chance to come back to that when we discuss behaviour change more. I think that in terms of outcomes and the ambitions, I think that the ambitions in terms of behaviour change are very weak. For example, some of the sectors have quite weak targets like transport because there is not enough use of behaviour change ideas rather than simply technological focus. There is too much focus on technological solutions in this plan. Not enough recognition of how social and material factors shape behaviour and produce behaviour do not just impact on choices. There is too much focus on individuals making choices that deliberate choices, and that does not reflect the whole of reality. I think that both the model and climate conversations have produced some interesting results that have not been fully taken up in the design of the plan. On the benefits and challenges, I echo what Richard Dickson said in terms of the times model, which has provided a much more robust initial approach in terms of defining sectoral envelopes, so attributing effort between the different sectors of the economy. I think that where the plan is weak, and that is partly because of the process that it has been through, we have a strong link between the envelopes and the policy outcomes. The policy outcomes describe the physical changes that we need to see, things like the number of electric vehicles or the fabric efficiency improvements to buildings. There is a strong link between the envelopes and those. There is a much weaker link between the policy outcomes and the actual policies that will bring them about. For example, looking at the plan, when we look at the policies, there is no information about the abatement that they are expected to produce. It is very hard to try and add up all the policies and see if they equal the policy outcome, and if that in turn equals the actual envelope for each sector. That is a big problem with the credibility of the plan. A lot of focus went into the times modelling, which was great, and unfortunately less effort has clearly gone into the part where we decide on the policies to deliver the changes that we need to see. That is one of the big challenges. It has led to a missed opportunity. It is disappointing to see that the climate change plan was launched with no new policy. The Committee on Climate Change has repeatedly said to the Scottish Government that we need to hit future targets, we need to see strength in our policies, introduce new policies, particularly in the areas of heat, transport and agriculture. It seems to me that there is a huge missed opportunity here. When we add up all the plans in the climate change plan, there is nothing new here for us to consider and see that we will bring about some of the changes that we need. To elaborate on that final point, the plan describes big technological and social changes. It is very hard to see if we add up all the policies, whether those will come about. That is partly a result of the process that it has been through. A key weakness is this final stage, the decisions between different departments and ministerial decisions about what policies they could put into the plan. My role came about because I am a co-director of the Centre of Expertise on Climate Change, Climate Exchange and we were heavily involved working with the analyst teams in the Scottish Government to support that. That is a number of individual researchers across different institutions in Scotland. I was also on the times advisory group that was being brought into being. I would echo the points that have been made. In comparison with RPP1 and 2, there has been a degree of rigour of cross-sectoral analysis and coherence that was not in existence before. It has clearly forced some very difficult conversations by ministers because they have not been able to get out of the fact that if you do not deliver emissions in one area, you are going to have to find it somewhere else. That has been very powerful and a very welcome change in approach. If you look at the governance and the monitoring and evaluation that will come on to that later, I am sure that a lot of the building blocks are now in place to take that forward, which is good. I would also echo some of the other points that inevitably this type of modelling framework ends up looking quite like a technocratic approach. If we as a country are going to deliver 60 per cent emission reductions plus by 2030 and onwards, you cannot do that just on the technologies and top-down Scottish Government approach. You actually have to build partnerships much more effectively with cities, with businesses and so on. I suppose that that is the thing that I am missing here around the partnerships with stakeholders. We are actually going to deliver this and some of the issues around behaviour change will pick up later. Mark Ruskell Can I ask you about the times model itself? My understanding is that, in other countries that have used times, it has been hosted by academic institutions. Therefore, the ability for stakeholders to get access to it and perhaps plug in their own assumptions or their own policy interventions has been there. What has been your experience of engagement with the times model in this setting, where it is clearly a Government that holds the model and is facilitating it for Greece or Turkey? I would say that the level of engagement that we have had in terms of understanding the inputs, because the value of these energy models are mostly rest on the assumptions that you make. Knowing the assumptions about technology costs, the speed at which things are expected to happen, that is the value of those exercises. There has not been a great deal of information shared with the outside world from the Scottish Government in terms of the inputs that went into the model and the assumptions that have guided the outputs. I think that that is most apparent in terms of what is in the climate change plan itself. The times model has produced lots of information about expected abatement from new building regulations, from improvements to energy efficiency or the rollout of renewable heat. Much of that information is within the times model, but it is not inside the climate change plan. There is still some way to go in terms of sharing that information, which would then make it much easier for us to look forward at the changes that are expected and going back to the monitoring part of this, to see the trajectory of change that we need to have and then be able to monitor against progress. Right now, the information is so vague inside the climate change plan. It would be very hard to come back to it in a year's time and see, track what kind of progress we've made. So you think that the information is there, it's in the model, and that policy options have been fed in. It's just not transparent how they've been rejected? Yeah. Andy Kerr and Richard Dixon. Just, I mean, it's worth saying that the whole process of commissioning the times model, making it stable, getting effective assumptions in, has obviously taken a huge amount of resources within the Scottish Government analytical team, so they haven't done the sort of stakeholder engagement that they had hoped to do. What we have been talking to them about is actually working with them to bring some of the people who have been developing that model out on succumbent to the universities, to help the universities understand in detail all of these assumptions going forward, so that the universities can start to play with it as happens in other countries and really test the assumptions, push it very hard and so on. So that seemed to be the next process, and what I would hope is that this committee, amongst others, can actually hold the Government to account on that. In other words, make sure that that does actually happen, because the intention is there. I think it's fair to say that they have struggled resource-wise to deliver what they wanted to do beforehand. Rachel Dixon. So I agree with the previous comments, and there was clearly a very good intention from the climate change team and the analysts to share more, and time has run away with them, and they haven't been able to do as much as they wanted. So they were at one point talking about producing an online calculator version of the tool, so you would be able to plug in your own numbers, and that may still happen, but there hasn't been time. So that's frustrating that here we are at the committee discussing the draft plan, and we don't have those numbers, and we don't have that opportunity. So we can't, as Fabrice suggests, we can't question the assumptions that have gone in, but I think the bigger frustration for me is that we haven't seen the full outputs either, even if we don't know all of the assumptions, we haven't seen the full outputs. So at the start of the plan we have graphs which show what Scotland's emissions will be out to 2032, and it shows what they are by sector. Each sectoral chapter says we're aiming for this much, but each policy doesn't have a number attached. Clearly, times has added up all those numbers to produce those overall graphs and overall numbers, but we're not being shown the numbers that are attached to each policy. And as has been suggested, that makes it very hard for us to interrogate whether we think those are credible numbers, because we may look at them and think they're much too big or too small, too ambitious. We have secondary measures, so the number of electric vehicles or other secondary measures, but we don't have the actual carbon numbers to be able to tell do we think that's a credible policy that will actually deliver that much. That means that monitoring is very difficult from year to year, so as has been said, I think that the monitoring plan is well thought out, but without those numbers it's very hard to be able to say, yes, in this year we did this much on this policy and that's the right amount, because we don't know actually how much we should have done in terms of carbon numbers. Let's develop this issue of assumptions on policy, Dave Stewart. I look at some of the bigger issues behind our assumptions. As you'll be aware, EU plays a crucial role in assumptions. In fact, seven policies in the draft plan refer to EU policy. Clearly, you need to be the brand seer to work out the detail about where we're going in Europe, but nevertheless, could ask the panel what their thoughts are about making such large assumptions about an area of which is, at the very least, a very fragile and delicate area of negotiation currently. Dr Dixon. I think that that's exactly right, that there are some quite brave assumptions and there's actually no real commentary in the plan on the danger of that assumption or why they've made that assumption. In some cases, of course, you can only assume, you can only put something in about that we'll work with Europe or try to work with Europe or something will come from Europe that will be helpful, but there should be some commentary on the risks involved in making those assumptions. The key one for me is the transport sector, so obviously other committees will look at transport in detail, but as an illustration of how the plan is put together, the top policy, the first policy, so that means it's the biggest policy, the one that's supposed to do most, is about vehicle emission standards and it says the EU and working with the EU and UK. So those standards come from the EU, current standards do, there are new ones being developed and they will be developed by the EU. When we leave the EU, assuming that happens, that will be a discussion with the UK Government. The UK Government may talk to Donald Trump and adopt rather poor emission standards so that we can sell cars to America. So there are all sorts of scenarios where Scotland will be stuck with something that doesn't deliver at all on this policy and we don't have the numbers to say how much it should deliver, we don't have any commentary about what happens if that scenario comes about. So I think you're right that the EU is... Sorry, to point the devil's advocate however, Mr Dixon, you've passed some of you, a number of you, have commented on the fact that the process has not been what you expected to be because officials were so caught up in the detail of the volume of work they had to. Had they done that, that would have been even more problematic and we might have ended up with a document that was 360 pages long, would you accept that? Yes, of course. I think I was only looking for a bit of commentary to say that Brexit is a risk and here are the areas of vulnerability and here's a little bit of a sketch of a plan about what we might do if something goes in the wrong direction because we've left Europe. So I agree that you could spend ages doing all sorts of scenarios that may never happen but a little bit of commentary would be helpful and it's a question again to ask the minister when you have her in front of you what does Brexit mean and what's the contingency plan? Okay. Anyone else? Andy Cale? I mean I suppose the key issue certainly from the government in the past and RPP1 and 2 both captured this issue around the trade detectors, the emissions trading scheme and the extent to which once we are out of Europe are we still playing with those rules and again you know it rather picks up the point that Richard has just made. I certainly agree that perhaps noting where there are critical assumptions in this ought to have been flagged and they're not but equally at the moment there is such a lot of uncertainty in this space it's difficult to know much beyond saying we think it's a reasonable assumption that we're going to have to retain European standards and European frameworks that our industry will have to operate with in so that's particularly around the industry commissions. Thank you. One of the other large assumptions is about carbon capture and storage and my colleague Mark Ruskell may wish to come in at this point as well. I mean obviously you're all aware that the UK government effectively ceased the £1 billion funding for carbon capture and storage plus carbon capture storage is an excellent initiative if there's clearly loss of that massive amount of funding where is it going to happen in Scotland and therefore how are we going to contribute to plan? Andy Kerr? I think one of my big concerns with the assumptions here is around the electricity sector and the assumption that by 2027 we're going to have negative emissions which implies both that we've got biomass, bioenergy which is being carbon captured and stored within 10 years to me is an incredible assumption. I have to say we need to be aware of course that Scotland is not where if you like the technology innovation learning rates in other words bringing the cost down is actually going to happen apart from one or two sectors for example in marine energy. In most of the places it depends entirely on what happens in other parts of the world and so whether CCS becomes commercially viable within 10 to 15 years or 10 years for this plan to work depends on whether it has actually got that learning rate and the cost reductions from work that is being done elsewhere. I have my doubts on that and I think if you look at where the major cost reductions are going ahead around the world in different markets they're still in solar, onshore, wind, battery storage, smart grids that's actually where I would expect to see the real benefits. I'm not seeing that yet we're not seeing that yet in CCS so I think that's a rather optimistic assumption myself and obviously the times model is driving that as being the only way it can try and find the least cost path but that depends on having a bunch of assumptions in there which says it's going to be commercially viable by the late 2020s which to me is unlikely. For Greece to make it. I share the same reservations. The CCS is quite surprising that it generates negative emissions so the plan relies on CCS and also relies on CCS to actually extract emissions from the atmosphere which will be interesting to find out exactly why that's happened in the model. It's certainly far faster than bodies like the Clinton climate change would recommend and it seems to suggest to me that other sectors essentially are going very hard on electricity and getting negative emissions means you can do less in other sectors so CCS is a concern from that point of view and I think there's a broader point as well in terms of going back to the credibility gap with the climate change plan which is CCS electric vehicles these are external changes that are expected to happen in the wider world and that will come in and we can ride off the back of those so that climate change plan rests a lot on these external technology breakthroughs and there's very little new initiative to make sure that those technology innovations take place in Scotland that Scotland is able to reap some of the benefits of those as well so again I'd say CCS unfortunately is both it looks like it's given a free pass to some sectors it's also a case where we're relying on external changes where we could actually be doing far more on the technologies that we actually are able to do now like energy efficiency like heat. Okay Dr Howell. I don't think I have anything to add to that. Okay thank you. My final point if I could come here is I think it's quite clear that transport is one of the most warning areas in terms of emissions that's being shown I think in Richard Dixon's paper and if I can just ask Dr Dixon to comment on this you were quite critical of Dixon about transport Scotland for if I paraphrase it was something about car loving road building transport Scotland and you effectively are quite critical of the plans for low emission vehicles which is 40 per cent by 2032 and you quote Belgium, Neville and Stirling in Norway as having 100 per cent by 2025 would you like to say a little bit more about that because presumably over the next decade transport still going to be top of the league in terms of emissions so we've got to conquer this issue around transport if we're going to succeed for achieving future targets. Yes indeed so as others said I'm certainly convinced that we need to do more than just technical measures but we do need those technical measures so the standards that come for petrol and diesel vehicles from Europe or from our own resources in the future are very important and how we do on electric vehicles is very important and so I was disappointed to see that what looks like a very unambitious number for 2030 in this plan of 40 per cent of new sales being electric or ultra low carbon vehicles. The UK CCC has recommended that we should be aiming for 65 per cent so it's well below what our own advisers are telling us and as I've mentioned in my paper there are several countries in Europe some of them much further ahead of us like Norway but some of them in about the same place in terms of electric vehicles already which are aiming much much higher so there are live discussions about when should 100 per cent of all vehicles be electric that are sold in our country and there are dates from 2025 to 2030 being discussed and some of those are actually now real policies not discussions so there are people in Europe who think they can do much much more than we for some reason if the Germans do this that means the German car manufacturers are bought into it that means electric vehicles will appear on a large scale at quite cheap prices because of the scale so actually it may be German car manufacturers which drive this change in Europe rather than anyone's policy but it's a shame that we're not setting a very ambitious policy so I'm not sure how they came up with the 40 per cent by 2030 number clearly that's along a big improvement from today but it's not as much as our advisers say and it's not as much as others are aiming for so we would have liked to see much more on that. Dutch pal I'd like to extend this by adding that not only are the targets not strong enough in terms of the proportion of vehicles which are electric but that is not enough of a policy it's actually inimical to other policies in this plan so the transport policies seem to rely entirely on technological changes moving to greener vehicles and encouraging people to take up active travel but there's no recognition whatsoever that in order to get people to take up active travel you need to have policies to reduce car use the expectation is we'll reduce car use by encouraging people to take up active travel and that's the wrong way around you know there's a there's an idea that becoming less reliant on a car will only happen if individuals change to walking cycling public transport and car sharing that's on page 162. People will only change to those modes if they can become less reliant on cars so I'm sure Richard would agree with me it's not just about improving the targets for energy efficient cars in this plan there's an assumption that there will be an increase in the number of cars and that is you know that's not going to work for other policies on transport. Andy Carr Can I just also flag the sort of sleeping giant here which is around air pollution and what we are seeing particularly in other European cities but we're going to see in other cities around the world are people just simply starting to assert that we are not going to allow certain types of cars in particular diesel cars through cities after a certain period for example 2025 so we're starting to see big cities start to be very explicit about the need to move away from diesel and petrol and again this comes back to are we actually working properly with our cities who also have air pollution issues to work in partnership with the local authorities to in terms of developing some of these more radical proposals because we are seeing that in other countries and as Richard said you know we're going to see that the car manufacturers are going to respond to that very rapidly. So frankly I know you're conscious of time come here for example I think in London there's the issue of low admission zones and what I'm sort of quite taken with is using the allergy congestion zones where you actually bring in the income to make sure there's alternatives for modal shifts such as more buses and so on but obviously there's plans for low admission zones in Scotland it's just a case of when it will actually happen. I think there are a number of measures we have obviously a commitment for a low admission zone in the programme for government a first one somewhere in Scotland in urban area by 2018 and there's a commitment in the climate change plan to add a climate change dimension to that work but there are other policies like workplace parking levies which are not really in the plan so there's a passing mention but of course no local authority can actually implement one of those without primary legislation but there's no plan in here to provide that opportunity so the government could legislate to give local authorities that power doesn't mean that any of them will actually do it but there's no proposal even to do that even to provide the powers and in the spice paper very hopefully there's a summary of the research that was done in 2009 on transport measures and it shows you that workplace parking levies are one of the very cheapest things you can do on transport to get you carbon reductions very cheap pounds per carbon saving and they do exactly what Rachel Howell suggests they discourage people from driving they make them think i'm going into the city today how will i do that well if i had to pay a bit extra at work perhaps i'll go on the bus or the train or in cycle so those kind of measures are not in the plan in any meaningful way they're not proposals that will happen and yet to happen they would need primary legislation so they should be here in a big way but they're almost entirely missing but i guess the measure that you've just articulated also hacks people off being hit with a parking levy and playing devil's advocate question would be how does that positively influence the mindset of individuals to change their behaviours it may prompt them to do it grudging way because it's hitting them in the pocket but overall is it helpful the direction of travel and so there are clearly winners and losers in any of these measures we need to change the way we do things that means some people will not be happy and some people will find they benefit from those changes so if the overall impact is that public transport is better and cheaper because more people are using it then most people will actually see a benefit and where this has been done in the uk on a decent scale is in Nottingham and they've raised enough money through a workplace parking levy to extend their tram network so people can see the very direct benefit there is a new tram because some rich lawyer is now paying to park it at his or her work and so you know there's some people we could probably pick on who wouldn't be very popular who will be paying but we do need to be careful of the social consequences of any of these measures so any of the measures in the plan we need to think of the social consequences so there may be details you would change about scheme and make it quite sophisticated but broadly we should be thinking about these parking policies workplace parking levies and low emission zones on a broad scale it's useful to get that example on the record that that's very interesting andy kelvin and rachel howe just also coming back to your your point of course this this isn't we're not in a static situation you know if you look at southeast scotland we've got another 60 to 100,000 homes coming in here in the next 10 to 15 years you know you think of the increase in transport induced transport of having another 100,000 people driving in and out of and around edinburgh for example on congestion and so on so it's not as if we can just carry on as we are we're going to have to rethink how we move people around and between cities and that is part of this wider package of measures that's needed it was one of the findings from the climate conversations was that people are very keen on improving public transport and i think the government has work to do to explain that improving public transport is part of a whole transport system i think the other important point to make is that there is a difference between policies being unacceptable before they are introduced and accepted afterwards and the perfect example of this is the london congestion charge where if you look at a graph of attitudes towards it before it was brought in far you know a majority of people are against it as soon as it was brought in the graph does this and it swaps over and it was accepted although it wasn't acceptable and i think that policies like this are likely to to show that kind of pattern okay good thank you more cross call i think the question that comes on the back of that then is to what extent these policies have actually been put through the times model and assessed for both their cost and also their ability to reduce carbon and affect behaviour change and i wondering to what extent you you know you sort of know what policy options have been put through i'll give you another one for example switching the default speed limit in scotland in residential areas to 20 mile an hour from 30 which could have a big impact in terms of reducing emissions at the tailpipe but also of course could could incentivise active travel and we got the data on those types of policies to feed into the times model and do you believe that the times model has actually looked at those as options Richard Dixon so as i mentioned earlier on the initial plan was for the times model to include its own transport model so that it would be able to suggest sophisticated transport choices that didn't prove possible because of time and complexity and so what it does is it takes input from transport scotland's transport model and so it is up to transport scotland how sophisticated their policy analysis is and it doesn't look like it's been very sophisticated so what they have fed in is that up to 2035 road kilometres driven will increase by about 23 percent over the last decade they've increased by about 4 percent so already that's a very big assumption if you read the document there is a mention of workplace parking charges in a way which makes you suggest that it was once in and has been mostly taken out because it mentions occasionally this policy might interact with proposed workplace parking levies but no one is proposing them because no one can do them because the primary legislation hasn't been passed to let them do them so actually that can never happen until the government acts so it's not clear whether any of those policies have been fed into the transport model which then feeds into times or that they've just been ruled out by transport scotland or deemed unacceptable in some political discussion and never actually modeled so we don't know clearly the policies you see in the transport chapter are almost entirely about technical fixes and new emission standards and switching to electric vehicles there's a very amusing bit about how we can't have more people using public transport because there isn't enough infrastructure so if you applied the same to roads of course you would say well there's only so much road space and there can't be more cars because there isn't enough room for them but that isn't the approach of government the approach of government is let's spend tens of billions over the next few decades and build lots more road space so we can have more cars when it comes to buses or trains that doesn't seem to be the approach it's just all it's limited by the capacity so we can't have any more which is an utterly crazy approach when we had the stakeholder event in december the information we were shown about the starting assumptions going into times where this 23 increase in car kilometres buses absolutely static no change at all trains walking cycling didn't appear on the chart so there doesn't seem to be any thinking about them so I can only assume that we are living in the world of 20 years ago 22 years ago there was a sector report and a royal commission on environmental pollution report which both said if you build lots of roads traffic will appear to fill it up it's a self-fulfilling prophecy it's a predict and provide way of of running the world and that seems to be where transport scotland still are they say there'll be this much development this many more people more people have cars so we'll build more roads if you build more roads of course more cars appear more miles are driven if instead you say that is unacceptable and he says where will these cars go on edinburgh's congested streets in glasgow in our other urban areas you would start from a much different presumption saying how can we stop that happening how can we invest in other things and in behaviour change so that we don't have 23 percent more vehicle kilometres driven in 2025 because we can't accept that on climate grounds it's not good enough to just say well there'll be electric or there'll be much nicer tighter standards for diesel and petrol we need to actually be braver and say no we're going to change how people make their transport choices so people will still drive cars but perhaps it will be the second choice instead of the first choice for many people because we will have changed the way we think about and to do transport for brise of achy and then Andy kill thanks i think this discussion kind of neatly estrates one of the key weaknesses of the the draft plan and that's the fact that the policies to borrow a horrible business acronym need to be smart to a specific measurable ambitious realistic and time bound so these are kind of the key principles we'll be looking for in any plan if i was writing my own plan for to show my boss that i'm going to do my work he'd expect to see some concrete timescales of which i'll do things and the scale at which i'll be done so to take this transport example we do have in the climate change plan a some vague terminology about low emissions zones the scope of those being broadened out to consider carbon emissions that's completely indeterminate we don't know when that'll happen there's no indication as to exact the exact carbon impact that should be expected when they come to have that discussion so in terms of trying to prove the plan i think looking at these specific areas but we do have we're heading towards a good idea but we lack the fundamental information about when it'll happen and what it'll do and i think to go back to to mark's point i think a lot of the information about these policies is out there it's within well within the possibilities of the Scottish government to to find out what the impactful workplace parking level will be what low emissions zone could do and there are good examples to use so for example london the low emissions zone there the proposal is to use that to make sure that all single decker buses are fully electric by 2020 and that reflects the fact that electric buses are actually cost competitive almost now with their petrol and diesel cousins and it provides the clarity to the bus operators within all of london that's what that's the kind of fleet that they'll need to have so there are concrete examples we could borrow from unfortunately the climate change plan is still very is worded in these very loose terms with no kind of specific outputs i'll just pick up a point mark that you made about things like the 20 going from 30 to 20 mile an hour zones because that's a that's a classic case where actually it's it's very difficult to pick the extent to which there are emission reductions associated with that what there are a lot of co-benefits that come from having slower traffic more livable cities therefore more active travel therefore you know less you know it's easier for people to get out and walk and cycle and so on so there's a lot of co-benefits but actually in terms of does it deliver substantive emission reductions the actually the evidence is very divided on that so i think there are a lot of these things where the times modeling framework struggles to deal with these these types of complexities and so part of what the the government have tried to do is is they've flagged a number of additional papers which start to look at those co-benefits but they need to be teased out a lot going forward and i think that's a lot of the benefits that we want to see within our cities or our towns may not you know may have a co-benefit of reducing some emissions but actually the real benefit is cleaner air better places to live etc and it's trying to get those read across between the times type of framework which is an optimization framework and the and the reality of what we're seeking and i think that's something that needs work basically going forward just moving on to another topic about heating residential heating and the future of the gas network i mean it's interesting in the planet it identifies around 20 percent of homes will be heated using low carbon sources by 2025 but then that jumps up to 80 percent by 2032 um i mean that appears to be about something else being put into the the gas network but what's your thoughts on the assumptions around that and the technological changes that are required for brisolig so i think the you know we're pleased to see this ambition on heat and a bit more description about the direction of travel to 2032 i think you've touched on a couple of issues with the um what's currently in the draft plan um so in terms of the penetration of renewable heat to 2020 that kind of illustrates again one of these policy gaps that we have in that there's no there's no proposal to change any of the policies that we currently have to drive that change yet the trajectory to 2020 sees an acceleration in the next coming years of the delivery of those policies so my question to to the government is what exactly is it that drives this uptake in the speed at which we do renewable heating in homes when there's nothing on there's no concrete proposal in this plan to change any of the policy out there so that's that's the first issue the second issue which you picked up on is the fact that we kind of relying on a distant technological fix to deliver a huge amount of emissions reduction so the the pathway for housing is renewable heat builds up gradually to 2020 flat lines and then suddenly accelerates from 2025 and there are a couple of issues with that i think the the principle one being it's not very credible to say to industry right now uh we're going to stop in 2020 we'll have five years of um sitting on our hands and then suddenly you'll be raised ago and within seven years we'll have transformed most homes and the industries and companies are out there right now and what they're looking for is a gradual consistent growth in the markets and direction of travel the second issue with the that heat proposal is in terms of buildings the way we decarbonise is both change the heat source to something renewable but also actually first of all you want to improve the fabric efficiency so that's improving insulation walls and lofts and what we see in terms of the residential kind of pathway in the plan is a slowing down in terms of energy efficiency which is surprising given that there's another imperative there which is fuel poverty and then actually a much bigger acceleration in the long term on the renewable heat side so we're easing off on energy efficiency and we're accelerating on renewable heat with very little policy detail so the actual proposal there is simply a proposal to have a proposal in the next climate change plan which why again why three years to start developing a policy which is going to be so transformational. Andy Keogh. Just when I when I looked at that those figures and talked to a number of folk it looked to us like a model artifact in other words the model is looking for cheap ways of heating homes and something is changing over a period of time and suddenly it finds that it's the cheapest thing so it just chucks everything into that space and that's why you get that very steep thing so to me that was more to do with the assumptions written into the model than practice that is likely to take place. I think the thing that we do have is that we obviously have extensive plans within Scotland around energy efficiency and yet what we're not seeing here that there's only an assumption of a fairly small reduction on the demand side for heat within this and to me it's almost the wrong way around you'd expect to see demand side for heat coming down because we're improving our buildings over the next 10 years very substantially and that then makes it easier to deliver the low carbon supply into that space so to me this looked more like a you know an artifact of model runs than than something that's actually going to happen. Rachel Howell. I'd like to pick up on Fabrice's question about what drives the uptake I think that's an example of one of the concerns that I have about the approach taken in the plan as a whole I get the impression that one of the assumptions made about what's going to drive the uptake of new technologies is an assumption that there will be public engagement policies happening that people will become more aware and that they will go out and make deliberate choices based on a concern about climate change and that's come partly from the climate conversations from the findings that people express concern and say they want to do something and they want more information so I think there's a very important point to be made about that type of research which is that when you invite people who don't normally talk about climate change to come and do so you are in a sense inviting them to step into an alternate universe so and that the views they give represent how they think and feel in response to a specific exercise in other words taking part in a climate conversation now I'm not suggesting that they are any way lying or misrepresenting their views I think that people when they think about climate change are concerned about it and do in the moment genuinely want to do something and think that they want more information in order to do that but then they step back into their own reality their own lives and if you look at what people spend time doing and what they want to spend time doing finding information about climate change and things they can do about climate change doesn't figure at all so people will go looking for information when they need information in order to do things that they want to do so people aren't going to for example decide that they are going to uptake these heating systems because of concern about climate change a small proportion will but not the majority of the population they will look for information about heating systems when they need a new heating system and when other policies that change the structure of how we heat homes and whatever impact and it's no longer a good choice to get an ordinary gas boiler so that's again an example of how you need to change structures in order to drive the desire to do something different and not expect that simply raising concern and doing public engagement will drive that uptake but sorry can I just pick up on that does that the point you make not fail to take account of the increasing awareness of the impacts of climate change we've seen over the last few years to have seen more obvious impacts you know towns being flooded areas that we know well being impacted upon is there not a possibility that that in itself will put a momentum into behavioural change and alter the dynamic that we recognize currently there's definitely increasing awareness and increasing concern and there is as I said a proportion of the population for whom that does translate interaction I think it is always going to be a limited proportion and unless it gets high enough to actually change what's considered normal it's not going to spread out people do what is considered normal so if you can change the structure so that you change what is normal people will follow that and and also I think it's important to recognize that we we imagine that people make choices that there's either a situation in which people make a choice or there's a situation in which they are unable to make a choice they're coerced or they don't have another choice to make I think it's really important to recognize that there's a big area in between in which people aren't making choices and that's quite hard to get the head around so if I'll illustrate by an example if I may if I were to ask how many people in this room have cleaned their teeth this morning I would expect 100 percent people have if I were to ask how many people had deliberated about whether to clean their teeth and it made a conscious decision I would expect nobody has we've all just done it as part of a routine and many many many behaviors are like that they aren't actually real choices in that sense meaningful choices teeth cleaning is a really good example where actually probably across the whole of our life we've never made that choice we've been socialized into a practice from a very early age now a lot of behaviors that have impacts on carbon emissions behaviors to do with water use toilet flushing laundry showering and bathing et cetera a lot of behaviors to do with transport are not actually meaningfully chosen thank you I will um good morning to everybody I wonder if in view of the remarks that you've been making up to now on assumptions whether any of you have had the opportunity yet and I appreciate it still early days in the 60 day scrutiny but have you had the opportunity to assess any of the three evidence reviews of the potential wider impacts and how those have or haven't been taken into account in the in the actual plan having just looked quite briefly at the transport one I see there's a lot of issues that are raised that we don't see in plan Richard Dix yes so that's right so the transport is the one that I've had a quick look at and also the strategic environmental assessment document the transport document is useful in that it raises policies which are not apparent in the plan I think the sea is troublesome in that it doesn't talk about policies which may have been considered or may have been eliminated right at the start and talk about why that happened so to me that's that's failing in what an sea should do which is to explain to you why we've ended up with what we've ended up with and that should include the alternatives that were considered even if it was only briefly so I think there's definitely a gap particularly on the transport side of some some transparency about which policies were actually ever considered and why they were ruled out and didn't make it into the final plan so I think those two documents are useful but the sea could be much more useful because it could have told us actually more about what's been eliminated okay okay we're moving really into the area of behaviour change so let's have a look at that now Finlay Carson convener we've actually heard enough a lot about behaviour changes we've gone through that the morning and heard our range of opinions what I'd like to look more at is how behaviour change is considered in the development of the plan where where's your thoughts on how that what role behaviour change is made and also your views on how the Scottish Government should build on the the low-carbon behaviours and finalising the document how we can move forward from what we've got just now I'd also like you to consider where do you think market forces come in into it you know you've touched on electric cars and whatever and impact do you think that's been considered enough in the behaviour changes that have been assumed just allow me to collect my thoughts so how it's been considered in the plan one of the things that really stuck out for me is that on page 29 there are key behaviour areas outlined that have been quite a long-standing ambition for behaviour change by the Scottish Government and these in many cases are not reflected or are only very poorly reflected in the policies and proposals detailed later so there seems to be a disconnect between long standing ambitions and what is now there in the plan I mentioned the ISM model that's mentioned as having fed in occasionally two ideas about behaviour change now as I said I think the ISM model is a significant improvement over other models about behaviour but this plan still reflects an idea as I've said about deliberate behavioural choices so I think what's happening with the ISM model a good model has been developed it's being used and then it's kind of being forgotten that people you gather data or sorry not you but gather data is gathered and then the social and material aspects of that model are kind of forgotten so for example on page 165 there's a box which gives an example of an ISM consultation about the use of heating controls one of the things that came out about that was that people find heating controls complicated and want simpler designs but all the suggestions at the end are about advice and information aimed at individuals it's going back to the idea of simply behaviour change based on information there's nothing in there about trying to encourage different design of heating controls and similarly as I mentioned before the idea or I didn't mention this before sorry um page 87 it mentions programs that support people to overcome information awareness skills confidence and attitudinal barriers to walking and cycling those are all individual barriers in the ISM model there's nothing in there whatsoever about the needs to focus on making it objectively less dangerous to cycle which is frequently brought up as a problem and that's you know so so data is collected about all the different factors and then the policies focus once more on individuals um I am also there was also the the consultation or the climate conversations which fed in in terms of finding out what people know and what they think I did wonder to what extent those have really influenced the plan given that there was this headline finding that public transport was a consistently popular theme and there was strong support for improvements when as we heard earlier there is also mention on page 70 that any behavioural switch from public sorry from private to public transport is likely to be limited by capacity of the sector to absorb significant new traffic and there's no plan to increase that capacity so it feels to me like there is a genuine desire to to bring in behaviour change but it's not being done in a coherent way whatsoever it's the the actual policies don't reflect the key behaviours there's very little ambition in certain areas so for example very limited ambition for reducing heating demand as we mentioned reducing car use or air travel demand no ambition whatsoever to reduce meat and dairy consumption which would be part of key behaviour nine not only a more sustainable diet but a healthier diet so all the co benefits on that do you think is that because you think a lot of the targets can be met easily because of technological changes and actually behavioural changes are far more difficult to to achieve so we can actually get acceptable outcomes by not doing very much so the behavioural ones are down the list because it's not the low hanging fruit i think that may be the perception i think that's an entirely wrong perception as i've already mentioned focusing simply on making cars greener is actually going to impact the ability to increase active travel i think behaviour change can be difficult to bring in if you if you focus simply on trying to raise awareness and to get people to make conscious choices because of a concern about climate change that's why it's not a low hanging fruit it is very clear if you look at the history of how practices change that it can actually be very easy to change behaviours if you change the material and social structures that influence and not just influence but actually create those behaviours if you make car use a lot less attractive a lot more difficult it will change people's behaviours people might not like it to begin with but there will be a lot of co benefits that they will like so i think yes i think you're absolutely right that is the perception and i think the way behaviour changes approach can make it very difficult but there is a great risk in focusing on technology that you won't achieve or the government won't achieve what it wants to achieve and further i think there's there's a recognition in this that it matters what technologies people take up to what extent they're adopted but there's no recognition of it's also important how they use them you know technology is not a sort of a thing that you can just sort of put out there and it magically does its own work it's used by real people in their everyday lives so technology isn't a sort of a simple thing because you can just take people out of the equation so you know often you don't get the energy efficiency benefits that engineers believe will be the case with a particular new bit of kit because people don't use them in the way they're expected okay a company for bristle work i could just ask the witnesses as well rather than simply endorse something that's been said earlier in order to try to allow us to make a lot of progress if you've something to add that's great but if we could avoid just endorsing what's already been said for bristle work yeah so on the behaviour change point and in answer to your question i think in my mind it's a three-prong approach it's information it's using incentives and it's using regulation so that's the kind of framework that we need to have and i think there has been a focus by policy makers on the technology change because often it's easier to regulate companies there's fewer of them they're centralised i think to use an example to be fair to scottish government energy domestic energy efficiency is an area where they've put quite a lot of effort in so this is an area that's progressing it will be it too slowly but if we look there in terms of what they've tried to do we have information yes so energy performance certificates if you sell a house if you rent a house you have to provide one of those that provides information to the household or about the energy efficiency improvements they could make as well as renewable heat we haven't really tried the incentives and the regulation part so in terms of financial incentives for example we need to tackle the split between the landlord and the tenant so the landlord pays for the the measures but the tenant gets benefits so we have to tackle the financial imperative there and lastly we also need to use regulation so yes it might be difficult and that's probably why regulation as part of the energy efficiency proposals despite being in rpp one and two is still in the terminal still yet to be have a date fixed on it so the regulation part would allow us to say when you sell a house it's a perfect time to actually get these improvements done because the house is empty so one of the big barriers behind making energy efficiency improvements is simply emptying the loft or having to move your furniture so if we regulate and say if you can't sell a house unless it's a certain energy performance standard that would tackle that problem it'd be agreed fire and sell a find an arrangement who pays and when that work happens so we've done the information we're starting to think about the incentives but there's been a lack of political will to really push on the regulation part and in terms of all the bits we could regulate for climate change I think energy efficiency is something that brings an economic benefit so it's within most people's interests to do the cost effective measures makes your house warmer improves health and from a social perspective it also tackles fuel poverty so yeah my my call would be yes absolutely we haven't done the harder bits but we really need to Andy Kerr just coming back to your point your question about market forces you know we are going through quite extraordinary transformation in markets so if you if you look around the world and say what's the biggest transport company it's actually a data company it's uber you know so we're starting to see an awful lot of these big changes starting to play into the markets that we see about moving people around or energy efficiency and so on um these are very difficult challenges for a modelling framework to pick up because it's as much about who actually takes up these types of technologies and how do we use them rather than just they in themselves are delivering emission reductions and so I would just you know I would just flag it's a very difficult framework what we need to do is just to realise that this is happening identify where market forces are working in our favour and and then think about how are we working with the delivery agents which might be a local authority there might be local bus companies there might be local taxi companies and actually work with those partners to see how we can develop that to go down a particular pathway so that's again picking up the social structures issue rather than saying you know we've got an explicit thing that will reduce emissions and that will just work as an independent technology and it's just it's a challenging space to be in the next few years because the space of change is so quick at the moment. Dr Howell, given your expertise in this area can I ask a question about it's obviously about behavioural change but if every sector let's take agriculture has contributed and it's generally accepted far less than it ought to have done in terms of emissions reduction up till now when there has been the voluntary approach applied what is the likelihood in your experience of a continuing emphasis on the voluntary and the encouraging producing the kind of improvements we're looking for or do we need to to move towards more compulsion? I think you need both the bottom up and the top down approach I don't think volunteerism will get us as far as we need to go it can be a good start but I think yes probably top down regulation is more necessary. Okay okay thank you okay let's look at the monitoring evaluation implementation elements of this Jenny Gilruth. It's clear that we do need robust procedures to meet the targets set out by rpp3 and that was obviously something that there was concern about in terms of rpp2 and a large part of that process will involve this new governance body which will report directly to cabinet and I appreciate Andy Kerr what you said at the start of the committee today you said inevitably this type of modelling framework ends up looking technocratic so I just wondered what the panel's views were on the role of this new governance body how it's going to operate and I think importantly how it's going to engage with as wide a range of stakeholders as possible because I think as well Andy Kerr you spoke about the relationship in terms of partnerships with those stakeholders and how you involve them in that process and affect behaviour change which was just spoken about. Andy Kerr. So I think I'll first I'll just reiterate I think the monitoring framework that's being proposed is actually sensible and it's clear and it's not there yet but the building blocks are there to make it work so I think you know we're quite pleased to see what what have been put down on that. What's not clear for me is whether the governance body that's been proposed is entirely independent of and separate from the policy teams or is it an independent thing looking in or is it some mix I mean I think we would say it needs to be some mix with both government and independence which would include some of the the key stakeholders like key local authorities or you know key business areas and so on to ensure that actually we're getting this wider buy-in and oversight of what is happening because this has to be a partnership process going forward it cannot be done top-down alone. So does that answer your question? Yeah I think so I'll be interested in the rest of the panel's views as well if that's possible. Thank you. I think the terms of the monitoring and evaluation framework I think the principles are there I think it's fundamentally undermined by the lack of detail about what specific policies will deliver so I can't really imagine how we will go back and monitor the progress of policies when all we have are very vague words to effect think about doing a change at some point we're not talking about specific numbers of measures we're not talking about timescales when they have to happen so I think that's an enormous issue for that framework because without that information about policies how are they going to go about doing their job. On the second point in terms of should it be is it the role of the governance body to do the wider stakeholder engagement that needs to happen I'm not entirely sure I think there's a role for government in terms of engaging with business engaging with a wider public which probably happened far too late within this climate change plan process but I think that's more of an ongoing thing for the government in terms of the reason we have a monitoring evaluation framework is that we we come back to this every year it's not just every four years we do a climate change plan suddenly we're starting to think about this but I'd say the jury's out in terms of I think that for me the governance framework the governance body has to make sure we're delivering against the measures and the actions that are in the climate change plan or at least we hope to see in the climate change plan but doesn't the framework create the opportunity for parliament to be far more involved in this process because if you've got an annual report being produced from 2018 onwards the opportunity and the expectation could be there for each of the committees that scrutinise the plan and perhaps others to be dipping back into it on an annual basis and holding the government to account through that mechanism that becomes available to it Richard Dixon I hope that that's the case and I hope that the report will be more than something that the committees use and that's not clear it's not clear what the status of that report is it's not clear when it will come in what part of the cycle so obviously there are already reports required by the current climate act including a report every time there's an annual target result and so will this come as an appendix to that report which would be useful will it come just before the budget discussion so it can inform the budget discussions to say these policies aren't performing or we haven't even started them yet we need money in the budget so I'm sure it'll be useful report but its status isn't clear will it will a minister stand up and release it in parliament and there'll be a discussion will it simply slip out and committees will have to spot it and do something with it so potentially very useful but we need some more clarity on exactly when and what format it's going to come in and in terms of the governance body as you asked the civil servants last week it's not really clear who's going to sit on it you asked about whether NGOs will sit on it I don't know if they've answered you yet in writing but not yet okay but I think again we need clarity on what the what's the remit of that group and does this group replace the internal group that had James Curran on as an external person which hasn't met for a long time does it replace the cabinet sub-committee because there's no commitment that that sub-committee will continue to exist and if so do we think that that body is up to the job of replacing a cabinet sub-committee because cabinet sub-committee certainly sounds a powerful thing and we were all pleased when it was created a couple of years ago but if I go back to the point I was making if we have a and I accept SINF but if we get to a position where on an annual basis the committees of the parliament see this as a fundamental part of their work and organisations like Friends of the Earth will be making written submissions to tell us what they think of the figures and we would be potentially holding all the cabinet secretaries to account does that not potentially open up a far better way to move forward on this I think it does so I think we're all enthusiastic about the report we need more detail and I hope like you that the committees will embrace it so I'm sure this committee will but I hope the other committees which are scrutinising the plan will also feel ownership and feel that they will want to come back to that report as well okay thank you sorry retail so going back to your question about governance and engaging with a wide range of stakeholders I'd like to comment on what more needs to be in if our recommendations about more ambitious behavioural change policies being included in that case I think it's very important that there is a continuing conversation with the general public that a climate conversation shouldn't be a one-off intervention but there should be a continuing conversation with people who wouldn't necessarily respond to written consultations and so on so questions for the government would be things like can it be seen to adapt policies to feedback from the people whom they impact can it listen and learn about those policies okay Jenny Gouldith in terms of feedback from people out with the usual suspects how important is it that we actually engage with young people when it comes to formulating plans like these I mean this committee last week or a session with groups of young people from across the country with an interest and that's but it does strike me that this whole process does things on to young people we lay down proposals and policies for 20 30 years time that will in fact impact more on them than many of us sat around the table so is that somewhere we're coming up short it's absolutely essential that policies engage with young people and that it allows young people to shape at least part of that agenda so it doesn't simply go to young people with questions that the government wants answered but that it actually asks young people to tell the government what they want to say young people are really concerned about climate change they are also locked into ways of life which in some areas are particularly high carbon for example 20 to 29 year olds are most likely to take flights they're living in a world which has been shaped by an older generation I think there's a certain level of I don't think it's got to despair at all I mean the young people I teach tend to be quite hopeful more hopeful than I am a lot of the time but certainly a frustration with the what they perceive as a lack of engagement so yes I think there definitely needs to be more engagement but I would stress that point about allowing young people to partly shape the agenda so for example just yesterday I was speaking to a very engaged student of mine who is going to run a climate conversation and she's got the template to run it but she says quite a lot of this is just not relevant to us as students you know what's the point of asking certain questions of people who don't own their own homes and have no capital you know so yeah you've got to allow young people to shape the dialogue as well as just asking them things okay Andy Kerr of course we're very lucky in Scotland because we do have a whole series of groups like the 2050 group which I think you met last week who are creating these amazing networks in different cities so I mean in that sense we've actually got everything we need to actually engage much more effectively in future but it's just how we engage more effectively it's how you engage yeah yeah but again this to me comes back to at the moment this because of the way it's been framed has been something of a top down system again what I would be asking Parliament to do is to hold the Scottish Government to account which is that going forward this will only be delivered if we're working in partnership and that means with young people it means with local authorities it means with certain business sectors social enterprises you know that that to me is the determinant of whether it's actually going to work or not and that's the that's really everyone's pushing it back to you but that's really where you need to be saying to the government what are you actually doing in this place okay okay thank you for that I'm Emma Harper it's really more to look at what kind of suggestions that you would have for further engagement with stakeholders like maybe young friends of the earth that would maybe be for you Richard Dixon that how would you engage in the young people for that way you've talked about the Andy Kerr mentioned engaging with businesses not just the technocratic model and you know that I'm sure that you probably have ideas of how you would further engage people Richard Dixon yes so I had a very good report back from young friends of the earth about the meeting that you held last week about stakeholder engagement particularly with young people so they were very positive about that and that's clearly the beginning of a journey and so they're very willing to engage with that that meeting was about how to engage rather than what they thought of the climate plan for instance and they're perfectly capable of writing your response to tell you what they think of their climate plan just as anyone else in Scotland is entitled to do but actually more structured engagement with that grouping that you met last week around what do you actually think of the plan and letting them defyse some of the questions as Rachel suggests I think would be a really good start in your accelerated engagement with young people because after all this plan and the climate build come are two of the things the Parliament is doing which will most affect young people things with longest horizons and most impact on their lives so absolutely essential as you've seen to make sure you can do that well I turn that back and you ask do you practice what you preach because it was suggested to us that the young friends of the earth had not had their views sought around the submission that friends of the earth made on the climate plan you're quite right young friends of the earth is a very Scotland is a very young body within the friends of the earth network in Scotland and so in terms of putting something in a hurry they were not part of that loop so we need to do better on young people too thank you for that confession Andy Kerr just to give you an example of where there needs to be much better engagement you know we've got a situation where both the UK and the Scottish Government are investing heavily into cities across Scotland with the city deals these are putting in housing infrastructure digital transport infrastructure which is going to be operating in a zero carbon world in 20 25 years time the extent to which those deals are actually writing in and thinking about and engaging with this this type of agenda is very unclear so I think there's a real opportunity then to sort of be sitting down and working with the teams the city authorities the city regions that are developing those things those are about giving investments from the government but also about leveraging in private sector money into that space and developing jobs etc etc around particular areas so again that engagement with business comes from a lot of these major infrastructure changes that we're looking at over the next few years because and similarly if you look at things like the energy efficiency plan there's a lot of talk in the in the plan at the moment about the 500 million that's been allocated for energy efficiency but actually to deliver the sorts of changes for two and a half million households you're going to need an awful lot of private money coming into that space so that needs to be an engagement with businesses who are developing the skill sets to service that need but also with individuals and it's those sorts of things that actually determine whether it's going to work or not so it's that's what I'm thinking about in terms of that engagement there are particular points where we can engage over the next year or two which have not been engaged as well as they might have been and I think that's a that's a key issue given that we're talking about putting in infrastructure that's going to be operating for 20 30 years. Just on the terms of engaging young people I think absolutely we need to talk about the vision and the positive benefits of all these changes this inevitably becomes quite a technocratic exercise about the number of lofts you do number of electric vehicles but I think messaging that really works I think it's starting to be reflected in the climate change plan although there's a lot more to do is to talk about cleaner air renewed cityscapes the industries of the future that's the vision that young people and the wider public get engaged with because I think the climate change plan kind of has to set the direction of travel people want to know kind of what's what is the future what are you going to get off what are we going to do once we're on fossil fuels now what what are we going to be doing in the future on the other other point in terms of business I think Andy's absolutely right we need to think about the economic opportunities and the way you engage business is to kind of frame this as it's an economic strategy so it's a host of incentives of regulations which will change some markets and create new opportunities and I think there's a lack in this climate change plan in terms of seizing the benefits and particularly the areas that scotland has no vantage which is domestic energy efficiency it is renewable heat things like heat networks electric heat pumps and I think going forward I think they need to do much more to engage that industry and also frame this as an opportunity rather than we'll do a few changes around around the edges and but it's essentially business as usual I think it's also very important to engage people in conversations within the context of what they are interested in so for example I'm sure there must be at times initiatives to engage young people in deprived neighborhoods in conversations and plans about how to improve their neighborhood that would be a place to have a conversation about a transport plan or whatever so rather than invite people specifically to climate change conversations to take the opportunity to talk about it where people are talking about health neighborhoods whatever pretty much any conversation can also have an element which will you'll be able to get good data and good ideas about aspects of a climate change plan so I'll finally cast him before Emma wraps us up thanks Gary just in the back that should the stakeholder group then be increased so we're not just looking at young friends of the earth or our youngsters who are already involved in climate change topics so we had the young farmers as well so directly that you know climate change is very important to them but ultimately the day-to-day job of earning a living off the land is their priority you talked about inner cities and and transports the driving force between for young people on low incomes whatever so do we need to look at a far wider stakeholder to actually get the engagement rather than just those groups that are already involved in climate change topics yeah yeah that was short and sharp thank you for that Emma Harper do you want to wrap this up just on the back of the engagement of stakeholders and finish talked about young farmers and I'm interested in farmers in general because the climate change draft plan talks about you know language that's not really definitive it says most farmers many farmers we expect instead of requiring you talked about compulsory versus voluntary like work that the farmers should do do you think it needs to be enhanced and language I guess described in a different way looking at you all I'm bristlebeck sorry give me time to gather your thoughts yeah absolutely right I've just got here the I think we we set out WF set out a criteria by which we judge the climate change plan match criteria measurable achievable I won't go into them all but agriculture is the one that fails them all frankly and to give you an example of the kind of woolly wording that we have so one of the I think policies is farmers are more aware of the benefits and practicalities of cost effective climate mitigation so they're more aware and that's it we have no idea what they might do with that information when they might do those things and all what benefits that those will have so absolutely I think there's also a table in the agricultural section which talks has a useful sort of milestones so it's the policy change over time and if you look there it's the same policy changes repeated over the whole decade there's no quantified change in terms of how many more farmers are doing things like soul testing more aware of the nitrogen budgets that kind of thing so you're absolutely right agriculture is one of the areas that really really does need to be tightened up I think on things like agriculture the other thing I'd flag is that you know we know it's going to be a hugely challenging period for those in agriculture you know if you take something like the sheep industry you know if they lose access to the to the European markets you know are they still going to retain the sort of subsidy so it's at these periods a real spectacularly change which which could be really really challenging for the industry that surely is the time to be engaging with them to say look okay we know things are changing we don't know exactly how it's going to pan out but actually within that we can't carry on as before therefore what is the vision that will deliver against these but also to ensure they've got markets ensure they've got jobs so it gets tied into being part of that conversation so I said as Rachel said you don't have it as a separate conversation with them which is where it's tended to be to date you actually have it much more as being this is core to actually the future of this sector because I would echo the point that these are very this is very woolly language and the big challenge we've had with agriculture has we've got vast numbers of people in agriculture and actually rather like dealing with smaller medium-sized businesses you know each one is their own business and therefore it's a real challenge to actually get them in a piece but if there is an existential threat to the industry anyway because of all the changes that are happening actually that is the time when you can capture their attention and talk about what's the vision that will work for them as well okay Rachel how the reason I hesitated when you asked that question despite the fact that I have been saying we do need more regulation is that there are places in the plan where yes it might be appropriate to replace words like expect or you know hope or whatever with require I'm also trying to get across the idea that there needs to be more in the plan which isn't about expecting individuals to do things so when it comes for example to transport I'm not suggesting that we need to see more you know we will require more people to choose cycling over car use but more where it says we will use city planning regulations or we will bring in new regulations that will change a situation in which car driving dominates as a practice so yes there needs to be stronger regulation but it doesn't all need to be focused on individuals okay I'm just to wrap this up I'm picking on Richard Dixon's perfectly valid point about how tight a time frame we have to scrutinise an rpp and the the challenges that presents for your organisation to get a submission in just to briefly get your views on does the forthcoming climate bill require to amend the 2009 act to allow stakeholders young people have more of a say and the parliament to have more time to scrutinise by the time we get to rpp for Richard Dixon yes I think that would be very sensible and the the times model has taken more time than expected and then good plans have not managed to be realised because of course we were running towards a deadline of getting the rpp in front of you and indeed it came to you late with your agreement and that was perfectly sensible to allow more time for it to be finished off and to give you the full time for scrutiny but I think that the fact that you've got a short timescale to look at it is frustrating for those who want to feed in no doubt frustrating for you in terms of the level of depth that you can go into in certain areas and the inquiry you can make of ministers and of civil servants and of stakeholders so I think looking at that issue in the new bill would be very wise and building in some stakeholder component or at least space even if it's not spelled out but space for a stakeholder component into that scrutiny would be very helpful in addition to that I feel that the consultation with experts which is happening now is a little bit thin I feel a lot of weight on my shoulders for example being here as a behaviour change expert I realise that there is a public consultation and people can write into that but I think in future it would be a good idea to have a process where the committee is able to specifically seek the views of a lot more experts I know other committees are asking more experts but I think I think there are a lot more experts and particularly experts from outwith Scotland so there are plenty of academic experts who would have useful views on things like behaviour change this is not specific to Scotland so for example I've obtained views from another expert whose opinions I trust that have informed what I've been saying today but I haven't had time to go and seek wide views and I think you know if you need more time next time round to approach more experts and to look outwith Scotland then yes I think that the UKCCC I think did recommend that the Scottish Government look at directly involving a behavioural scientist and all other work around climate change it was a fair point anybody else want to come in on that are you content okay that's great let's move on to wrap us up by looking at how the plan might be improved Claudia Beamish thank you convener there's been a lot of comment this morning which has obviously been very valuable for the committee about quite specific issues around how the plan might be improved so those points have been noted beyond that and in parallel with that could I highlight one issue as an example which I raised last week in committee which was concerns about the lack of information including the plan related to blue carbon and in response Scottish Government officials agreed to look further at the issue and noted I quote the scrutiny process should throw up things that we are required to do more on and to look further so just as as we close this session I would ask you if there are other specific areas or indeed comments on blue carbon which isn't in the plan although there was a small box on it in the last in the rpp2 are there issues that to put you finally all on the spot that you would think should be considered further okay for brislaw begge thanks that's a really good question I think the committee has the committees have a real job to do a really important job in terms of improving the climate change plan I think from our perspective the the most important things and you've had a lot of criticisms today probably I think the most important things to retain would be making sure we use this process to drive actual change so for example domestic energy efficiency we've been told for a year and a half that a new infrastructure priority is on the way and that more detail would be forthcoming in the climate change plan yet the detail that's actually in the plan doesn't talk about regulation or dates when that might happen we know that funding has already been frozen now out to 2021 so obtaining more information from the government in terms of what does that energy efficiency programme have to deliver in terms of climate change as well as fuel poverty would be a great outcome on in the transport sector I think focusing more on in terms of what detail do we have when the thing's going to happen in terms of the demand side measures the low emission zones workplace parking levies the detail in the plan is just too scant and too vague that we don't know if we don't know if we'll actually have conversations about these policies in the coming years or if we'll be at the next climate change plan talking about the same proposals once again Rachel Hull well at risk of repeating myself the three things that I think should be in the plan aren't our proposals to directly reduce car use and not just to see that as a benefit of increasing active travel to reduce demand for air travel and to reduce meet and dairy consumption okay Richard Dixon so I agree with the previous panel members but in addition to that I would say a good questioning of the big assumptions that are in here so we've raised for instance brexit what's that mean what's the contingency plan the assumption that there will be new standards that will make vehicles cleaner well we should learn from dieselgate that even if there are standards they may not work so the credibility even where there are numbers and I think the the key thing for the committees of the parliament is to ensure that you will have in future enough information that when you interrogate the annual report from the monitoring and evaluation exercise you can tell are we on track and you can tell are we spending the money in the right places and how much money do we need to spend next time to get us on track or to keep us on track so those are the key details for you to make sure that Scotland stays on track to deliver and I think you don't have that information in this plan so getting more detail in here will help you do that in future okay thank you and fame with Andy Kerr I can't comment on blue carbon sorry for me I think we're getting to the point where we cannot deliver to me it's all about deliverability so and that cannot be done top down that has to be done in partnership so the question is do we have that will not just the the understanding from the partners but the actual buy-in are they actually taking this forward themselves thinking that it's a good thing because it's going to support their their their own areas the other one is about reducing misalignment of resource spend and lock-in and the third one is is behavior change cannot be just an add-on you know it is about socially how do we structure our society to deliver all the benefits that we want including jobs good economy and so on but deliver that low carbon benefit and I think that's the those are the three things that I touched on in the plan in different parts of the plan but it would be nice to see that absolutely explicit because that is at the heart of whether we actually achieve these targets okay thanks and fame we mark roscol one area which isn't considered in the climate plan all the energy strategy because it's subject to a separate consultation is fracking and the future of unconventional gas but how much of an impact do you think a decision either way could have on the success of this plan and the policies within it so we're hoping to see fracking consultation this week so we'll have four months for everybody to express their views and at some point there will be a government proposal which will come to parliament for a vote so we might see that in the autumn of course we have Claudia Beamish also proposing a bill which would ban fracking so and we are obviously very pleased to see that neither this plan nor the energy strategy assume that fracking will go ahead and include it so even though there hasn't been no official government decision it's not included in either this document or the energy strategy and clearly they've made the numbers add up both although we can't see all the numbers but the numbers we can see add up to delivering Scotland's targets and also to an energy strategy that seems pretty sensible without fracking without new nuclear so those were two of the highlights for us of the energy strategy is that fracking is not in there looking at the resources in Scotland looking at the research that the Scottish Government commissioned on fracking the resource is pretty small so if fracking were to go ahead it would be a lot of political upheaval a lot of bad feeling for actually really very small amount of energy so we would be very disappointed if at the end of the process the fracking consultation process ends with a vote in parliament to proceed with fracking because it takes it in the wrong direction increases carbon emissions the industry would try to argue that fracked gas is low carbon but that only really works if it's displacing coal in power stations and of course we've closed both of our coal power stations so what it would be doing is competing with renewables or distracting us from energy efficiency which is the areas those are the areas where we should be putting our effort okay ritual howl so two points i think fracking would lock us in longer to unsustainable technologies and it in terms of public engagement in terms of people's attitudes what the government does matters so public opinion is behind wind power even though locally there may be protests it's generally behind it and it's generally anti fracking a decision in the opposite direction by the government would i think lead people to believe that the government isn't serious about certain targets and people are really influenced by that people do say things like well you know if they're really serious about it they will be doing this that and the other and if they're not then it obviously means the problem isn't as great so i think it will have an impact on how urgent and important people think it is to develop an for example a grid entirely powered by renewables um yeah so i think it would make a difference both both in terms of the structural things we've been talking about and in terms of attitudes you did make the point that people are behind wind power but of course offshore wind's been undermined by an environment organization and now we go challenge which is most unfortunate andy care i'm on record and i think in front of this committee is saying i'm less worried about where the gas comes from i'm much more interested in what we do with the gas and whether we can reduce our gas demand so i'm actually fairly relaxed about whether we frack or not i think the bigger issue for this committee is going to be the question of how we're going to deliver our low carbon heating going forward and clearly one of the options which has been tested in leads at the moment is whether you use hydrogen in the gas grid and to get the hydrogen you're likely to use methane and crack it to create hydrogen then have carbon capture and storage that is one of the options that's on offer at the moment it's flagged in the energy strategy um we're going to get to a point sometime in the next few years when we're going to have to make a decision as to whether we go down that route or the other route which is a localized energy system route and i think that's the thing the sort of thing that i would like to have seen more explicitly within the energy strategy which is these decision points about what are we going to do as a country are we going to go down one route which is going to rely on methane crack it use hydrogen in the gas grid as a way of delivering low carbon heating or are we going to go down a route which is very different from that around local energy low carbon local energy systems so so in one fracking has no future bluntly in the other fracking does have a future because actually it will support the methane the local source of methane which is then cracked to create the hydrogen and that's a think a decision which you know isn't going to be made now but that's the sort of thing that is flagged in the energy strategy which which we need to collectively as a as a country think about okay okay um mora school was a a final final supplement just really supplementary giving the the opposition to fracking from some of the panel members would they also advocate a closure or a drastic reduction in our oil and gas production from a climate change point of view? Richard Dixie obviously the industry talks about a long future 40 or 50 years for north sea oil and gas we would like to see a much shorter future so not tomorrow but 10 15 years and of course as part of that we're already working with the unions to talk about just transition and how we plan instead of have a crisis where an industry shuts and nothing is there we plan in a very careful way to make that transition so working with unions and workers and industry to have jobs for people to go to and the north sea industry is already in crisis losing lots of jobs so this is the time to be creating those alternatives and to make that transition happen but clearly as a country which has very strong climate aspirations it's going to be morally troublesome if we are very low carbon in future but still producing lots of oil and gas we sell to other people so they can create climate change okay okay is that content to leave it there for Greece on the back? Just to fly one thing that hasn't been discussed is the actual emissions from production and refining itself so the committee in climate change didn't allow us of the extra emissions that would simply come from the fracking process itself and without strong regulation to make sure you don't have fugitive emissions we're talking millions of tonnes of additional CO2 so that means additional millions of tonnes of CO2 that other sectors will have to reduce so whilst we increase fossil fuel extraction we have more emissions that means we'll have to go harder and faster transport in buildings agriculture and everywhere else I think that's one one element that's missing in all of this is those impacts because especially as we move beyond 2030 and emissions have been drastically reduced those residual emissions become quite important and when we're facing difficult decisions in other sectors we need to think about the long-term impacts of what we're locking ourselves into as we head to 2050. Thank you very much for your time this morning I think that's been very very useful I hope you found it useful I'm going to suspend briefly we'll resume in five minutes okay good morning welcome back to the environment climate change and land reform committee the third agenda item is for the committee to consider two petitions we will consider these in turn starting with PE1601 on European beavers in Scotland the committee considered the petition its meeting on the 25th of October 2016 and agreed to write to the cabinet secretary for environment climate change and land reform on the timescales for the decision on the legal status of beavers the decision to allow the beaver populations to remain in Scotland and to extend protection under the law as a european protected species was intimated to the committee on the 28th of November 2016 the committee has followed up the issue by writing again to the cabinet secretary on the timescales for when the protection will come into law as well as to what the interim measures are in place the petitioner has indicated that he sees no reason for the petition to continue now that a decision has been taken although he would like the committee to continue to scrutinise this work I refer members to the papers can I invite any comments Mark Ruskell convene I mean I would be content to close the petition in the understanding that you know there is an order that will be coming to this committee at some point what I would like to see is perhaps early sight of the strategic environmental assessment that covers that order when it when it comes to our committee so that we're aware of how the government's considered this is an issue well so we could write to the government along those lines to indicate we'd like early sight before the petition the instrument comes to the instrument yeah anyone else okay so are we content to close the petition with the caveats that we just discussed we are okay we are indeed okay we now turn to petition PE1615 on a state regulated licensing system for gamebird hunting in scotland this has been referred to the environment climate change and land reform committee following scrutiny by the public petitions committee which had taken evidence on this from stakeholders paper 4 outlines the previous scrutiny of the public petitions committee and suggests some possible options available to this committee members may of course wish to suggest alternative action in relation to the petition so I refer members to the papers and additional evidence received and I would invite any comments on this issue in favour of inviting inviting the petitioner to give evidence to the committee and with a view to then discussing whether we need to invite other stakeholders after that session okay other views Claudia Beamish thank you very much I take a slightly different view to to Kate but it's really in in view of the fact that we're awaiting information on the European research and I think it might be helpful to write to the cabinet secretary and ask when that is going to be coming and then once there's been a brief time for both the petitioner and the range of stakeholders to consider that information might in my view be an appropriate time to invite the stakeholders and petitioner to give evidence okay other views of Alexander Burnett minute first can I note my register interest relating to shooting the petition seeks to address wildlife crime and given a number of ongoing activities on this issue I'd propose dismissing the petition until such time on these other activities are exhausted the committee is still to report back on the wildlife crime report particularly on the effectiveness of current penalties and investigation protocols and I'd also contend that those who shoot already licensed by the extremely rigorous shotgun and firearms regime furthermore vicarious liability introduced just five years ago extends responsibility to those who would require the state licenses being proposed under the petition so unless for Scottish government has plans to regulate in this area I can see no reason to further consider the petition I would however support Claudia Beamish's intention to write to the cabinet secretary to clarify any further intentions in this area so to be clear are you saying we should dismiss the petition or do we consideration of it just for the record I think the petition should be dismissed okay okay other views Mark Ruskell certainly wouldn't favour dismissing the petition convener I think there are multiple issues that the petition considers wildlife crime is just one narrow aspect of it I would back the call to to write to the cabinet secretary to try and get more of a definition of the word shortly because I think the cabinet secretary has indicated that this international research on licensing will be produced shortly I think though that we do perhaps in that letter need to identify an indicative timescale for when this committee will consider this petition I wouldn't like us to get hung up on that definition of shortly I think if we were for example ready to go on this in March that would give the government time to respond and hopefully issue the comparative study that's going to be so important in our ongoing understanding of how licensing systems can or cannot work okay I must say I'd be tempted to go along with that myself. Other members at Angus MacDonald Yes thanks convener I would certainly agree with Mark Ruskell's suggestion I would certainly be against dismissing the petition at this stage that would seem to me to be extremely unfair and also clearly to write to the cabinet secretary for further information you are of course a member of the petitions committee Mr MacDonald anyone else got a view David Stewart Mark Ruskell makes a fair point I would certainly be totally opposed to closing the petition at this stage and I think I'm certainly useful to write to the cabinet secretary as well along the lines that we've discussed can I invite other views because they're cool with a you know a divergence of opinions here Emma Harper contact me about issues around this so I am in favour of exploring it further and either you know inviting the petitioner and or other stakeholders in the future to explore this further okay in terms of inviting people here I mean the reason behind that is because I'm keen to give this the attention I think it deserves but I would support the time frame that Claudia Beamish has set out okay so essentially to capture us as we have two proposals one is to dismiss the petition completely at this stage the other is to write to the Scottish Government seeking information with a view to informing the committee inviting the petitioner and potentially the stakeholders in front of us at a future date but not too far in the future does that summarise the two options I think given the mood of the committee then it would be sensible for for us as a committee to write to the cabinet secretary as everyone agrees and consider further options thereafter once we have a response from the Scottish Government. Are we agreed to that? Highlight in your final comments that I would want also to be sure that we highlight the need to receive the information from abroad as soon as possible and from previous experience just briefly about the issue around concerns about goose numbers for instance that I don't think we should be waiting for every country to respond before we get that information I only highlight that because it can be quite a long process and I think we need to take out Mark Ruskell's point we do need to act quite quickly. So are we content to proceed on that basis? I'm looking around the table we are content so to summarise we will write to the cabinet secretary seeking the information that we've discussed working to a timeframe that is roughly looking towards march as a point at which the committee will come to firm work conclusions upon the action that it wishes to take. Is that a good summary of where we're at? Sorry, Finlay Carson. We've done that in compass information on how current legislation is working with regards to the outcomes that the petitioner is looking for will we get further evidence from the just to regards to what's already in place? You mean the measures that Mr Burnett highlighted? How? So in that letter to the government we should expand and seek their views on how the other measures like general licence and etc. How are the current legislations being employed? How is viewed. That seems a reasonable point to me. I think we've agreed a way forward on that. At the next meeting of the committee on the 7th of February the committee will take evidence from stakeholders on the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan rpp3 on resource use, the water industry, the public sector, peatlands and land use. The committee will also consider draft letters to the commission for parliamentary reform and to the culture, tourism, Europe and external affairs committee. As agreed earlier we will now move into the private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed.