 Felly, wrth gwrd fwy fynd yng Nghymru, fi fydd iawn i'w cymaint myfymau Rolfol Cymru i'u eiffan ei gwith. Ffyo'r ystafell y gwirionedd yng nghymru, maen nhw'n efallai i chi bob tytrion gwirionedd y gyrir sydd o'r ffinsolaethu yn gyffredinol o bau. Yr ystafell ygafir yng Nghymru yw'r ystafell mwy o appetite o ffosffol yng Nghymru. Ar gyrfa i yr ystafell yng Nghymru, rwy'n gweithio i'i cyfrifio y cyfrifio a chyllwch ond parlimentary reform. Are all members agreed? That's agreed. Moving on to agenda item 2, the second item on our agenda this morning is to take evidence on the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan, our PP3. The draft plan was laid on 20 January 2017 and the Scottish Parliament has a period of 60 days to consent the document. The committee will be carrying out this scrutiny in collaboration with the three other committees last week focused on agriculture and forestry. This morning, we're going to look at climate change in relation to transport. I would like to welcome Professor Tom Rye, who is the director of TRI and the professor of transport policy at Edinburgh and Napier University. We've met before. David Beaton, the managing director of Urban Foresight. Sally Hinchcliff, an organiser of pedal on parliment. Phil Matthews, chair of the Transform Scotland. Dr Jason Moneos, associate professor in transport planning and geography at Edinburgh and Napier University. During the course of this morning, I would like to remind you that you don't have to push any buttons. The gentleman on your left and my right will be watching and will ensure that your microphone is activated. If you'd like to come in, I will try and get you all in if you indicate. You need to indicate to me or Steve Farrell, the clerk or indeed the deputy convener, Gail Ross, and we'll try and make sure we don't miss anyone. I think the most important thing is that you leave here at the end of this meeting is to feel that you've had a chance to feed in your thoughts. The first question this morning is going to come from John. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Can I have your views, please, on the modelling undertaken to support the transport element of the climate change plan, please? So who'd like to go first on that? You're all ducking responsibility, while you've got your thoughts. Tom, you… I could say a little bit. I'm not an expert on transport modelling. What I would say is that the transport model in terms of surface transport is based obviously on traffic forecasts. Those traffic forecasts are treated as something that can't be influenced, so they're sort of a given. I have indeed discussed with Transport Scotland at one of their modelling events that that isn't necessarily a very helpful approach, because one might wish to start from the point of view at what is the level of traffic that we wish to have and therefore what do we need to do to achieve that level of traffic. In addition, there is only one, as I understand it, from looking at the report and the supporting information. There is only one traffic forecast assumed, whereas if you look at the UK national traffic forecasts, there are five different scenarios in the UK national forecast. In relation to those, the Transport Scotland assumption, which I think is a 27 per cent growth between 2015 and 2030, is on the high side. I have some problems with that, which I've just summarised. I can't say anything else about the modelling techniques, because I don't know it's sufficient. Sally, you… Just one thing that stood out for me. I didn't really follow the full details of the model, but when I looked at the outline of it, they divided it up into mode of transport. Active travel was not considered at all, which made me wonder whether the impact of increased cycling and increased walking had actually been taken into account at all, because there didn't seem to be any evidence from the model as presented in the plan that it had been included. Does anyone else want to come in? I noticed that Tom's had a sort of subsequent thought about it. Sorry. You can disagree with me early on if you like. You may not get in again. Apologies. I was just to clarify Sally's point there. From talking to a modeler, my understanding is that the demand matrices, the overall demand in the model, is reduced depending on assumptions made about active travel. If, for example, the model says that there's 1,000 trips in total, but an assumption is made that then 30 per cent of those trips will be made by active travel, those trips are removed from what are called the demand matrices of the model, and so there are only 700 trips that are then modelled using motorised modes of transport. That's how it works, I believe, in simple terms. John, just before I bring you back in, Stuart's got a small question, I think, there. Well, small question and maybe a big answer. I just wondered to what extent this whole system has a feedback loop in that, if you decide what the traffic volume is going to be and you build to support it, you create an environment that almost creates that traffic. The question might be if there was an unconstrained view. In other words, your underlying assumption was that there were no constraints on how people could use various transport modes. Would the answers be different from the approach that I know we take, which is actually a constrained view? I just give as an example that the new forth crossing is designed to have a capacity that is essentially the same as the bridge that it is replacing, but the unconstrained demand for crossing the forth might be something quite different. It is perfectly possible, reasonable in public policy terms, to use what you implement as a constraint, but I just wonder how the feedback, and I do not have an answer, how the feedback loop between these two things working and is it working the right way, and is more to the point in relation to what we are talking about climate change here, are we using in a way that is helpful to the agenda that we are discussing today? Jason, on traffic planning, is that something that you would feel you would want to come in on? No, I do not really have any to add to what you have said on that. David? Well, I think maybe taking a step back and then coming to the point. Broadly speaking, a robust evidence-based approach to exploring some of these challenges and coming up with answers to them is a good thing, and I think that that is worthy of note. I think the issues of growing transport are clearly linked to anticipated growth in the population and the economy, and again, when government policy is planning for that future, it is important that transport policy mirrors that as well. I think that it is a good point. If you build it, they will come type approach. We build more roads, we will get more traffic, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is also the constrained economy aspect of not building these things, which is the continuing tension. One of the things that the climate change plan addresses is that there will be some catalytic measures that will have a significant impact on trips, things like low emissions zones, that we will hopefully bring about the transformation that we would like to see in the future. It is a joined up way of looking at some of those challenges and opportunities. If I could ask a wee question, low emissions zones are about pollution rather than climate change. Primarily, is that correct in your understanding? The motivations are largely driven by air quality, but the consequence could be that there are fewer journeys within cities that have a climate change benefit. Sally wants to come in. I will take Tom. I would like to go back to John to develop this line of thought. We are in Scotland planning to increase the road capacity quite significantly with the A9 dualling and so on. Every model seems to show that that increases motorised transport. Equally, the more cycling infrastructure, for instance, you build, the more cycling you get. It works both ways. It is a sword that you can use in both directions. Tom, do you want a specific point on low emissions zones? The low emissions zones that have been implemented elsewhere in Europe have led to a faster renewal of the local fleet, local vehicle fleet, than areas outside the low emissions zones, which of course has had an impact on fuel efficiency and therefore climate change, as well as on local pollution. They have that benefit in specific regard to the question about assumptions and constrained demand and so on, with regard to modelling. Although there has been a tradition, obviously, of attending to model on the basis of predicting the amount of traffic and then providing for it, although I accept Mr Stevenson's point that sometimes we will model for constrained demand as well. Our modelling tools still are not as sophisticated as they could be. Perhaps they will never be sufficiently sophisticated. Therefore, that is why I advocate the approach of thinking about scenarios. Where would we like to be and therefore what do we need to do to get to where we want to be? There is a danger otherwise that we do end up in this kind of loop that Mr Stevenson alluded to. John, can I just bring John in here, because there is a sort of second thread to this? About the transport section of the plan and the scrutiny that organisations like yourself and Parliamentarians are obliged to give it, given that the transport modelling was influenced by a search carried out by Consultants' Element Energy for Transport Scotland, which was only published last Tuesday, can we meaningfully scrutinise that plan? Who would like to lead on that? Are you all comfortable that you have not had a chance to scrutinise it or do you all feel that you have had a chance to scrutinise it? It is rather a leading question, I think. Go for it, then. Tom, go for it. I am referring to the report on the potential for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle technology. That is a very good question. The report last week by Element Energy— Yes, that one. I made an attempt to scrutinise it. How did you get on? The Element Energy report, if we are talking about the same report, the one that I read, was looking at the potential of low-emission vehicles and how big the market for low-emission vehicles could be. It is on this basis that some of the predictions about the impacts of low-emission vehicles and the climate change plan have been made. I was a little bit concerned because the Element Energy report for Transport Scotland says that in-kind and cash support of about £1,000 per vehicle purchase will lead to, by 2030, a 40 per cent market share for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles. A 40 per cent total will be low-emission by 2030, based on the idea that it would give people a combination of incentives, say free parking, but also maybe some cash incentives to buy such a vehicle. Similar work that was carried out by the same consultants for the Climate Change Commission predicted that by 2030, for the UK as a whole, it would require £3,000 of cost support in-kind and cash to achieve a 60 per cent market share for the same type of vehicles. I am not saying that either is wrong, but I think that it would have been helpful as if the climate change plan and, indeed, Element Energy's work that was published last Tuesday could have had a range of predictions of take-up of these low-emission vehicles, which I think would be in line with other research that has been done. There are so many imponderables in the take-up of low-emission vehicles that it would be safer to say, well, we will have a kind of low take-up scenario and what does that do to our climate change targets and our achievement of our climate change targets versus a high take-up scenario. I do not see that in the work at the moment. Also, it would have been good to have a little bit more comparison or refer reference to what has actually been achieved in those countries that do have a high level of take-up of electric vehicles, and I did not totally see that in Element Energy's report, but I did not have much time to give it full scrutiny. That is interesting in the sense that I am not noticing anyone else putting their hand up. David, do you want to come in? I am a little bit sympathetic, because I know how much work has gone on behind the scenes, and I know that the report perhaps does not entirely reflect the sum of all the analysis and work that has taken place to reach the conclusions and the points that have been made in the climate change plan. An important point to consider is the rate of technological change in this area, and the fact that battery prices for electric vehicles are radically decreasing and are expected to decrease exponentially over the next few years. We do not really know how quickly that will happen. Certainly, the Government does not have any direct control over that. It is very much dependent on industry expertise for that. We also do not know how markets will develop. A lot of the incentives to promote widespread adoption of ultra-low-mission vehicles are not necessarily within the gift of national government. They are largely the responsibility of local authorities and perhaps other commercial partners that can incentivise adoption of these vehicles. It is a very complex area. I know from doing work in that area that you can come up with a forecast one day, and six months later everything will have completely changed. I have some sympathy for that. I will explore a wee bit more. You just said that the batteries for these cars are increasing in value at a rapid rate. I wonder how sustainable this whole idea of going electric cars is. If it goes worldwide and 90 per cent of the cars in the world are going to be battery-powered, are there enough elements in the world to produce the batteries, the nickel and the cadmium and whatever else is used? Are we going down a blind alley here and we are going to run out of these basic elements to produce the battery? That is a huge question. I do not want to pre-empt the answers. I am just going to say that we have a whole tranche on questions on battery technology later in the session. It is very interesting. I have a life I made to be very rude and say that I am not going to let them answer that question until we get to that section, just so that I can keep it straight. John, do you want to come back on it? I am sorry, but I am still going to be flogging on about this plan because our job is to scrutinise and explain to others where we get with things. Do you have concerns about the constraints placed on the model by policy makers, the lack of detail about policy measures that were rejected and the reasons for choosing to do so? If we can throw one into the mix there, Professor, I talked about where we would like to be. An aspiration for many people is a 20-mile-an-hour limit on residential areas. I do not know whether you could comment on that perhaps as an example. Who would like to lead on that? Sally. To answer the first part about the lack of detail in some cases, one of the things that we were noticing is that there are very few figures in the report compared with the last iteration in 2013, which, for each measure, had how much reduction was expected and how much it would cost. That seems to have gone largely from the report that was published in this iteration. Some of the reasons that I found particularly on active travel, which seemed to talk only about walking journeys under one mile, seemed to completely ignore the issue of the two to five-kilometre journeys, which is the area where you can see the most growth in bikes and the most potential for a switch to active travel. We have modelled potentially quite significant savings to carbon emissions, but it would be really interesting to see the Government figures on that because this is just calculations that we are doing as ourselves. It is not anything official. It felt very undetailed compared with the 2013 iteration. Phil, you would like to come in and then Jason. First of all, I will echo a lot of what Sally has just said. The lack of detail, lack of quantification of individual policies and proposals is disappointing. Take a step back first of all. As with energy, as with waste, with transport, the way in which you should approach that is to think about hierarchy of actions. First is to reduce the need to travel. Second is to look for the right modes, the more sustainable modes. The last bit is to look for more benign technical fixes and so on down the line. It seems that this whole approach to transport is very much front-loaded on the techyfix electric vehicle side of things, which is certainly going to be very important, but it is not the whole picture. Our frustration is just that, as you said, there is a 27 per cent increase predicted in road travel and so on. There are all sorts of other Government targets around cycling, where we are not seeing any progress at all towards a 10 per cent target. There are all sorts of other Government aspirations about public health around social inclusion and so on. We seem very much fixated on the electric vehicle side of things, rather than measures that would help to deliver better places to deliver more sustainable cities. As Sally was saying, there is a lack of detail and a lack of putting that in the context of the wider Government aspirations, socioeconomic and environmental aspirations. Jason, I would like to bring you in, if I may. I agree with those two previous comments on building on them a little bit. A lot of the policy measures proposed here have not been decided yet that we are going to try to negotiate emissions standards and negotiate excess duty differentials, negotiate biofuils policies. We are going to look into low emission zones and see if we can potentially have a pilot in 2018. So a lot of these things actually have not been decided yet. If you have not done that, then you cannot model them because you do not know if you are actually going to do them or not. There is probably a link between the lack of detail and lack of quantitative figures and targets. That is linked to the fact that some of these policies have not actually been agreed or decided yet. Therefore, how can you even model them? David, do you want to come in on that? To quickly address that point, I think that it does come down to what Government can say will definitely happen. Government cannot say we will definitely have a low emission zone because that is a locally administered decision. Government can encourage that but it is not in a place to make it happen. I think that in terms of the transport hierarchy, obviously it is an underpinning principle to all transport planning and transport policy, but this is a climate change plan. When you are looking at how you shave decarbonisation of transport, you have to be realistic about the contribution that different modes can make. Cycling is not going to bring about a radical decarbonisation of transport anytime soon. However, if you look at it, I think that it is over 60 per cent of journeys in Scotland or by car. Naturally, if you want to make a serious dent in carbon emissions, you are going to have to concentrate on that mode to a large extent. I think that that is true, but if you are basing your forecast, sorry. Phil, do come in and then I am going to go to Sally. If you could just catch my eye just so that I can try to manage everyone's expectations, that would be fine. I think that that is right. As I said, I was not discounting the role that electric vehicles can play. I think that, as has been alluded to as well, the more traffic growth increases and part of that is based on transport decisions that are taken now in terms of road building, etc., over investment in other modes and so on. The higher rate of demand growth that you have for road transport, the more challenging those targets become. The two are related. Decisions made and infrastructure spend, decisions made on how transport is managed when cities directly feed into demand for road traffic. It is also true, as people are saying. We are not sure exactly when electric vehicles and ultra-low emission vehicles technologies are really going to kick in in a big way. We have major air quality challenges now. We have congestion challenges now with all sorts of things now. We seem to be basing things on things that may happen somewhere down the line, 10 or 15 years down the line, rather than action, which we should be thinking about now. I think that the Government should be about joined-up thinking. Of course, that is about climate change, but it is also about delivering policy in the round and thinking about how things fit together. If climate change action is not necessarily also meeting other targets that are good around public health, then that is something that the climate change plan should be thinking about in some way as well. That is a very good link into the next question, but I know that Sally wants to come in briefly, if I may. Just to say, a large number of 60 per cent of journeys are by car, but some of those are very short journeys. If we are just going to give up and say, well, actually let people drive under two miles, let us just leave it like that, then we are digging a big hole for ourselves, and electric cars have got further to go if you like to save us. Whereas we can start to build for bicycles now, bikes are here now, and it is completely under the control of the Scottish Government, so it is something that we can get going with. Further down the line, better low-emissions vehicles can come in and pick up the slack for the longer journeys. I have made a brief reference to the 20-mile an hour. It seems to me to be that it is more of the same. Do we have to look at the mitigation rather than trying to change patterns of behaviour? I wonder if the 20-mile an hour is an example of something that we are at air quality. That is almost a different question, but I am happy to have very brief answers, if I may, because I would quite like to go on to this whole issue of target setting, if I may. Sorry. Tom, do you want to lead? The 20-mile an hour's issue is something that is more related to safety, obviously, and local traffic and may not have that much of an impact on climate change, simply because it does not have much of an impact on fuel consumption. If anything, it possibly pushes up fuel consumption, but it really depends on where the traffic redistributes to or whether it absolutely reduces the total number of vehicle trips. In terms of your wider question about, is there enough detail in here? Can we understand how the modelling has been done? I would not expect a huge amount of detail in a strategic document, but I would expect more detail in the pender season, maybe links to data sets and so on, so that we can see how the working has been carried out. I would also expect a little bit more detail about the implementability of many of the proposals, the policies and proposals that are listed here, because it is not only you can make an assumption that they are implemented and they will have an effect, but then there is also the issue, can you implement them? To be honest, quite a lot of those things that are listed have serious implementation difficulties and it would be helpful in scrutinising the document if that could also be looked at or raised. Unless everyone has anything specifically different to that, I would like to leave that there if I may, John. I would like to go to John. You have got some question on targets, I think, that leads neatly into what was discussed earlier. Okay. Thanks, convener. If I can link two things together, i.e., looking back and looking forward, you can maybe combine them because I think they are linked to each other. I mean, how do you feel we have done since the previous plan, RPP 2, have we really achieved what we should have achieved? And then linked to that, really, are the targets that are being set realistic for the next 15 years up to 2032? Are they overambitious? Are they underambitious? Or is it not as simple as that? Phil, you were mentioning targets, so I'm afraid you're coming in first. Right, okay. I think, looking back all the way to 1990, transport is the one major area where we've seen very little reduction in emissions. That's obviously very disappointing because, as I was saying before, it's a large part of our emissions, so we should be seeing significant reductions, and the significant reductions in transport would actually lead to, I would argue, a whole range of wider benefits for Scotland, health benefits, socioeconomic benefits, environmental benefits as well. So I think that's been poor. In terms of the targets, looking forward, you know, the 30-odd per cent by the early 2030s, I think that's a reasonable ambition. It's a realistic ambition for the sector, but as people have said already, I think it's very much predicated on a range of unknowns. We have technological unknowns, we have the whole issue of European standards and, you know, the fact that a lot of the action is predicated on action, which is completely up with the control of the Scottish Parliament. I'd say that we also have the issue now of a Trump presidency and a threat potentially to the international framework around climate change and questions about what that may do as well. So again, I'd say that's a laudable aspiration for transport, but given that it's predicated on a few actions that are up with the control of the Scottish Parliament, can we be sure that that will deliver? Are there not a whole load of other things that we could be focusing on in Scotland under the control of the Scottish Government, local authorities and so on, which could deliver greater benefits more quickly and will actually be more deliverable, more certain than what's in the plan? I mean, can I just clarify if that's all right? I mean, you said, you know, our reduction over the last, whatever, 16 years, 15 years hasn't been that great, and that's really a combination of things, is that right? Because actually the per-vehicle, they've become more efficient, but the demand's gone up the other way, and the net combination is not great. It goes back to the point that I was making before about the hierarchy of actions. So I think that because we haven't focused on reducing demand, we've focused on the end of it. Yes, as you say, we have had gains in efficiency, but they've been essentially balanced by growth in traffic. And presumably going forward then there's going to be again a combination of issues, some going up, some going down, kind of thing. Well, if there's a 20 per cent growth in road transport, then that obviously mitigates any improvement gains that are from substitution of electric vehicles. I mean, the lower that growth curve, the more savings you get down the line, obviously and so on. So I think that the two are very much related. I'd like to bring in Tom on that, because I'm sure you're going to have some views there. I agree with what Phil has said. I think that one important point to remember is that we have a lot of end loading of these emissions savings. So the slope of the curve, if you like, or the shape of the curve is not particularly helpful, because that still means that a lot of carbon is going to be admitted. Even if we hit the target by 2030, still a lot of carbon is going to be emitted in the earlier years between now and 2030. So the total amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere is greater than if we adopt more effective measures more quickly. The second point is, and it relates to all the uncertainties here, given that there are so many uncertainties, particularly about the policies that are adopted in the CCP and most of those, as Phil was saying, are out with the direct control of the Scottish Parliament. There are so many risks here of non-achievement, it would be useful if there were—perhaps it is there and I've just missed it, but if it isn't, it would be useful if there is more discussion of what the risks are to some of these key policies not being achieved and therefore what impact that would have on the targets and what we could do instead and what impact that would have. If there's a lot of risks in there, it's better to be cautious, is it? I think that we're examining the fact that we're needing, from what I've heard from Phil and from you, Tom, is that it's risk analysis that we need to be doing and then targeting where we can make a difference rather than hoping that we can make a difference if it's not too risky. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I think—more risk analysis, yeah, effectively, and then that would also drive the choice of measures because if we think that there's a very high risk that, for example, are leaving the EU is going to have an impact on our use of EU emissions standards, then we should analyse the risk of that and what we could do instead. David, do you want to come in on that? Yeah, just in terms of the question about how we're doing and perhaps that naturally leads into what more we can do or is happening, clearly I think there's sort of agreement that transport is perhaps the underperforming sector when it comes to climate change mitigation and there's far more that can be done, but there have been some improvements since RPP2, certainly in the space where we work most around ultra-low emission vehicles, there has been a significant increase in sales, so in 2015 sales of electric vehicles were equivalent to the previous four years combined and 2016 sales look set to outstrip those sales numbers as well. So things are going quite well, there's also a comprehensive network of charging infrastructures to support those, there's more charging points per household in Scotland than anywhere outside London, apart from north-east England and Northern Ireland, so things are going well in that respect as well. I'm going to let John come back in to see if, with an additional question, we can bring in some of the other elements. Yeah, I suppose I take the point that we could do with more analysis and more figures and all the rest of it, but somewhere along the line we've got to come up with a figure and say, well, this is what transport's got to deliver over the next 15 years. I suppose my question is if that overall figure should be more aggressive and just go for a stronger figure, even though there's a lot of risk around it, but because then that would make transport look like they're contributing or are we being, the Government being more cautious and saying, well, really we're not all that optimistic about transport, therefore that's why we're having a lower limit. Who'd like to come in? David, you'd like to say? Yeah, I think the word double-edged sword's already been used today, and I think targets can be that, so they can be very useful in sort of motivating investment and focusing effort, but they can also create a situation where you spend your life defending the kind of perception that you're not progressing fast enough to hit that target, so setting targets that you know are unachievable is probably something that I would caution against. I don't think there's any point in grandstanding, and certainly we've seen that happen quite a lot in this space. A lot of Governments have set targets that they've known to be unachievable from the outset. I think it also comes down to what you can actually influence as well, and so many of these things are outside the influence, direct influence of Government that it makes it really, really hard to say, you know, this intervention or this measure will lead to this direct outcome. Do you think that that's specifically more the case in transport that more things are out with the Government's control, whereas, say, in forestry or agriculture, maybe we've got more under our control? Yeah, because it comes down to human behaviour a lot of the time, doesn't it? And, you know, that's where it starts to get very complicated. Yes, that's me, yes. Okay, Sally, do you want to come in on this target situation? Just very quickly on the human behaviour point, is that if we concentrate our efforts on reducing increasing efficiency, then there's always a countervailing pressure that the cheaper it gets to drive, the less incentive there is not to. So, if that's our only tool that we've got, then it's one that weakens as we use it, whereas if we're using other measures as well, you don't get the same countervailing force if you like of it. Basically, if your electric car costs pennies to run, then why not use it? Stuart, do you want to mention something on targets? Because I'd like to bring in Tom and then I'd like to move on to my own. I just wanted to pick up on that tiny wee point. Isn't the evidence that in pricing of travel that it's the change in the pricing of travel that influences people, not the level of pricing? Particularly as we've seen oil costs fluctuate, it's at the point of change we see a change in behaviours, but it doesn't seem to be very much evidence that it's sustained once the price stabilises almost at whatever level it's at. Is that a correct or reasonable or incorrect thing to say? In other words, the solution may not lie simply in the idea that it's pricing. Tom? I think you're talking about the idea of long-term versus short-term elasticities. The long-term and short-term elasticities, i.e. the responsiveness of behaviour to a change in price, are very different. In the short term in particular, the price of fuel for people who don't have much choice is not going to have much influence on how they travel. In the longer term, a big impact to the price of fuel is to influence choice of vehicle, but also to influence the choice of where people live and how they choose to travel. If you look at North American cities, you were talking about feedback loops earlier. There's clearly a feedback loop between land use and fuel price in North American cities. They use a huge amount of fuel for transport per capita in comparison with European cities. I think there we see a bit of a longer term effect feeding into the transport system, a longer term effect of fuel price. It's a policy decision because it's driven by tax. Could I say something about the target question that Mr Mason raised? Yes, just briefly, if you may. Just very briefly, should the target be more aggressive? Probably, but I think that it would be extremely helpful if there were a range of targets and aligned with each target an explanation of what would have to be done to achieve each target. It becomes more transparent that if you have a more aggressive target, you have to do more. It's easier to justify the choice of policy measures and targets that you've finally gone for. If we wanted to achieve a more aggressive target, we would need a more complex and interventionist set of measures. For a variety of reasons to do with politics, to do with implementability, whatever, we decided that those are not acceptable. I think that it would be a better way of going about it, that range of targets approach, but perhaps I would say that because I'm an academic and I like that analytical approach. Politicians would like that approach because it would give them all a chance to input and say what they want, how they want to achieve it. I'm going to leave the targets there because I think that that's a very important point, but I'd like to move on to demand management and bring in Peter, if I may, on that. I demand management. We've all heard that it's mostly car journeys, so it's journeys by car. We all know that most cars have only one person in them, most of the time. I just wonder how much could Scottish Government get involved in trying to change human behaviour, encourage more car-sharing schemes, et cetera, or whatever other ideas the panel might have in that respect about lowering the demand for journey by car. The demand for car travel is basically driven by the cost of car travel and the time that it takes to travel by car compared to other modes. There are other factors that come in there, but basically it's the cost and the journey time. If it's faster and cheaper by car and slower and more expensive by other modes or a combination of those two, you'll take the car mostly, particularly if you have free parking or cheap parking close to where you're going. Could you manage that demand for car? If you want to manage that demand for car, you have to influence those factors, essentially. If you want to make a big impact on demand for car travel, that's what you have to get at. Are there ways that you can do that? Yes. Modelling that was carried out by the UK DFT in 2004 for a nationwide congestion charging scheme suggests that that would have a very significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions from transport, but I don't think that it's politically acceptable. Car-sharing can play a role but a small role, to be honest, because car-sharing mostly for the majority of users doesn't have that impact on time or cost. For people who are travelling a long way or have high petrol costs, it's something that can help them, but that's at the margins of demand management. One thing that I would also like to draw the committee's attention to, which hasn't been mentioned yet, is land use. The patterns of land use that we're pursuing in most parts of Scotland at the moment are basically leading to people living further away from where they need to be and further away from each other. Part of the demand for transport is, obviously, journey distance. Even if we improve the fuel efficiency and carbon efficiency of our vehicles, if we're living further away and having to travel further greater distances, that will offset the savings from the fuel efficiency. That's part of the reason why we haven't really made much impact in the overall CO2 emissions from transport. I think that we should not forget land use, and it was slightly disappointing that that's not in the CCP. The final point that I'd like to make about demand management is really about freight and van travel. We have somebody here who's more expert on that than I am, so perhaps I could defer to them if they want to say anything about managing demand in the freight sector. Some of the biggest growth in traffic has been not in personal car travel but it's been in freight. We're coming on to freight, so I'm going to cut that one if I may at that stage and bring in Sally because I know she wants to say something. Just to reiterate the point that I made that one can, by changing the way we arrange our streets and our cities, you can make other modes of transport more attractive for the shorter journeys. That includes safe, separated infrastructure for cyclists, better design for pedestrians, and just reducing the permeability of towns and cities to the motor vehicle. Rather than being able to drive through the centre of town, you drive to the edge and maybe go on by another mode, or you drive around the ring road to get to where you're going rather than trying to filter through maybe a medieval street plan, which was never designed for it. That then starts to change the—if you have to drive five miles to get to the other side of town but you could cycle or walk a mile—the car stops becoming the obvious choice. That works as well for small towns, big cities. Again, it's looking at the last mile, the last few miles of a journey, even if you're having to do the bulk of it by car. Can I just push you a wee bit on that if I may, Sally? Just so I understand, because it seems to me that the more we can keep services within areas where people are living, it makes more sense. Is that the thrust of what you're saying? Shop should be there, the post office, the bank, all the services that people need should be within the settlement that they're living in, if it's big enough to justify that? That is part of it as well, but also to say that you're not encouraging through traffic past these service areas, so that basically when the centre of town should be for people to stop and do things, it should not be a transport route, basically. Can I just follow up a wee bit more? We spoke up with a 20-mile limit. I assume, Sally, that you would welcome 20-mile limits in the middle of towns because a cyclist will feel safer. Traffic will be running a bit slower and it will encourage people onto the bikes. That would be another driver to do that. For me, a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit cuts child pedestrian death rates. As far as I'm concerned, that's argument enough for them. The benefit to cyclists is actually slightly marginal, but it cuts the—just a simple thing—everyone follows their satnaff now. If the satnaff is calculating on speed limits, it will tend to send people around the edges of town rather than through the middle of them. It could have an impact on keeping people out of town centres, which would improve things. Gosh, that would be a nice thought that we wouldn't meet lorries trying to squeeze through places where they shouldn't be. Does anyone else want to do it briefly on demand management? We have got quite a lot of questions and I'd like to bring Stuart in with the next one, but anyone wants to push on demand management? Okay, I'll bring Stuart in on the next question. Thank you. I really want to try and explore what actions can be taken that will actually lead to model shift. What I've taken from quite a few of the comments most recently from Sally is that the key thing that will make a difference is to make car transport less attractive to people. Politically and policy terms, that's fundamentally difficult. Reducing the national speed limit from 60 to 50, making people drive further around towns so they want to go in other ways, etc. In other words, disincentives. Is that how the panel will see it? Phil? I think that we have to bite the bullet. I think that there are two sides to it. As Tom and others have alluded to, of course it's about people make decisions, usually quite logical decisions based on convenience and cost and so on. It's about how you change that. The most convenient choices people make are actually the more sustainable and lower carbon choices as well. I think that Sally's made some points about cycling. Part of it might be speed limit, part might be segregated cycleways and just much greater provision for cycling along the lines of many European cities, many of which end up with the cities being much more attractive places to live in and for people to invest in and so on in terms of a bigger picture. I think that workplace parking levies, some other measures like that which impose some costs on the road traffic side things would be important. I think that the other thing that we haven't really talked about is buses. Now, buses are a major mode of transport, particularly in cities, a more socially inclusive mode of transport. We've seen bus patronage fall by about 10 per cent in the last five years. There's lots that local authorities and the Scottish Government could do in terms of bus priority measures, integrated ticketing and all sorts of other things like that, which would help buses in themselves and also integrate them with other modes or the system that was walking and cycling predominantly as well. I think that we have to accept that there need to be some restrictions on cars, whether it's low emission zones, whether it's workplace parking levies, things like that. We also need to look at how we make the other modes more attractive so that cycling actually becomes a pleasurable thing, not a rather scary thing you do on the road with all sorts of other modes. Can I just come in? Yes. I'm hearing a lot of the positive changes that we can make to make alternatives more attractive, but isn't it really in practice that, while that is necessary to get people out of their cars, it won't make a whitter difference if people are satisfied with the car as the mode of transport? If you look at Edinburgh, where it has spent more on cycling provision than other Scottish cities, we are seeing some increase in cycle use compared to other cities. The enhancement of that is right, but it has to be an integrated package. It has to be at thinking, as Sally was saying before, how you create the situation where the cycle route is the shorter, safer, more attractive route, the car route and the parking provision and everything else is more expensive, it takes longer to travel by car and so on, combined with faster bus services, etc., other alternatives, trams, etc., urban rail that's actually useful and so on as well. I agree that a lot of people are wedded to cars and maybe it needs some bold action, but I think that we can see elsewhere in Europe how that integrated package of bold action has actually delivered much higher uptake of cycling, much higher uptake of pedestrians. Disincentive and incentive for others? It's a balanced package, yes. Sorry, I want to bring in David. I almost feel like I should apologise for sending pro-car and I'm not. I'm actually pro-climate and I think that we kind of get trapped in being anti-car as being a solution to some of this. I think that we need to be realistic about the fact that 100% increase in the number of kilometres cycled in Scotland would only be the equivalent of about 1% of all cars in Scotland being ultra-low-emission vehicles. In terms of contribution to climate change ambitions, I think that we need to be absolutely realistic about that. I think that we also need to attribute the fact that when you're looking at CO2 emissions you're looking at sort of 79% of those emissions being journeys that are greater than five kilometres, so typically wouldn't be cycled. I think about 60% of them are greater than 10 kilometres, so typically wouldn't be taken by public transport and buses. I think that when it comes to buses we also need to recognise that actually buses are a major source of air quality issues in many cities as well, so again it's not a simple straightforward answer that modal shift is a solution to climate change or air quality improvements. Clearly need to make progress across decarbonising all forms of transport and encouraging more active and sustainable transport as well. I absolutely agree with you about radical measures and things like low-emission zones will bring about radical changes and behaviours. There is a lot of enthusiasm around things like workplace parking levies, so they are the sticks that can be used to encourage or to make transformative transformation happen. I think the committee would take that bicycling isn't going to be the saving grace as far as emission concerns, but there is a huge health implication, which the committee is also minded for that the bicycling will improve health. On that I see Sally about, I hope not to disagree with me, but Sally. What I was going to say is that a cycling also unlocks other forms of transport, so to get to Edinburgh today from rural Dumfries I cycled, took a bus and a train rather than drive to the station. A short journey by bike makes a rural bus more effective. I think you have to remember that places like Glasgow, 50% of households have no access to a car, so we are not punishing in many ways by, effectively, we subsidise the car in ways that we don't really notice by things like free parking. We are actually imposing costs on the people who have no choice. We are also obliging people to use cars who maybe don't want to use them. Most children would rather walk or cycle to school, but because of the issues around danger and distance and so on, are not able to do that. I know that it is difficult for politicians to say that they are attacking cars, but what you are actually doing is rebalancing things and giving people the choice and also giving the people who don't have access to a car some of the benefits that the car driver up to now has had. I am just going to move this on, if I may, to low-emission vehicles, because I think this is quite critical. Some of the issues on bus improvement have been answered. I was interested in one comment about cycling and bus use. Buses, we know that they have little space for wheelchairs, pushchairs. How do you get that to work properly? Should every bus stop have a cycle rack where people can leave their cycles or do buses have to be fitted with some way of people taking their bicycles on the bus? Sally? Certainly in the Netherlands you would see bike parking at every bus stop and some of the bus interchanges will have more bike parking than you see at a UK train station. That is one way of doing it. Other places bikes can be carried on buses either on racks outside. I think most rural buses are very empty and with a little bit of flexibility you could probably get one or two bikes into a bus, as long as they give way to wheelchairs and pushchairs. There are ways and means, but we need to do a lot more bus. Bike and bus is difficult. I have invested in a folding bike to enable myself to do that kind of journey. I could not do it otherwise. Can I also ask about bus passes? We are going to have a consultation on bus pass eligibility. The suspicion is that the eligibility will increase from 60 to an older age. What impact will that have on carbon and people's use of buses? Bill, do you want to come in on that? I do not want to come in on that. I do not really have an answer to that. I think that there may be research out there about it, but I do not know about that. Just on the use of bike and the interchange, I think that it is about creating a system seamless interchange, part of it is about information provision as well, using phones, etc., so that people can know when buses are coming and make that seamless journey. I think that there is a real issue with bikes on trains, particularly in rural Scotland as well, in terms of very limited capacity. The fact that you have to book weeks in advance to get a bike and a trade and so on, that is something that needs to be looked at for railways as well as for buses. As Sally said, all the things that we see elsewhere in Europe show that they can be done in terms of decent bike provision at bus stops and at railway stations. It is absolutely essential. Tom, do you want us to come in? Some research that we did at Edinburgh Napier, when the national minimum entitlement of a free fare was introduced, we found, and this has been corroborated by other research, that the wealthier car owning elderly were to some extent leaving their car at home, particularly for trips into town, because they had more time and thought it was a bit of a bargain to go on a bus for nothing. So one would suppose that if that is taken away from some of them, then they will revert back to using their car for those types of trips. However, there will be relatively short trips. Therefore, in terms of the overall sum of the carbon impact, it would not be enormous, but it would not be a positive impact. It would be working away from the targets. Does anyone else want to come in? I would quite like to move on to the lower mission side of it, if I may. It was just really to ask you all whether you think that the Scottish Government, the estimated uptake of ultra-low-emission vehicles, if you think that the estimates of that are realistic and achievable. That is for both private and for freight as well. David, do you want to? It is our best guess. It is a good way of looking at it. It reflects a lot of forecasts that have been made at the current time. As I mentioned earlier, that is an evolving understanding of how quickly markets will progress. There are two ways of looking at it. One is what is the industry intelligence telling us in terms of the rate of diffusion of those vehicles into the market? How quickly do we expect people to buy them? How quickly do we expect technology to advance to get to a price point and a level of functionality that will appeal to private and commercial fleets? The other is what do we need to achieve for emissions reduction targets and quality improvements? Unfortunately, they are not exactly the same answer. That is a real challenge. From my understanding of other outlooks, it is ambitious and sitting alongside the climate change plan cannot be taken in isolation. Transport Scotland's switched on Scotland electric vehicle road map has ambitions that are highly ambitious, perhaps go even further than the climate change plan in terms of the 2050, 2040 and 2030. I think that there is sufficient level of ambition in Scotland on this agenda, but ambition is one thing that action is separate. We still need to join the plan to make everything happen. We have talked quite a lot about private use. When a part of my question was on freight, I wondered if we could develop a bit. Does anyone have any views on the freight and how to do that? Jason? On the freight and logistics specialist that Tom was referring to earlier, hence some of my lack of answers to some of the lack of jumping in on some of the other questions. I don't know if we're going to talk later. There's a lot of mention of consolidation centres in here. I don't know if you have a specific question on that, but that's certainly part of it. I won't get into too much detail now if you want to talk about that in a separate question, but that's certainly related to the use of electric vehicles. We've seen in the statistics actually a lot of the growth in freight vehicles is in actual LGVs, in the white vans. That's happening now anyway, but certainly if you're looking at more use of consolidation centres, having the HDVs coming to the consolidation centre and then distributing from there in vans, there's obviously the potential there for a lot of them to be electric, also things like cargo bikes as well, other forms of that kind of level of delivery, depending on how far it is in the distance and so on. There's a bit of an issue with it's very important with LGVs growing already and potentially growing more if we go for a more consolidation centre approach. It is very important that a lot of them be electric because that's actually going to potentially have more numbers of vehicles on the street, maybe smaller vehicles, but larger numbers and potentially they're not always full, so that could actually have a counter intuitive result of having a lot more vehicles in the city streets. So that's an issue from congestion, point of view, et cetera anyway, but certainly in terms of emissions you want them to be many of them to be low emission as possible. There's been a lot of research on a lot of electric, use of electric vans and cargo bikes and other things like that in other countries and it certainly seems achievable that you can get that level of take up, but again there's so many unknowns as we know. It's very hard to predict whether it will happen or not because so much of it is, it's just behaviour, but I think it's reasonable. Yeah, well it's just really interesting this week because there's been an article issued and it was in relation to what's happening in Norway and the uptake of electric vehicles there which seems to be the leader, almost a lot of countries in terms of what's happening and I think it was something like about nearly 40% of newly registered cars there are electric vehicles and it's really just to ask you a bit about the incentives that are offered there. I mean what is it that's happening there that we could be doing here, that we should be doing here and I think even just from direct experience of having a family member even trying to purchase an electric car it just seems that here, I mean it's so complex and that's not fully explained to you when even you go in to purchase these things in terms of this low rapid fast charge, how these points are split up across the country and sometimes it feels a bit like pots of money are made available to install electric charging points without an overall strategic picture of how that fits in, so it'd be just be interested to get your thoughts on that. Tom? Yeah, so I'm anticipating that there might be some discussion in Norway, I had a bit of a look at some of the literature on what's happened there and maybe David knows more than this because it's not my area of expertise but I thought it was a good idea to swat up on it and as far as I can understand the Norwegian purchase incentive package consists of zero purchase tax which knocks off 11, about 10,000 quid, plus they don't have to pay VAT on an electric vehicle, they get reduced road tax, free public parking, they don't have to pay tolls which are quite, there's quite a lot of toll systems in Norway, they get free charging at public charging points as well but strangely there was no, until very recently, no national strategy on charging infrastructure so that was all a bit ad hoc in Norway but now there is a strategy, oh and they get free access to bus lanes as well, so all that together reduces the cost premium of an electric vehicle to about a thousand euros, well 900 quid, so David does that sound about right to you but I was then just going to compare that to what's in the report in the CCP report in terms of the level of incentives that we were talking about and the cost differential but I would be happy to bring David in, Sally was a bit nervous I think when you were going through the list of things that electric cars got that they might be going into cycle lanes as well but bus lanes which unfortunately are considered to be cycling infrastructure in this country but the only point I really want to make on this is that the one, it seems like the one electric vehicle that does not seem to be subsidised in the carbon plan here is the electric bike which is now forming something like a third of the market in places like the Netherlands and Germany and is starting to transform the five to ten mile journey as well as the naught to five mile journey so again you know we talk about the bike as though it can only do very short journeys but actually it becomes much more capable with a with pedal hack on top of it. David, before I bring you in can I just ask Jamie just to because I think link to this is how to encourage you've got a specific question to come. Well if you'd like to yeah Murray if you'd like to come. Well it's also sorry just to tease out as well and ask a bit more about if any of you have an idea of how the Aberdeen hydrogen bus project has been going as well so I think that's been obviously a new initiative here and just to hear your thoughts about that if you know how that's been operating and about hydrogen infrastructure too. Tom looks like you're constantly in the firing line I mean I mean I've heard of it obviously but I really don't know how it's going I mean all I can say is that hydrogen fuel set not fuel cell fuel cell technology is still relatively experimental and the big big challenge is of course providing the fuel as it's very energy intensive to provide to make the fuel and then actually the fuel fueling infrastructure is is a little bit problematic. David no we we have had some involvement with the Aberdeen project so we can say a little bit quite recently so it's gone well it's been great for the city it certainly has the city's received a lot of global interest and attention from that it fits really well with the the skills and capabilities in in the city and obviously with the focus on oil and gas and associated processes and industries a great amount of expertise in handling hydrogen and a great amount of hydrogen produced the buses are working well so I think there's a really strong economic argument for it I think in terms of what it could mean for the city in terms of hydrogen as a a a solution to decarbonising transport I think there's still some way to go at the moment and I think this comes down to really understanding that it's going to be a mix of solutions that bring about this kind of low carbon future for transport so hydrogen will have a role electric vehicles will have a role cycling public transport will have a role and it I think it's quite easy to get trapped by thinking about sort of binary thinking about one form of transport or one one type of fuel over another and really it's going to be like renewables we'll see a mix of solutions in the future hydrogen is expensive though and I think anecdotal observations have been that you know the the price of the hydrogen fuel is actually higher than diesel and there is some necessity to subsidise that at the moment but you know again technology will progress the distribution systems will advance and you know things will get cheaper and easier so hydrogen is not a short-term solution is perhaps the the short answer to that I want to bring in Peter and Stuart and I see toms wanted to come and say Peter if this is a supplementary to that yeah well it's back to my question that you ruled out I've ordered last time I want to ask about the the future of the battery technology just basically what I said last time round if it's adopted worldwide is there is there the mineral resource within this planet to to build all these batteries David it's it's not something we can take for granted but it's certainly electric vehicles will not be the source of that problem so consumer electronics like laptops mobile phones and things like that it's essentially the same battery technology lithium ion batteries and those consumer devices will account for a larger proportion of the global demand for those resources than than than transport there are you know lots of efforts around things like rare earth elements which show components of battery technologies and and also recognising that some of these elements come from parts of the world where you know there are some security and stability issues occasionally so it is a an issue that is being given some attention by by governments around the world but it's not something that will necessarily hold back progress in in that sector tom do you want to come in it wasn't about battery technology it was just finishing off what I had to say about Norway and its implications for the projections in this in the climate change plan very briefly then very briefly okay so the cost differential in Norway between an electric car and a standard car has reduced to about a thousand euros the the predictions or the the modelling in the climate change plan assumes a cost difference between a diesel car and a battery electric vehicle of five and a half thousand pounds in 2030 so a much bigger price differential is assumed in the climate change plan than we see in Norway at the moment and in Norway the my info suggests a 27 percent market share for plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles in total so um yeah I I wonder whether the range of incentives that's modelled in the climate change plan for take-up of these low emission vehicles is sufficient to achieve the level of market penetration that is assumed to bring about the carbon reductions that that are in the plan which is why it goes back to my plea for a range of projections rather than just one yeah still wants to come in briefly and then I'd like to move on to Jamie if I may just a wee observation rare earths are not rare they're just called rare because when they were found they were difficult to find and extract they're not common but they're not rare that wasn't my point that I learned something at every committee meetings it's really the the history of government's interaction with new emerging technologies is a history of almost total failure to predict what's going to be the winners we just know that all governments of all complexions in all countries that's true and on hydrogen in particular i'm aware of four separate hydrogen technologies it's not just cells and I'm just worried and I want to see if the worries share they were putting too much emphasis on single solutions rather than the strategic goal I mean for example one of the hydrogen technologies I'm aware of is a suspension of hydrogen in a sort of gel that creates a fuel that you can actually put into existing diesel vehicles it's in the lab it never emerged from the lab who knows but at just the general point are we getting too fixated about the technologies rather than the goal and we should be should we be much more careful to leave the door open to disruptive technologies that might be discovered next week and prove to be viable in 10 years time that's the real question I'm very happy to let everyone in and I think this is a question that that you can answer hopefully very briefly so I'll push you on brevity because there are other questions here and I want to get Jason back in on the freight if I may David no I agree I think the stated position of the Scottish government is technology neutral and I think that's the right approach I do think there's a huge amount of hype around hydrogen there and it's easy to get excited about a technology that's not yet there and I think ultimately the market will decide and perhaps the role of government is to support the market when it's pre-commercial when it seems to be a technology that will deliver significant benefits so yeah I would advocate a technology neutral approach however I think that also needs to be aware that the way that that message is communicated to markets can be confusing so a lot of the technology neutrality commentary from government almost suggests that there's a suspicion that maybe electric vehicles are a stepping stone towards a hydrogen future which is you know none of the outlooks would suggest that so I think we need to be careful that that isn't communicated in a way where it implies any uncertainty about the future certainly you know there is there's consensus that electric vehicles for example are going to be the dominant propulsion technology in the future and that but that future will contain a range of different alternative fuels. Tom I'm not going to bring you in there what I'd like to do is just leave that one hanging at the moment and bring Jamie in if I may just about encouragements. Thank you convener I'm sorry for varying slightly from what's on our papers here but I just thought I would add to the this conversation about hydrogen technology I was reading an interesting article yesterday where it was described as the beta max of car technology in the sense that there's a lot of hype around it as you said but the take-up was very low there was a UK government scheme I think last year to local authorities and public bodies to replace vehicles and there was funding available around £2 million I think and it's been taken up by very few public bodies I think London Met for example have replaced some of their vehicles but it's just an observation really on that subject but I wondered if I could come on to the wider question about the move to these types of vehicles. I've just been reading your inputs in our briefing papers and I was quite intrigued by a few comments I wonder if we could expand on them. Sally I think in your input you say that incentives to increase take-up of fuel-efficient vehicles will increase car ownership and undermine the demand management policy as one of you might just expand on your views on these sort of schemes or you know there seems to be a view that perhaps we shouldn't be incentivising people to move to these types of cars. Well I think we just need to be careful about the incentives we offer so I think for instance if one of the few demand management policies that's in there is parking controls and if by buying an electric vehicle you can then circumvent the parking controls that you know is an example of the two policies working against each other and parking obviously as well as being lots of on-street parking causes problems for other means of transport because you know once you have cars lining the edges of the roads that makes it difficult for buses it makes it difficult for pedestrians and so on so we need to be a bit careful about the incentives that we offer to make sure that we're not you know taking with one hand and giving with the other. I hear what you're saying on that and I think that comes on to the point that Tom made and that's the you know the Norway model and I'd say as a diesel car driver if somebody came along and offered me an electric car which meant I could use bus lanes and park for free in the city centre absolutely I would swap the diesel car out for a greener electric car if those incentives are available so I think we have to be mindful of the fact that these incentives do get people off of you know high emission vehicles and into you know when the price came out for example there was a lot of suspicion around the success of it but now every cab that I get into seems to be a hybrid car and it seems to be de facto you know normal and acceptable to do so I wonder if anyone had any views on that. Tom wants to come in on that. It was specifically on the Norway experience early research 2009 research in Norway demonstrates exactly what you were talking about there that the people who have taken up and they've bought an electric car they're disproportionately two car owning households which is unusual in Norway most households own one car and the rate of commuting is 80 per cent by car compared to 45 per cent by amongst the population as a whole and the people who bought a car an electric car demonstrated a shift away from public transport cycling and walking to electric car presumably because some of these you know the demand management tools that apply to people who don't have an electric car no longer apply to them particularly the parking so I think we have to be cautious as you suggest. David do you want to come on? So I visited Norway a few times and they have a great package of measures but fundamentally electric cars are cheaper in Norway than fossil field vehicles so it's a very easy decision for Norwegian to make you know the upfront cost is marginal in terms of premium and operating costs are far lower so you know it's a very rational decision in many ways. I don't think we're going to be in a situation anytime soon where there's 100 per cent purchase tax on top of the cost of buying a fossil field vehicle I think that would be very difficult to introduce they also started about 10 years earlier than we did so again the sort of 10 years further forward. We do have things like in the city of Dundee you can park for anywhere for free today with an electric vehicle. The Scottish approach is very joined up there is a not only is the switch on Scotland road map covering all of the incentives necessary to bring about widespread adoption of electric vehicles but there's also a national framework for local incentives that's a review paper that we wrote for Transport Scotland looking at what local authorities can do. There's also the integrated energy strategy which I think Merritt's notes that you know there's joined up approach to a strategy that covers power, heat and transport looking at it in the mix and the switch on Scotland road map is currently being updated by Transport Scotland as well and will be published in spring of this year so there's an opportunity to feed into that process. Does anyone have a view on the target of 40 per cent by 2030 at some of the inputs into the committee where that that isn't aggressive enough it should be up up to near 60 per cent for example and that's of new cars obviously. The 2050 ambition is almost complete to carbonisation of run transport so if you work backwards from 2050 what you need to achieve to hit to that point you need to you probably need to get to a point where almost all new car sales are ultra low emission vehicles by 2040 which would be further ahead than the 40 per cent so yeah the 2050 targets ambition sorry still stands and the UK government has signed up to that as a target as well so whether they are consistent in their ambition or not is perhaps worth questioning. Thank you. Just before we move on to the next question which is read out I'd just like to just develop I don't think we've developed enough on freight and I have this concern that and I thought Jason's point was very interesting about hubs and and pushing out from hubs using electric fans would would reduce the the emissions I wanted Jason if you'd just like to just briefly if you would just explain to the committee some of your plans or suggestions for for increasing the use of freight on on other means apart from roads and reducing emissions. Sure yes poor old freight is often the sort of forgotten cousin I'm afraid in terms of transport well one thing I wanted to point out really is there was a lot of mention of consolidation centres in this document I mean several times mentioned sometimes on its own and sometimes in conjunction with the low emission zones and this is something you know last 10 years of transport policy and other documents have mentioned consolidation centres but well I mean we still don't have one in Scotland so I mean to say that that private sector operators and users are reluctant to use consolidation centres is a massive understatement basically they have no interest at all because they're potentially add costs because you have extra handling and things potentially add time add complications because you've got to do it have extra storage and you know you're kind of putting an extra link in the chain so there's a lot a lot of difficulty in hassle and cost that they don't want so there's been a lot of talk about how can we get them how can we make them more feasible can we make them cheaper can we make them more attractive etc etc and there's been a lot of work done by a lot of people but we still haven't got there in fact TechTran had actually got quite close they've done a lot of work on this and they had one almost that was going to run and then it didn't run but it looks like they might get one off the ground eventually in Perth I think so it takes a lot of a lot of work from the public sector to retry and get that model together so this is something we're doing a bit of work on actually at Napier we've recruited a PhD student to look into this so she's looking at some comparisons with other countries where they've been a bit more successful but more specifically to look at the conjunction of the consolidation centre and a supportive policy so some of the mentions here I think are good that if you have a low emission zone or other things like time windows or pedestrianisation can that if the consolidation centre doesn't work now will it work if you have the policy so I mean it'll be another year or so till we get some results on that but I think that is the way it has to go you need definitely a supportive policy also it's important to think about different kinds of consolidation centres so you might have one on the edge of town like on the bypass kind of which would be much larger or you could have one kind of reasonably in town like sort of Cameron Toll or in Fountain Bridge something of that sort of level which would be a smaller one and then you can have a smaller again sometimes people call them micro consolidation centres like say in Rose Street or something a really small one and you'd probably deliver from there even on trolleys or bikes or things like that so you kind of depending on which type of sort of hub you're talking about they've all got their own strengths and weaknesses and traffic profiles and things like that but we haven't really cracked that nut yet and even in other countries there's few that are really successful they even in other countries that potentially a bit more progressive in their transport policy then we are still the difficult nut to crack. One thing we're also looking into is pedestrianisation actually which isn't it's not really considered you wouldn't think of it as a freight policy really but if you pedestrianize a city centre and you then you obviously it's difficult to deliver to those shops and hotels and things so it kind of becomes a potentially supportive freight transport policy to work with a consolidation centre so yeah I think there's a lot of work to be done but I think this complementary approach is is the is the right way to go but yeah still a lot of work to be done on on that topic I would say. Okay thank you Tom you want to come in on that. The consolidation centre idea is very interesting for dealing with the problems of urban freight deliveries and all associated problems like large trucks in urban areas that shouldn't shouldn't be there that type of thing but they deal with the last mile or the last few miles of a freight journey and from a carbon perspective of course as with passenger transport the bulk of emissions are coming from longer journeys or the longer sections of journeys therefore the consolidation centre's effect on carbon emissions might not be so great or I don't think it's been particularly well assessed as yet. We have to think also about what measures there might be to influence carbon emissions from trucks and especially vans because the biggest growth in this sector has really been amongst vans you know that aren't going to city centres that wouldn't be affected by by consolidation centres and I think a lot of those to do with fuel technology uptake of alternative fuels uptake of electric vans and these these types of measures and also fuel efficiency measures for HGVs some of those are being driven already by the sector anyway because larger companies want to achieve fuel savings but I think there's a lot more that government could potentially do to encourage uptake of those new technologies to reduce the carbon emissions per mile from the vehicles that are out there traveling. Jason, I'm going to let you come back and then I'm going to move to Roger if I may. I just want to expand on Thomas's point about the longer distance in freight in my case. A lot of that is some of it has really been achieved by modal shifts so there's been a lot in terms of between England and Scotland there's been a large increase in modal shift from road on on to rail and that's been driven a lot by the logistics providers that they will consolidate containers from different shippers and then fill the train but a lot of they they all rely on ongoing subsidies the modal shift revenue support scheme so it's it's been a very worthwhile achievement but it's costing a lot of money annually to to support all that. Looking specifically within Scotland the difficulties with the longer distance freight obviously Scotland's quite rural quite dispersed same for passenger and freight. It's harder for passengers to get on the it's harder to support rural bus networks and likewise it's harder to support to get freight on to the rail network because there's only a few major spines and freight's quite dispersed and there's been some success on that again with the logistics companies taking some stuff up to Aberdeen in Inverness subject to infrastructure constraints and there is a mention somewhere here talks about the rail freight strategy and about needing to get longer trains and that's something that that is very important because I mean it talks about electrification as well which is also valuable to get more of the rail network electrified but if you can only take 20 containers on a train or if you can then change that so you can take 40 it's costing you very little more and you're getting twice as many trucks off the road so I know Network Rail are doing a lot of work on going on that to make longer passing loops and all these kind of basically more capacities so you can get longer trains but I mean in the United States for instance they have trains that can take 600 containers and in the UK the longest trains are about 90 and in some of rural you know to get to the north of Scotland you're talking 30 40 kind of things so that kind of gives you a sense of the scale of what we're trying to achieve so definitely things like that to get longer trains will help but freight is quite dispersed things like timber doesn't mean a lot of work to try and get more timber on rail but as you can imagine it's very dispersed again so these are sort of on-going challenges that that recur in every one of these documents unfortunately but again a resolution that appears in the horizon. I'll quickly bring in John Finnie before I could say I was going to move on to read it but I'd John Finnie. Thank you. It was just to pick up on that phrase you used there in relation to an old it would be great if 30 or 40 containers could go to on the Highland Mainline but you said it's subject to infrastructure restraints there. It is back to the issue of looking at a policy inspired isolation because the infrastructure restraints mean that it's only 20 or 21 units which isn't the optimal number obviously because of single line. I suppose I'm going to ask if there's an answer to trying to marry all those issues together because people are trying very hard when you talk about the combination of freight and that's happening you know the supermarket goods going up timber coming down. Where does that fit in or is there a gap in explaining how the benefits could be accrued in the plan? Well it's like a lot of these problems we're discussing today there's several several different inputs there's demand for getting the customers to want to use rail in the first place which took a long time but that's they're starting to get used to it now. There's the cost I mean they these also get subsidised because until you can get much longer trains you need that that's what you need to bring the unit cost down so they end up being subsidised. There's sort of delays I mean you only have one train a day or maybe not even that many that doesn't fit into all the shops you know just in time logistics and all this kind of thing so you know there's several different reasons why I mean basically if you look anywhere in around the world where freight is very successful and cheap you've got high capacity, high frequency, high demand you know balance demand in both directions so the I mean the government can't really click their fingers in and fix all of these. A lot of things are market things what some things they can do is the infrastructure and network rail are doing a very good job of that but again it comes down to sort of cost benefit how many tens of millions do they want to spend to get 10 more containers a day going to Aberdeen when they crunch the numbers that might not stack up at the end of the day unfortunately. John just a very brief. Yes but similarly if you spend three billion dualling the A9 and give a further half hour competitive advantage to haulage by increasing the speed limit you're not going to get that move. Yeah I mean certainly the Ralph Wright group have had a lot to say on that yeah so they can give each other a... I fear that was a statement and maybe we should leave that hanging there so I can get right to him with that question if I may. Thank you. Can I ask about decarbonising rail and ferry things like rail electrification and hybrid ferries the good value for money do they make a difference? I'm not really the ferry expert I think our Aries 12 colleague Professor Alf Baird would be the man to talk much more about ferry design and things like that. Tendril electrifying rail freight again is it worth doing on long rural routes? I mean that day is a thorny one you want to do it as much as possible of course but if you've only got a train a day on the freight terms obviously you've got more passenger trains. Again to refer back to the United States I mean I've talked to operators over there and they think you're crazy too like you're not going to electrify thousands of miles so the longer the distance the less cost benefit really of electrification so they're looking at obviously more within England and within the central belt I mean I don't know the figures off the top of my head but I think electrifying long distance rural routes compared to just using maybe lower emission fuels might be potentially more beneficial. I mean you mentioned, or coal, coal dining is mentioned in here but it's using shore power in ports so when the ship is when the ship is birthed there instead of using their own on board engine to power the lights and everything you can plug into to an electric connection in the port but again so if you're a big port you have many ships that the cost benefit you know you'll spread that cost over much more of many more vessels but a lot of smaller ports in Scotland that don't have so many vessels do you how many millions are you going to spend for electrification of the shore power or the power in the vessel whereas you might get more bang for your buck using just lower emission fuel and other technologies it's not really for me to say but it's the individual making that decision might have questions about the cost benefit. Phil wants to come in and then I'm very mindful that I've got three committee members who've got three very important questions who want to ask them so if I can let Phil come in very briefly and then move on to the next question if I may. Yes just in terms of rail electrification I mean rail has a very low contribution to the overall carbon footprint already you know it's a very efficient form of transport electrification is good for all sorts of reasons increased acceleration better journey times and so on as well I think going back to the point mr Finney and others have made look at the big corridors we have particularly Aberdeen and Inverness Perth Inverness we've got a Victorian single track railway not suitable either for fast journey times for passengers or for freight at the moment and no passing loops or very few passing loops in this sort of thing and rather than thinking about these corridors in total and look at the road and the rail together we've gone for throwing billions of pounds at road and not really thinking about a railway which is already slower as one of my colleagues has said than the rail alternative so electrification particularly I would say up to the Aberdeen on the Aberdeen line and some upgrade there is really important in terms of the highland lines it's about dualling the track as much as possible and that's great for passengers and for rail and I think those journey times two three hours people won't fly that distance but that's where rail can really compete well with with road alternatives whether it's for haulage or for passengers as well so we need to be focusing on that level of rail journeys if we want to offset carbon Raida wants to come back and I'm going to come back with a one question but only one person is going to get to answer it I'm really just on that point if we're looking at reducing air passenger duty and we're looking at those shorter rail journeys does that again put the balance to flying rather than using rail you know again it's all about the choices infrastructure choices make spending choices we make cost incentive choices we make I mean we would say certainly that cutting APD when air is already already under sub under tax compared to other transport modes is a bad idea and Virgin trains have come out recently and said particularly on the London to central Scotland routes and potentially London to Aberdeen as well that this could be quite devastating for their business if you if you cut what is already an under taxed air alternative to rail when they've been building a good rail case of the last 10 20 years or so and I'm going to definitely leave that section there and ask Richard who's been waiting patiently to for his question please thank you canina good morning basically come on to the meaty one of the scots government's transport capital investment programme and Sally Hynnscliff touched on earlier about a nine and john touched on a nine in my area at ringstone well so we're doing a massive m a m 74 m 73 upgrade which will actually allow us to go underpass the m 74 and it's supposed to open quite shortly but basically this trunk road in general you know sort of traffic upgrade given that it's highly likely that major investment has been made by the scots government and the trunk road network which it has will be to extra miles being driven do you agree or do you does the scots government's capital investment and transport infrastructure best support its emission reduction ambitions I'm sure I'll get two answers in this one Tom almost launched himself out of the seat to get to that one first so I'll let you go first I suppose a no that's a perfect dog the carbon account for Scotland looks at transport projects that are currently under construction or in planning and assesses their carbon impact and we we see that there's a net increase in carbon emissions projected to arise from all these investments not surprisingly what I would like to know from a carbon account of Scotland is whether or not the wider land use impacts of those investments are also taken into account in those projections I suspect that in general they're not and I think that those land use impacts will lead to further journey lengthening further reliance on the car due to the these mainly trunk road investment schemes new development will be attracted to these new junctions and that will mean that people are traveling further and traveling by car more than is modelled even in the carbon account for Scotland was specific regard to rail electrification the Egypt scheme the Edinburgh Glasgow improvement programme it's pushing a billion pound to electrify between Edinburgh and Glasgow the railway network and unfortunately not to increase the frequency and to reduce the journey time by somewhere in the region of seven or eight minutes this scheme is projected to reduce carbon emissions because the diesel trains that currently rum will be replaced by electric trains however is it a cost effective way of reducing carbon emissions I would say absolutely not although I'm a professor of transport I think the billion pounds could be better spent on building houses close to affordable high quality houses close to where people need to be so they don't have to travel so far and then they'd be less dependent on carbon emitting sources of transport Sally do you want to come in on that well I think I don't know if you've seen the spokesperson's submission which I think went in yesterday but I mean they've looked at the balance between trunk road spending versus investment in active travel and although we hear a lot about the record levels of investment in cycling that the Scottish Government have done we're not hearing so much about the record levels of investment in trunk roads and I think that does show you know that's four times I think the increase is four times the total of spending on active travel so it is it isn't just cutting journey times between cities it's funneling large numbers of cars into town centres and cities which then cause problems elsewhere so it's generally something that a small amount of rebalancing of that budget could could actually have quite a large impact I think I did admit to say that and I meant to do it is there is a cycle cycle walking tracks etc I've been built on to the dmh upgrade which I'm sure you'd be quite impressed with yes and some of those trunk road schemes are very good one of the things you want to look at though is is more about rather than just running things alongside these trunk roads basically look at say so if you're to say if you're bypassing a town or you're giving people the option to go past the town you then take the step at the same time to reduce the traffic within the town by reducing the permeability of the town so that people now have the bypass to use if then going past the town so it's now not possible or much harder to take your car through the town and that then unlocks so for instance the Netherlands which has very high cycling rates they build a lot of roads they build very big roads but when they build a big road around the city they counteract that with the idea that you now don't drive through that city you drive to the city but you don't drive through it so and that's the thing that we're not doing we're just building the road part and we may be putting nice cycling infrastructure and we're improving trunk road connections that way but we're not looking at the whole picture again so if you if you drive along the a 75 where I live in near Dumfries a very nice cycle path appears which joins one dairy farm to another because that was the bit of road that got widened so obviously that cycle path is completely useless I know that Tom Knight wants to come back in and Sally you actually hurt on a subject I was thought I might not might not ask but I will my mother-in-law was Dutch I went to Holland my wife and I been in Holland quite a number of times and have cycled not a lot but cycled around basically Appledorn various other places that my brother-in-law worked in and how do maybe Tom when he's coming back in how does Dutch emissions compare to Scottish taking that they have it's over there you have to see it to believe it massive amount of bikes but as you say the infrastructure is give to that and because again the land is quite flat. Tom before you come in because I see Sally's wanted to come in is there anyone else who wants to come in on the on the previous point if not I'll bring you in Tom Sally and then I've got to move on to the next question if I may so Tom with regards to the Netherlands I think they're transport emissions per capita are lower but they're still growing and the reason for that that they're growing is because there's increasing car use in the Netherlands in spite of all that fantastic cycling infrastructure there's an awful lot of road infrastructure as well and also there are housing price issues which mean that people have to travel a long long distances to work by car and by train could I just raise the point of the the investment in trunk roads and its wider impact the justification the government justification for investment in trunk roads is to reduce journey times and therefore increase economic growth while that's a compelling theoretical argument the empirical evidence for that actually occurring is very very difficult to establish at a country level so if you cut journey times you don't necessarily increase economic growth on the other hand if you cut journey times you make car travel cheaper and that will encourage more car travel and we know that that therefore increases carbon emissions so this automatically assumed link between cutting journey times and improved trunk roads or improved railways and increased economic growth at the country level the empirical evidence to support that is really not there Sally just I just wanted to I reacted to the the Netherlands is flat arguments yes it is flat it's quite windy which if you if you cycle a lot is almost as bad but um the the correlation between cycling rates and um it is is if you look at all the factors that different cities have and and how how much people cycle in them the correlation has got nothing to do with whether terrain um even size or density the one thing that comes out is length of cycling infrastructure so it's just correlation is not causation but there's a very strong case for the fact that it's the cycle paths in the Netherlands that make people cycle and not the flatness with this next with the next question for me thank you very good morning the draft climate change plan to me is all about behavioural change it's about getting people to change behaviour and to do that the best way to do that is positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement in other words the the carrot rather than the stick and it surprised me this morning that by and large I know we've touched on public transport touched on buses touched on rail the the the discussion questions and answers very much been orientated to private transport as opposed to public transport if I could just put to you there are some environmental and health benefits from moving people especially in our cities to public transport there are 1.3 million scots who have the free bus card the bus travel pass 70 000 scots every year come into receiving that travel card do you agree with me that if we could get people to you know talk about reducing car use and cutting journey times and whatever but if we had if we actually managed to get people to leave their cars at home and do without the car in a lot of cases all together by using it more on these bus passes then surely this has to be a good thing for the environment reduce emissions and for people's health it's a surely a win win situation all together is it not David if those buses are low emission buses absolutely so I think we need to be aware of the fact that air quality problems in cities are quite often attributed to buses rather than to private cars and when you think about the fact that these are high mileage vehicles which are quite energy intensive and produce quite a lot of emissions clearly diesel buses driving around in cities today is a problem and there are ambitions around decarbonising buses I think one of the important things to bear in mind here is the replacement cycles for these vehicles so that the average age of a bus in Scotland I think is over eight years old and the average replacement cycle for a bus is about 10 to 15 years so if we're to hit targets in the future we need to make quite rapid progress in decarbonising the buses in our fleet so the answer is yes more people on buses is a good thing if they are low carbon buses Does anyone else want to come in on that Tom? I think public transport is part of the answer improved public transport of course and improved alternatives are part of the answer however they're not the whole solution as has been alluded to before it's very very important to have a package of measures to tackle emissions emissions from transport are a function of trip length they're a function of the carbon intensity of the fuel they're a function of the vehicle technology and they're a function of the mode of transport that's used all those things if we want to focus on mode shift if we want to bring about mode shift yeah improve the alternatives but I'm afraid all the evidence suggests that there's a need also to make car use a little bit more difficult I'll give you an example of where that hasn't been done Madrid the city of Madrid experienced very high population growth I'll grant you but in about in the last 15 20 years they've increased their metro network the length has increased from around about 150 kilometers of metro to around about 250 kilometers of metro and they've also improved their suburban railway network at the same time but they improved their motorway network didn't introduce any demand management measures mode shift there's been no mode shift you know you've had this incredibly improvement in the public transport system but at the same time no other measures to make car use more difficult and so the mode split is the same as as it was so I think that has to be borne in mind that if you only improve public transport without dealing without making car use a little bit more inconvenient then the new passengers on public transport will be people who have been attracted from walk or bike primarily the interesting thing that you raised that but I wonder whether the perspective is right because I mean I come from a very rural area a lot of us in this particular committee come from rural areas and very often there's no real alternative to the car out in I mean I live 30 miles from Aberdeen for instance seven miles from the nearest village and we have a bus that passes I don't know how many times I mean it just just can't use it because they're just not frequent enough the problem is if you make bus transport more attractive I mean I'm not just talking about the cities I mean as I say 1.3 million of us have these cars already and you could improve rural transport by making it more more efficient by expanding at the moment it's just for six people aged 60 over with disabilities I know the government's looking at improving it for the younger people if you expanded the process and got more people to use the buses and made it more attractive in a positive way you don't necessarily have to go at it from a negative perspective don't you think do you agree with that or not does does that Tom do you want to come back on that I have I have a valid okay I have a valid point sorry I have a relevant piece of evidence I mean I think we're talking here about long-term elasticity effects in in in response to an improvement in service or a change in price that's what I mean to say yeah in the example of south Yorkshire many years ago in 1972 they froze their bus fares at 1972 levels and they didn't put them up until 1986 at bus deregulation and the long-term effect of that was to reduce car ownership and car use and driving license acquisition amongst young people but they had a level of service as well and there was a cost associated with it in the rural Aberdeenshire case I think it would be more difficult to bring that about purely through price and improvement in bus service simply because in rural areas it's it's it's difficult it's very difficult and very expensive to provide an attractive bus service that can be you know even halfway as attractive as the private car simply because of the distribution of population and the distribution of destinations but in a long term if one were willing to put enough resource in then probably one could bring about a public transport system in a rural area that were as attractive as a car but there would be a big price tag attached to it definitely I think that's uh do you want to follow that because I think it's a valid point in some cases there are places where you can you can get a bus to to somewhere to have a meeting to find that you have to stay on the bus to get home so you've got no time for the meeting because of the frequency of the services the final question if I may to the deputy convener girl thank you convener and I just like to thank you all very much it was a really interesting session we touched on a lot of different topics and there have been mentions about rpp2 and the differences between the two plans we talked about a lack of detail land use various different points but just so that we as a committee can capture it succinctly do you have any detail of a lack of any kind of policy that you would have preferred to have seen in the plan that is currently not here and I'm I'm I think that's a really good question so I'm going to go along the line if I may and give you all a chance to and if I may limit you to to one I know there isn't a silver bullet to solve all the problems but if we could start with one from each view that'd be very helpful Phil would you like to yes I think as we said in our submission work post parking levees it is in there but it's not there as a clear policy we'd very much like to see that taken forward in a more active way by the scosh government and by local authorities as well okay Tom I may simply have missed it and it may be there but if it's not I would say land use crucial in controlling or influencing trip length in a positive direction Sally mode shift to away from the private car and then including public transport which was very strong in the climate conversations but doesn't seem to come through to the plan at all okay David I'm just going to underline Tom's points about land use and planning because I think where we live and where we work and where we travel to is is a huge part of this okay Jason what's difficult to point to to one thing especially with freight it's much more private sector driven so the government perhaps it has even less control over that or influence than it does with passenger transport so I don't really have anything to add it's more about perhaps adding a little more teeth to the ones that are in there such as consolidation centres and long-emission zones and also longer freight trains which is in here but again it's that issue of how much you want to spend on it but I would probably say yeah longer trains is the one key policy there okay can I can I echo Gail's comments thank you very much it's appropriate that we spend a very large amount of time on this subject of transport because it is the area that perhaps needs the biggest change to be made over over the other sectors that we've done say I would like to thank you on behalf of the committee for attending this morning I would say to you that if there are matters if you feel that I've cut you off when there's something that you want to say but if there are matters that you want to feed into the committee there is still time but not much time and I would ask you to give those to the to the clerk as as soon as you can after this meeting so thank you very much for for attending and I briefly like to suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave thank you the third item on the agenda is the consideration of the plant health import inspection fees scotland amendment regulations 2017 this instrument is subject to a negative procedure the committee should now consider any issues it wishes to repeat raise in reporting to the parliament on this issue members should note there's no motions to a null have been received in relation to these instruments there have also been no representative representation to the committee on these instruments does any members of the committee have any comments on them so is the committee agreed that it does does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to these instruments that is agreed then now i'm going to suspend the meeting to allow the committee to move into private session thank you