 Mwneud i gyd, ac wrth gwrs, y Cymru, Cymru Cymru i'r ymddirionedd, Llandr producentau Cyngorau 34, 2018. Felly mae'r ystod o i'r ystod i gyd a'r agenda, rwy'n iawn i'n cael eu gwneud gyd y cymdeithas o'r cyfodol yn cael eu cyfrifodau, ond mae'n gael'r cyfrifodau cyfrifodau. Rwy'n iawn, rwy'n iawn i'n iawn i'n iawn i'n iawn i'r cyfrifodau, wrth gwrs, o'r cyfrifodau The first item on the agenda is for the committee to take evidence on the climate change emissions reduction target Scotland Bill. This is the sixth of the committee's evidence sessions with stakeholders. I am delighted to welcome our first panel of this morning, joining us are Theresa Anderson, policy and communications officer and climate and resilience for action aid international. Jim Densham, senior land use policy officer, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on behalf of the Scottish Environment Link. Gina Hanrahan, head of policy for WWF Scotland. Professor Tassiean Jaffrey, director of the Centre for Climate Justice. Allam and Roe, a member of young friends of the earth Scotland. Cewe Pansar, policy operational volunteer, 2050 climate group. Carolyn Rans, the climate campaign of friends of the earth Scotland. Before we move on to questions, just to say that there will be a lot of questions that you all maybe feel that you have something to say on what we, in order to manage time, I've asked members maybe just to direct their questions to you, so don't feel that you have to answer every question that comes up because we will run out of time if we do that. So we're going to be quite efficient and targeted this morning. So I'm going to open up questioning about the bill in relation to the Paris agreement and the IPCC's recent report. I guess this is one that you could all maybe answer briefly. Do you think the bill is adequate to comply with, A, the Paris agreement and the recent IPCC report? If you just maybe raise your hands and indicate to me if you want to answer. Yes, Carolyn Rans. So of course the Paris agreement commits all nations to holding the increase in global temperature rise to well below two degrees above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit that to 1.5. And the IPCC report, which came out just a few weeks ago, made very clear the pathway that we need to be on to meet those targets. And it talked about the need for urgent rapid transformational change. Now if we look at the targets that we have in the climate change bill as introduced, we have particular concern around the pathway to 2030, which hasn't significantly changed from the pathway as set out under the 2009 act. So obviously the 2009 act, the targets in that were set over nine years ago now. At that time, we were assuming that a global deal would be made in Copenhagen, which would limit temperature rise. That of course failed to happen. And when we set that deal, we hadn't yet reached one degree of temperature rise. So it's quite inconceivable really to think that a pathway that we set under those circumstances over nine years ago remains consistent with a significant increase in ambition under the Paris agreement. And of course the First Minister has spoken very clearly about the need for Scotland to play our full part in delivering the Paris agreement. But unfortunately with the targets as well forward, the bill doesn't deliver on the Paris agreement. Any other thoughts? Theresa Anderson. Thank you very much. I think the IPCC gave us a lot of new, very clear information that I think we really need to take to heart if we take seriously the mission to limit warming to 1.5 degrees and to avert runaway climate change, we really need to listen to the science in the IPCC. And what it told us is that actually we are pretty much going to use up the budget, the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees within 12 years unless we take absolutely radical transformation action right now. I mean, there's no avoiding it. The science was very, very clear. And I recognize that the bill was written before this report came out. But I think if you are asking this question seriously of yourselves for the sake of Scotland and the world, you need to really understand what this means and actually know that the bill is not strong enough in a number of ways, partly because if we're talking about a 12 year timeline and having a 2050 target for net zero, that 2050 is almost irrelevant. But if we're using it up within 12 years, we need a much steeper curve of emission reductions in the near term rather than focusing on the long term target. It's not just enough to set targets though. The targets have to be, we have to achieve the targets. I mean, in terms of what's in the bill, do you think that those pathways are clear enough or is it just a case of target setting and it will, that will force everything else to happen? I mean, we've had views over the last few weeks on that and it'd be interesting to know, you know, we don't want to be setting targets that we will fail to reach because we want to be a, we want to be a world leader in this. And if we, if we fail the messages, they're unachievable. I wonder what your views are on that. I think it is more, because we are talking about something so important as an existential crisis, I think it is more, it's better to set high targets that force us to achieve more than to, then to try and have something achievable that actually leads to like planetary breakdown. We need to, we need, it's, you know, failure of a, of a political goal is less of a disaster than failure to meet climate targets. Stuart Stevenson wanted to ask a question. I just wanted to pick up on a word that both Caroline and Teres are used, which was the word science. And, of course, the IPCC is a review of the science. And I just wanted to test who should choose the numbers in the targets. Should it be politicians or scientists? I think it's pretty clear that our targets should be based on climate science and on climate justice. So we should be setting our targets on what climate science and climate justice demands is Scotland's fair equitable contribution to our legal international obligations under the Paris Agreement and underneath the UNFCCC. How we then implement those targets is a political decision, and that's where we take the decisions on what's right for happening in Scotland. Just check climate science. I perfectly understand the definition and climate justice. I look at things that Mary Robinson's foundation do, but that is not a science-based observation. That is a moral observation, which I support, by the way. Is that a correct interpretation of what you said? So climate justice is about ensuring that we acknowledge our historical responsibility. And so that's a very important point to take into account whenever we're looking at the targets. So when we look at the Paris Agreement, the Paris Agreement doesn't just set out these temperature goals. Just right underneath, so article 2.1 of the Paris Agreement sets out those goals. Article 2.2, just underneath, says that this agreement will be implemented with regards to equity. And so it's a very important consideration, which is actually embedded in the heart of the Paris Agreement. So it's fundamental that we must consider that when we're apportioning that global carbon budget to come up with our targets. Yr pan sef. On the point of equity, we're on one hand looking at our international equity and looking at international justice, but we're also looking at intergenerational justice, intergenerational equity, like we've been discussing if we run out of our carbon budget in the next 12 years, or maybe a little bit longer if we managed to expand our ambition. It will be a lot more difficult for those of us dealing with this in 2030 or 2040 if we have no budget to balance. So at this point, if we make those changes at this point, when we have a little bit of wiggle room, a little bit of space to do and manage transition, this will be a much more, just much more productive change than what change and what options we will have in 2030, 2040 if we don't have that budget to deal with. Yr han. I just wanted to go back, if I may, for a moment to your first question. Which is whether this is adequate to deliver on the Paris agreement. And I think from our perspective, one of the fundamental questions that needs to be answered about the bill is what temperature target is this bill aiming for. And I think there hasn't been enough clarity about that yet from the Scottish government. I think the IPCC report lays bare the very stark difference in effects between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees. It means if we go for 2 degrees, 16 million more people exposed to severe drought. It means 1.3 billion more people exposed to extreme heat waves. It means an ice-free Arctic once every 10 years as opposed to once every 100 years. And it means we lose virtually all our coral reefs with a 1.5 degree target. We have a chance of saving up to 30%. That's obviously a fundamental problem in itself, but it's also an ecosystem on which a billion people depend. So I think from our perspective, the bill certainly needs to be aiming for that 1.5 degree target. In response to the IPCC report, I think what's quite clear from the IPCC report is that the globe as a whole needs to be aiming for net zero carbon roughly in the 2050 range. Now, this is the target that the bill is aiming for, as we've been told, so 90 per cent equals carbon neutrality. Now, that would play Scotland only at the global average effort by 2050, which, from our perspective, doesn't do enough to tackle the equity dimension, but it also doesn't do enough to acknowledge the huge potential, the economic potential Scotland has. We have vast renewable resources, we have vast carbon storage potential. So if we can't do this, I can't see what country conceivably can. So we would like to see the bill setting iconic long-term targets to eliminate our contribution to climate change entirely by 2050 and stronger early action. Just to come in on the feasibility question, I think we could spend quite a bit of time exploring that if the committee is interested in that. I think the bill has set a 90 per cent target because the CCC has said that was at the limits of feasibility when it produced its advice in 2017. Now, that was based on 2015 advice developed for the fifth carbon budget at UK level. I think because there is a really exciting global conversation happening now about net zero and 1.5 stimulated by the Paris agreement, there's actually a plethora of new research coming forward that tackles the feasibility question. So, for instance, yesterday we had new evidence coming through from the Energy Transitions Commission, which is led by Eddard Turner, the former chair of the CCC, involves lots of oil and gas majors, and it shows that we can make huge progress in the industrial hard-to-treat sectors towards net zero. There's been pathways developed at European level by the European Climate Foundation. There's been new evidence on the potential for negative emissions from the Royal Academy and from a number of other sources, including some Scottish academics. So... The guts of the feasibility question later on, so there will be an ample opportunity. I want to take Professor Jaffrey. I wanted to sit him and respond to the first question. Thank you, convener. I'm just sort of picking up and echoing what my colleagues are saying there and what the IPCC report is saying. I think that the headline that everyone talks about is that every extra bit of warming matters. And with that context, the implications are going from 1.5 to 2 degrees, the implications that we'll have on the challenges, not just in our ecosystems, but for people, society in terms of human health and wellbeing and how that relates to achieving the UN's sustainable development goals. But more in particular is the challenge or the difference it will make to risk of droughts, food shortages, floods and heat-related deaths. And I think it's important to bear in mind the implications that it has for people living in the global south or in the Arctic regions or in the most challenging and vulnerable parts of the world. And I want to pick up on that point of whether it's climate science and looking at climate justice as a science. And to be very much advocate that it's looking at the impact that small temperature heights will have on society as a whole and building the evidence base and what difference it's going to make for people's livelihoods and the implications that that will have on how society will be able to build resilience and to live sustainable lives going forward. And I think it's important that we ensure that we build on that evidence and get that right and drilling right down into the human aspects and the implications of if we don't reduce our carbon emissions and reach those targets, what implications that will have in that context. And somehow I feel that that's perhaps still a little bit of a gap, a bit of an unknown. Oh, it impacts on individuals. Yes. Jim Dencham. Thank you. I wanted to just talk about the points about the impacts on wildlife representing Scottish Environment Link. I think what we can't afford to do is look at some of the pathways and think we can afford to have an overshoot. That's where we go beyond 1.5 degrees and then come back to it through sequestration and carbon removal from the atmosphere. And we can't afford to do that because wildlife is seriously affected now. This is not a future threat for our, even for Scottish wildlife. This is a threat that is happening right now that is affecting many species. So we can't afford to go beyond 1.5. It used to be that we used to say, you know, two degrees is safe warming, but with so much more science now, you know, and the IPCC report, 1.5 is really what we need to stick to and not go beyond that. Because even if we come back, it might, from 1.5 or beyond 1.5, it might be fine for humans or for quite a few humans, but for a lot of wildlife, you know, serious, serious impacts. And I think one of the things that we, you know, looking at what we need to have by 2050 in terms of our own emissions reductions, the climate change committee talked about 80, 90, 97% emissions reductions to return to 1.5. And we need to make sure that we don't go beyond 1.5. So for us in many of the NGOs and the wildlife NGOs, we want to make sure that we have net zero by 2050 to avoid that, you know, catastrophic prospect for many species. And for people as well, I was reading in the IPCC report yesterday that 20% to 40% of people now live in a 1.5 world. Their location is now 1.5. So we're not talking about, you know, one world which is 1.5, we're talking about hot spots and colder spots. I mean, we're quite fortunate here, we only have one degree of warming, although our North Sea is worn by two degrees. So there's differences all over the place and we need to make sure that the world is safe for wildlife and for people. Mark Ruskell has a small supplementary question on this theme. Yeah, it's an interesting point, it's something that we haven't really covered in this committee yet, the difference between 1.5 and 2 and really what the implicit target is in the bill on global temperature and Scotland's contribution to that. IPCC was quite global in looking at the impacts. Has there been any analysis of what this means for Scotland? Not to my knowledge of what it means for the difference between 1.5 and 2. Could we take a species that could be threatened? Would we see an increasing refugee crisis in Europe, for example? So there are many species that are already seeing the impacts of climate change and there's quite a lot of evidence that we've provided to you. I think one of the stories that I've talked about, is that the North Sea is already warming by two degrees and that's really affected the marine food chain quite a lot. The Sandeal story is quite well known where in the North Sea the food chain starts with the phytoplankton and that gets fed on by the zoooplankton, the copepods, the very small plankton. But those are very vulnerable to temperature changes and you find that they have moved north and instead of those cold water plankton we're getting warmer water plankton, which are not nutritious. They're not so nutritious. So then the sandeals that feed on those can't thrive, can't either not so many of them which affects our seabirds. Those are really a key species, the sandeals, for kittywakes, for puffins. So we've seen 60 per cent reductions in our kittywake populations in Scotland already and that's 60 per cent without massive amounts of climate change. And in some areas like opening in Shetland, 80 per cent reductions. So those things are affecting us now and they are very likely to see whole colonies wiped out. I'm going to move on to questions from Finlay Carson. There will be ample opportunity for you to come in to make points. You haven't had a chance to make so far, Finlay. Thank you. Good morning. When we look at the scope, the proposed climate change bill will only amend the part of the 2009 act that relates to emission reduction targets and associated reporting duties. The consultation is focused on strategic ambition and not delivery mechanisms. So is it realistic that we should look at increased target setting without actually considering what will be required to meet those targets? Professor Jeffery. The target setting is important but I also recognise the importance of looking at our infrastructure and what's needed to be able to achieve those targets. We've just finished the Arctic mapping report for the Scottish Government and within that we were looking at, particularly around moving away from oil and gas exploration into decommissioning and the benefits that renewable energy has to place as an opportunity for the Scottish Government to really step into that zone and demonstrate global leadership in that. Within that there's huge opportunities for the economy, for jobs and for people to be able to get right behind developing that infrastructure for renewable energy technology and in the ways in which it can be done through the jobs market or through technology innovation and looking at partnerships and linkages with other organisations that we can really build to make sure that that is really at the heart and core of what we stand for. So I think bringing these things together is really critical. One of the things I wanted to add was that obviously innovation and infrastructure investment, whether it comes from businesses or from the public sector will follow from ambitious targets and predictable policy. So having a clear pathway to the direction or the direction of movement clearly set out will allow not only the public sector but also businesses, small and medium enterprises and people in Scotland, whether it is young people trying to decide what they want to study and seeing that these are the directions that the society is going through. So while obviously it is very important to focus on how are we achieving those targets, having the targets in the first place will open up this solution making process to all of Scottish society where there's a lot of creativity, a lot of innovation capacity also outside and out with the public sector. Gina Hanrahan. We would see the bill as a huge opportunity to both align the targets with the sectoral policy effort that is needed to deliver on those targets. The 2009 act has set a precedent, I suppose, in that it covers quite a lot of sectoral policy areas and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, of which several members of us around the table are members of, has been calling for a number of sectoral policies entwined in the new bill. So to take action in our building sector by setting an energy performance standard of sea in the 2025 to 2030 region and that might be something that the committee might like to explore further in the next session with the existing homes alliance. The phase out of fossil fuel vehicles by 2030 and to set a nitrogen budget for the agriculture sector. Now we would argue that while these are policy areas actually they all fall within scope of the bill because they are about setting targets for specific emissions targets for those specific sectors. I think there's also a very interesting question about how the bill deals with investment and the budget. So we would like to see the bill tidy up some of the provisions around the budget and particularly section 94 reporting so that we're now reporting on the change in emissions rather than emissions in any given year. We would like to see the bill focus on achieving a low carbon element to the infrastructure commission because we need to be getting our capital investment right for the future. And we would like to see a process that aligns the new budgetary process with the monitoring process for the climate change plan. So I think there are opportunities there in the bill that members should consider. Andrew Sir. I would also remind you of the lesson drawn on renewables development that renewables have far outperformed what was projected both in terms of scale, pricing, feasibility. I mean, if people had planned based on what they thought renewables were going to do they would have far underestimated their potential. And I think that this is a really strong lesson for us to draw. We need to remember that political feasibility changes once you change the politics and you can't just always define everything by what is currently considered to be politically feasible. And if ever there was going to be a time when a bill needs to take a leap of faith this would be the one. Rans. So I think just drawing on that theme of learning lessons from the past we should remember what happened with the 2009 act and in 2009 the 2020 target of 42% emissions reduction by 2020 that was set not because we knew exactly how to meet it but because that was the right target to set in terms of climate science and Scotland's contribution to tackling climate change. And in fact even the first RPP that was published in 2011 didn't set an entire pathway to meeting that target and now of course we're well on course for exceeding it. Finlay, you've finished your line of questioning. Yes. Thank you. We've heard earlier about why we as a developed country maybe have to take the larger share of this and I think we all agree that there has to be transformational change but we also had evidence earlier about how that impacts on different people. For example in a rural area you don't have access to public transport you may live in an old drafty house very hard to insulate for us and you are reasonably well off you will have your electric car because you can afford that you will have your photovoltaics which will charge it you will have your good insulation. How do we make sure that when we're I suppose using carrot and stick to people to get and change their behaviour we're not actually penalising people who don't have the wherewithal to do anything about it? Professor Jeffery. Thank you for that question. What we need to be really mindful of is making sure that we develop a policy at the heart of which is ensuring social justice and equality is at the core of that because with a change in climate it's inevitable that the poorest are the ones that are going to suffer the most and those who are already in a position of being able to adapt to the environments will channel the where out of that situation and it is true that perhaps when we're looking at behavioural change and societal change it's almost as if the expectations perhaps can be quite unmanagable so I think we need to be really realistic in how we achieve that behavioural change in society and making sure that there are support structures and resources in place to support those who are in the most vulnerable situations but also need to be part of the conversation going forward and I'm just picking up on with our temperature changes opening up of the Arctic oceans that are going to have significant implications for people in Scotland particularly those who live in the rural and remote communities up in the highlands and islands and that presents itself both as an opportunity but also challenges and risks I think we need to really bear in mind because that's really where much of the impact is going to lie with the geopolitical governance of the seas opening up of the Arctic seas Gina Hanrahan I think there's an interesting element in the existing act where the Committee on Climate Change gives overall advice on targets and within that it's required to balance a number of different factors whether that's the top-down science, the economics but there are backstops there in the existing legislation to ensure that the likes of rural and island communities are considered what this means in terms of connectivity and other things that we don't leave anyone behind in this transition and that's very much to the forefront of minds balancing all those really important factors when we're advising on targets but we don't have the same criteria to consider when we're thinking about policy effort and that might be something that we look at for the existing bill is there a role for the CCC in giving a stronger policy advice to the Scottish Government that considers these factors in more depth? Stewart Stevenson has a supplementary question I just wanted to go back to Caroline Lann's Rans, beg your pardon under 2009 act which I took through Parliament If I recall correctly the UK Climate Change Committee recommended 34% and said 42% was the limits of practicality and that was the phrase they then used exactly the same phrases they're using 90% or is my recollection wrong? So I wasn't around at the time of the 2009 act but I believe it was also the case that the 42% target was put forward assuming that higher targets would come through from other countries including from the EU which didn't happen and in either case whether they thought that was at the limits of feasibility at the time we've clearly shown in the nine years since that target was set that innovation that strong targets have driven the technological change the social change that has led us to the position where we are which is where we have cut our emissions almost half and that has come from setting those strong targets Okay, we've found some questions from Magnus MacDonald Okay, thanks, convener and good morning to the panel Two quick questions clearly we know that the Scottish Government consulted on the bill over the summer of 2017 and we know the main themes of the consultation but I'd be interested to hear the panel's view on whether they would say the results of the consultation were quickly reflected in the bill and the second question we know that many of the respondents to the consultation stated that a net zero target should be set in the bill so should a net zero target or other matters such as the delivery of the target and the establishment of a dust transition commission have been consulted on as well Jim Denson Thank you I think analysis that we did on the respondents of the consultation showed that it was 99% somebody else may qualify that if that's not right 99% of people did want a net zero target in those who responded to the consultation so to me that is pretty well you can't get much stronger than that really of course so why is net zero by 2050 not on the face of the bill it clearly should be When else would you answer that? I would obviously agree with my colleague here that a net zero was called for in the consultation and clearly is something that the Scottish public is keen to drive forward a powerful image it makes it very clear to the public that this is transformational change 90% leaves that little bit of space where everybody can think that that's their space that's the little bit where they don't maybe have to change as much whereas having that a clear net zero target changes the public image shows that all sectors need to really be looking at that Claudia Beamish has a supplementary question we'll take Professor Jaffrey first and then I'll bring Claudia in I'm going up on the just transition commission being in the university sector I have to say I haven't seen much on the just transition commission what it's about, what it's involved I know I've been involved subsequently to ask for on some of the things that could be considered within that just transition commission but from my position I would have to say that I think there's a huge overlap between the targets of achieving a just transition and the targets of achieving a climate just world and there's a grey area that overlaps the two and I think it's that shady area that much remains unknown very challenging and difficult questions again to do with people losing their jobs redeployment sectoral wise what implications that has in terms of moving forward looking at infrastructure and all of those implications there so I think there's a lot of that conversation I would welcome that conversation to be unpacked in much more detail Angus Caroline Thank you, I just wanted to add to the comment about the just transition commission and it ties in with the question that Rhoda Grant asked earlier about how do we make sure that the transition to a low carbon economy is fair to everyone in Scotland and at the heart of the just transition is the idea that as we are making this inevitable transition that we ensure that that doesn't damage the areas and communities that are currently dependent on high carbon industries and so we friends of the air Scotland are a member of the just transition partnership and we strongly believe that a just transition commission should be set in legislation and it should be long term for as long as we are making this transition in Scotland we need that commission to be advising us because the challenges will change over time and it's about ensuring that the right people the people who are impacted on the table and having a say in how we make that transition and helping us to go in the right direction to choose the right policies Thank you Just to perhaps follow up on the back of that convener I'm interested in your views about the role of oil and gas in the Scottish Government's plans and the target Do you see a future for oil and gas in 2050 and we've had evidence for oil and gas UK that's going to be 67% of our energy will be supplying 67% of our energy demands in 2050 Is that implicit in the Scottish Government's targets or not? Anyone else? The act as it's currently designed is primarily about production emissions if you like rather than consumption emissions so we count oil and gas sector emissions particularly as they apply to refining and what gets burnt transport and other sectors I think there is a lot of evidence that has emerged over recent years that we can completely decarbonise the energy sectors particularly so we're talking electricity we've already made enormous progress in that respect transport that transition is accelerating at enormous pace and there's also clarity that we can now push on with electrification particularly in the heat sector so by 2050 our oil and gas products will be significantly reduced so I think I don't have a figure for what that will look like obviously something to test but I think there is clearly going to have to be a recognition that the sector is going to have to have a managed decline and that the Just Transition Commission plays an extremely important role in that context How important is carbon capture and storage in the mix? Because that seems to come out as being an absolutely essential part of the solution here yet we had a situation where a UK Government level funding for those projects was taken away Swetha Anderson I do remember the point when the UK Government decided instead of investing in actual emission reductions decided to put their climate budget towards investing in CCS and that was something like nine years ago and since then we've had very little to show for it in terms of all those I think it's nearly hundreds of millions or billions invested in CCS and nothing to show for it and it breaks my heart to think of all the all the emissions reductions and actual climate action that could have happened in that time instead of choosing that pathway back then and I think that it's they've made the right choice now to sort of dial back a bit from that CCS investment but still we keep hearing all the time about this imaginary, magical future technology that really I think everybody doubts is going to be able to deliver anything like on the scale that some parties promise The funding was taken away from it at a crucial point Stewart Stevenson will know very well in his constituency that they were very near to winning that bid to be there It's not only the technology that has the limits it's the scale that has those technical barriers the scale of storage potential is actually still very limited and and then there's also a lot of proponents which believe that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage would be able to increase the potential but that has massive socio-economic costs because it would lead to conflict over land use Gina, how will you bring in Stewart Stevenson? I think the conversation particularly around Peterhead that took place the focus was very much on a power sector model for CCS now the power sector has massively evolved in recent years and I think we now know that we don't need CCS particularly to decarbonise the power sector. I think where there may be a role for CCS in future is in the hard to treat sector particularly in the industrial sector and that's very much where the debate is rightly focused at this stage I think there are big questions about the role of bioenergy plus CCS in future what we need to be absolutely clear about is that we're not going to use a conversation about the development of BEX to delay doing what we know how to do now so that was the plea I would make to the committee Jim Dacian wanted to come in The IPCC's 1.5 report recently released talks about BEX and CCS being uncertain and entails clear risks it's not developed enough which is perhaps a failure of investment and understanding what we would be really concerned about is looking at some of the models which talk about BEX at such a massive global scale because it has clear land use change impacts and then knock on biodiversity impacts and that's the same for in Scotland too so if we're going to put a lot of our land across for bioenergy crops to then burn and then capture that carbon and put it underground we have to think about the impacts of that on wildlife, on society on livelihoods so it really shows that you know if we want to if we want to not have an impact which is bad on our wildlife and on our rural communities we need to do all the things that we can do now rather than relying on a future technology Stuart Stevenson I just wanted to ask Theresa where she got the statement that we had limited carbon storage capacity because my understanding is all the carbonic acid we could possibly produce from everything in Scotland we've hundreds of years of storage in the North Sea but it may be that of course what I'm hearing is a more global statement in which case I just wanted to be clear what was meant You're correct I mean the global picture with the planet doesn't it? Right and I have questions from Mark Ruskell So if we can come back to the issue of a net zero carbon target or a net zero greenhouse gas emissions target when should it be set should it be on the face of the bill do we have clarity about the pathways to get there and does that matter should we perhaps get views from each of the panels if that's okay convener about when you think a net zero greenhouse gas emissions target the date for that when it should be set Okay well we'll go round from my left to right First of all we can just perhaps clarify what we mean by net zero emissions sometimes we've heard people referring to net zero carbon sometimes net zero carbon dioxide net zero greenhouse gas emissions so I think it's important to clarify that the bill actually sets out quite clearly what is meant by net zero in the Scottish context and that's a 100% emissions reduction in all greenhouse gases so there's sometimes been a bit of unhelpful confusion when we use the term carbon so for friends of the earth Scotland we have taken a very heavy equity steer to the targets that we're looking at for this bill and we've used a methodology which is fair shares methodology which has been drawn up by the Stockholm Environment Institute and fair shares looks at the premise that we have a finite amount of greenhouse gases that we can burn to stay well below 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees and so that's the carbon budget and then to a portion of the carbon budget we've done a few things it looks at our historical responsibility so our cumulative contributions to climate change over the years and it looks at the capability of different countries in terms of finance and technology and so the fair shares methodology comes up with net zero emissions target for Scotland in the range of 2036 to 2041 so we as friends of the earth Scotland supports a net zero target by 2040 so add to that that we actually believe that the most important target in this bill is the 2030 target and using fair shares that would come up at least 77% for 2030 The 2050 climate group were a membership organisation and we haven't had a specific target figure for our consultation with our members we consulted over 75 young people when we were looking into our consultation response and we had support for both net zero by 2050 and net zero by 2040 targets but I think for us the crucial part is that it needs to be on the face of the bill we need it to exist in the bill so that that signal of transformational change comes loud and clear from the bill similarly to refer to the way Paris Agreement works we think that it's very important that in the bill there are very clear mechanisms for upping that ambition as we see more pathways so we believe that it should be included in the bill with options for it being brought forward as we see more pathways become clear I'm here representing a membership organisation as well we've not had specific conversations around the actual target we'd like to reach net zero but obviously we support a net zero target as soon as possible based on Scotland's fair share of global emissions reductions so we support friends of the Earth Scotland and the fair shares analysis that calls for the 2040 net zero by 2040 target to deliver that but for us we also think that it's really the most important as it stands right now the 2030 target really doesn't deliver much more ambition than the current legislation does and we see that as a failure for the Government to acknowledge the actual crisis that we're in and in doing so you're effectively passing the burden for the more radical transformative action on to young people it's us that will have to address it in the future if you don't address it now so we're quite disappointed to see that the emission reduction targets rather than something that's more of where there's more steeper emission cuts immediately right now and gradually addressing the net zero later on Professor Jaffrey I'm basing my rationale on more objectivity than anything else and I think the thing about realism comes into play here as well but I also think that there's a huge opportunity for the Scottish Government to be very ambitious and look at a net zero target by 2040 because I think we've got the knowledge, the skills, the technology the know-how of how to get there and to set a target that's realistic based on what we can do and achieve and deliver with a robust plan that underpins that and that plan I think needs to have at its core community engagement issues to do with the economy and governance and society to frame it so I think we need to be very ambitious and be realistic but also have a very clear plan a step plan really on how we achieve that target WWF supports a net zero target by 2050 at the latest on the face of the bill because we think to legislate for it is an important signalling effect to communities to citizens and to businesses to innovate and to change cultural practices economic practices etc I'm going to be honest our position is already a compromise and it's a compromise because it is balancing the scientific argument where I think it's quite clear that we need to hit net zero as soon as possible as quickly as possible but what we also knew at the time about the feasibility evidence which showed that there was no clear pathway before 2050 now I said a lot of new evidence has since come forward but I would emphasise to the committee the at the latest element of that and we have since produced work which will actually be published tomorrow with vivid economics at UK level which looked at the earliest feasible date for a net zero target and it's taking a primarily technologically focused view of that and it shows that the UK as a whole can hit net zero by 2045 in certain scenarios so I think there's clear possibility for Scotland to go further than that and we will be commissioning Scotland's specific analysis as well So Scottish environment link would like to see net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at the latest as others have said I think one of the interesting things is from the Scottish Government's programme for government they talked about we will achieve net zero by that time so the question is well what about the non-CO2 emissions that seems to be the bit that they don't know how to get to so mainly those come from farming and land use so what is the pathway for that so to come on to the point about pathways at RSPB we've produced this report this week called Balancing Act so that's really saying how do you address those emissions which come from land use which are non-CO2 so and as the title says it's a balancing act it's about reducing the emissions through efficiency savings as far as possible as you heard a lot of last week in your session on agriculture but also to really boost the massive potential that we have in Scotland for sequestration from peatland restoration, from tree planting from blue carbon from many different areas so if we do that and the science papers quoted in here which says that we have a massive potential to do that in Scotland so we can do that it can be hard to do it can be hard to see the pathways ahead but as the IPCC report says we need rapid and far reaching transition and that it's unprecedented in scale but not speed so that really struck me when I was reading that because okay we've got to do this scale across the globe and across Scotland but it's not unprecedented it's unprecedented in scale but not in speed so we have done things very fast before we can make this change quickly and if we get on with it and do things now as the CCC land use report that came out this week said we do need to start now we can do that and to be honest thank you very much action aid also uses the same methodology that Friends of the Earth use which is the Stockholm Environment Institute and I really strongly encourage those of you to have the chance to look at the equity reference calculator online to see what different countries fair shares would be taking into account capital historical emissions because it's a really interesting tool that they've taken the global carbon budget and figured out what each country's fair share should be and so on that basis we would agree with the analysis that 37% reductions by 2030 and net zero by 2040 would be in line with the fair shares approach and looking at all greenhouse gases as well including non-CO2 and just bearing in mind the point about the steeper curve is absolutely critical the 2030 target is the really key thing here because if you look at the IPCC report the graphs themselves they're very clear that especially the scenario one which I think that if you look at the options of the different scenarios the first scenario is really the socially hopeful one that we all want to reach for that curve is much steeper and doesn't rely on future technologies that haven't been invented yet to solve the problem and so if we want to keep in line with the IPCC then that steeper curve is much critical so the 2030 target is really what the focus should be on and then 2040 is the net zero point Angus MacDonald wants to come in with a short supplementary question Just picking up on Jim Densham's point and the link submission I was interested to see in that submission a call to establish a duty for a sunset clause for peat extraction in Scotland it was just when you mentioned a peatland restoration I was wondering if you could expand on that suggestion We have really good targets within the climate change plan for peatland restoration but this is about protection so a sunset clause would really look at areas of land which are consented for extraction of peat a thing that we feel is totally damaging it releases lots of carbon and it helps people to grow plants obviously but there are many alternatives so there are lots of consents out there that companies sit on for many many years and so many of them a vast proportion of them have not been turned into actual permissions to actually then extract so their consents to do that at some point in the future we want to see this sunset clause say give a date to say by this time you need to have stated that you are going to remove this or not and do away with it because we believe that there are many consents out there that will never be removed at all that the extraction will never happen so if we are very clear about how much is actually going to be removed in the future we could think about how to recompense companies to do that to not do that and we would be much more certain about how much extraction there would be and if we then use that as a way of educating people that this is a very damaging situation and that we shouldn't be using peat for our horticulture it would actually reduce people's want to buy that product and hopefully reduce extraction in the future so it's a very practical suggestion okay thank you very conscious of time so if we can keep our questions and answers short we will move on to questions from Claudia Beamish thank you just for the record for the official report I did have an amendment to that effect in the planning bill which I understand the minister is prepared to work on to make it better for stage 3 could I briefly go back to the planning bill I hope I said planning I'm a bit obsessed with client yet could I go back to Jim Dentscham and I was very interested to see if you could briefly explain to us about the open letter from the groups of farmers in relation to setting targets well it wasn't only farmers it was Environment Link I think as well really significant broad group of signatories and that's going to lead me and so others can think about my main question to anyone who hasn't yet spoken about the interim targets and their significance and importance so Jim if you could just say briefly about that briefly the agriculture and farming and land use in fact has been seen as a quite hard to do area of you know to reduce emissions government has only had in the climate change plan a 9% reduction envelope for agriculture and we believe that that's not sufficient enough to move that sector forward and to be fair so we drew together people who wanted to were keen to say we need to do more we need government to provide leave to ship and these are some measures that we want to see and so we had 50 signatories to that letter calling for carbon neutral farming when we say carbon neutral in that case that was so that people understood it but it's really greenhouse gas neutral farming so you have 50 organisations NGOs, farming organisations, farmers themselves, academics other rural groups who are interested in signing that and I think to get away from the actual it got a bit mixed up with perhaps what the actual target is we're aiming for we're aiming for net zero etc the most important thing we felt was that there was a significant all those people were keen on those measures that we talked about in that I think that's in your evidence things like better soil management agroforestry reducing emissions intensity and helping farmers to become more efficient those sorts of things a much better provision of advice so have a look at that and that's in the evidence that we've provided from environment link to be absolutely clear what that calls for but there are some for particular measures that those organisations were keen to see delivered in terms of just to start with yourself and if we could have brief answers so we can get through all the other questions but in terms of the interim targets how does that relate to what the IPCC has said about the need for urgent rapid transformational change from your perspective and then from others who would like to comment there's lots of evidence out there saying that we need an advice saying that we need rapid transformational change and we want to see a 2030 target that is a 77% reduction and we need that because otherwise if we have a current trajectory before we then act we're allowing the status quo to continue and to wait for things to happen by somebody else. We need to start today and tomorrow doing the things putting in place the things that we need to see. The things that you've proposed without going to any more detail just to know if it's just fine we're going to refer to the balancing act report we propose our RSPB proposes in that 10 suggestions for things to do for the long term sorry but for the interim targets just in terms of clarity are there things that can be done now? Absolutely so in that for the short term to improve there's 10 recommendations for improving the climate change plan which would take you or help you to make sure that you achieve the 9% but go further and then 10 other suggestions, real serious ideas that would take you much further than the 9% so that gives you a much faster trajectory towards achieving an agriculture helping to achieve that 10% emission reduction by 2030 Gina Hunt, how you wanted to come in? Just to explain how we've landed on the 77% by 2030 ask there's a needs-based case for that and a feasibility case for that so from a needs-based perspective we've based that analysis on the carbon law principle developed by Johann Rockstrom at Stockholm Institute and that relies on having emissions every decade so that's what we need to do but there's also a feasibility case around 77% we definitely can get significantly further than the 66% that's already legislated for the government themselves have shown that 71% is a linear trajectory through to net zero by 2050 and we've done some analysis of published scenarios for the climate change plan so either committee on climate change scenarios or the government's own scenarios ambitious but credible envelopes within them for specific sectors and we've found that you can easily get to a 73% target by 2032 if you take a credible realistic action in a stretch scenario you can even get up to 79% that's if you don't use the windfall in the land use sector that the Scottish Government used to backtrack an ambition in the final climate change plan I think it's really important to recognise that the CCC and its recent progress report emphasised that we need to be building in contingency now for more stretching targets in the future and our analysis shows that we can do that and there's credible policies to be able to do that I believe my colleagues have responded to the feasibility question more than I could have because I'm not a technology expert but what I can say is obviously having credible early targets will allow Scotland to continue on its leadership path and will allow first mover advantage will build cases for business opportunity and technology development in Scotland that will be the technology of the future in addition to that I just wanted to also highlight that towards the end of 2040-2050 we will be dealing with adaptation as well as mitigation so the more steps we can do now while we mostly have the world as we know it as it were the less we will have to be pushing for radical change at a time when the world is drastically changing around us as well I guess I just want to take this opportunity on the question of the 2030 target to kind of re-emphasise the moral urgency that I'm kind of here to project the ambition of the action that we take now is more important than ever because this has been alluded to earlier like our share of the carbon budget is rapidly being used up some reports say we have 12 up to 12 years left before our fair share contribution to global emission reductions has been used up so we need to be delivering the emission reductions consistent with what is demanded by climate science and by climate justice and I want to re-emphasise that point that young people around the world are already experiencing at times re-emphasis of points that have been made probably eating into other questions I apologise Can I bring in Caroline Rans, please? I'd just like to reference the climate change plan as we're looking ahead at what can be done to 2030 now obviously this committee spent a great deal of time scrutinising the climate change plan and making very thorough recommendations for what could be done to improve it however when we saw the final plan earlier this year it added up so that actually the policies in the draft climate change plan delivered 1 million tonnes savings that weren't there in the final climate change plan so we did see a rollback in ambition in the final plan as compared to the draft and so there are a suite of policies that the Scottish Government has already considered has already costed and that the CCC has already put forward and that this committee has scrutinised that give us significant possibility to go further towards 2030 I'm going to move on to questions from John Scott Thank you and I just want to go back to interim targets briefly and ask what the practical implications are of the interim targets that you've proposed for 2030 for example I note the Scotch Whiskey Association say that to go for a revised target by 2020 is not easily achievable is unrealistic I think it's the words they have used but accepting what they say and perhaps as being a fair comment would you like to talk about the 2030 targets what are the implications? Would anyone like to come in on that? I'm declaring an interest as a farmer as well To be the answer To come back to the original question does this bill match with the IPCC report I think the key takeaway from IPCC was urgency if there was one word it would be urgency and so interim targets are clearly necessary in order to meet that urgency question and 2050 targets wouldn't respond to that sufficiently but in terms of what the implications would be and perhaps speaking to you as a farmer and as has been touched on before certainly the land sector and agriculture has a role to play we know that agriculture does make up emissions particularly non-CO2 emissions and there are savings to be made that can as has been alluded to really enhance food security and adaptation as well particularly through soil management but as the CCC report that came out last week identified there is a lot of potential if we consider the role of diets as part of the land management factor and we saw many reports coming out in the last month last months that are confirming this analysis and I think this is going to be a big part of strategies going forward looking at the role of diets and how we use land management in that context and I think a lot of gains can be made in the short term by considering this briefly on the practical implications on the target for 2030 and I think the question that underpins that is what's going to be the driving force to achieve that and unrealistic but I think what we need to do is get the private sector mobilised very quickly to drive emissions reductions in that target private sector conversations are really critical but also multi-stakeholder conversations we need to happen very rapidly very quickly to get buy-in to be able to reach a target if we're looking at the practicality last week we discussed implications of driving this by legislation or by incentivisation and what would your preferred options be in terms of particularly of land use which is one of the things I know a bit about and the new agriculture bill that's coming through post-CAP I think legislation as a whole can sometimes be seen as top-down driven particularly in the land use sector and in the farming sector people working in that sector that come from all different socio-economic strata but I think if it's legislation alone my recommendation would be to see if we can get good buy-in to that legislation to support the roll-out of that going forward Sarah Pancer One point on quickly on this I think obviously like you said legislation isn't necessarily something that we will go or yourselves will go and give to the agriculture sector I think is crucial to building engagement with the sectors, building engagement with young people and all groups within those sectors to make sure that the answers to these questions that people who work with the land have that we might not have as people who are in that context I think consultation is really key in all of this and it's really key in building the urgency. I also wanted to just pick up on the wording you said easily achieved none of this is going to be easily achieved but it will be difficult whether it is now or whether it is in the future there will be some difficult choices to be made but they will be easier to make at this point than they will be but none of us think that this is going to be easy but it's necessary Jim Densham So I think as you heard last week the voluntary approach for farming anyway has not produced significant emissions reduction so far so I think we need to build on that we certainly need to broaden as you heard last week again farming for better climate we certainly need more advice to farmers to help them to understand but we need everything we need a certain basic level of regulation in order to bring certain farmers up to a level that is the basic minimum so we talked before about compulsory soil testing to make sure that that sort of basic planning for your fertiliser use is there and in place that all farms are doing that and then I think last week also and I agree is that we need to have a certain amount of where we have a new cap system or post Brexit system of farm payments that will be conditional payments so it's not all about regulation it's about different layers some basic regulation some conditional things to do with payments supportive payments a lot of rewarding farmers for sequestration in the future so that if they do need to change their land use because they have the opportunity to do that they are compensated for it in terms of payments for gone and all that sort of thing thank you so much I can finally ask you should the ability to modify targets in both directions be included in the bill we have a short answer to this we have a lot of questions still to ask Caroline Rans so this is something that we discussed at length with the bill team who convened a technical discussion group on the technical elements of the bill over the winter and of course instinctively to give the power for targets to come down in future we always want to be driving for more ambition to do better and go further so it feels wrong to allow that mechanism for targets to come down but this is part of the proposal which has been put forward for an inventory freeze to protect annual targets from the baseline changes and the inventories so we're quite content that mechanism to bring targets down as well as up is insulated within that particular part of the bill and that there are significant safeguards that would ensure that the bringing targets down can only be done with advice can only be done if it's because of an inventory change and can only be done in terms of regulation brought before Parliament for scrutiny we're going to move on to questions from Finlay Carson section 5 sets out the target setting criteria including scientific knowledge technology, energy policy and so on and it's been updated since the 2009 act to include current international carbon reporting practices what we'd like to ask is whether you think that the target setting criteria is appropriate and maybe consider what stop Climate Change Scotland suggested that we needed a tighter definition for fair and safe when it came to the objectives of not exceeding fair and safe emissions budgets could you consider whether they're appropriate now Anyone like to answer that? Caroline Vance If I can answer the fair and safe budget first there was a proposal in the consultation to remove this criterion of meeting a fair and safe Scottish emissions budget we're very pleased to see that that has been kept in that's the sort of fundamental basic overarching criteria that we should be considering when we're setting our climate targets so we're very pleased that it's there we would like to see a strengthening in the definition so the definition as it stands refers more to the safe part of the fair and safe budget it doesn't really reflect the fair aspect so we would certainly like to see that amended to include the UNFCCC principles of equity and common differentiated responsibility and we would like to see a requirement for the CCC to calculate on what our fair and safe emissions budget is whenever they're asked to do the 5-year advice and to take that into consideration in terms of whether the target setting criteria is still relevant that you're right there's quite a long list here of different criteria as I said we consider the fair and safe criteria and our obligations under science and under the UNFCCC protocols to be the most important and perhaps the ones that come underneath that are really more about how we implement the policies One criterion that we see as notably missing is something around public health so we have a lot of other factors that are under consideration but I think a lot of the policies that tackle climate change have huge co-benefits in terms of public health if you think about insulating people's homes and protecting them from damp drafty homes if you think about encouraging people where appropriate to get out of their cars and cycling and walking all of those things can have massive public health benefits so these are all about avoided costs for the NHS as much as anything else and I think we need to make sure that the CCC can balance that in its criteria air pollution is another one that could go in separately or be considered under that criterion Caroline talked about the top three being the top criteria because they are the ones that scientifically are important but also point point J which is environmental considerations and in particular likely impact on targets on biodiversity is also a really top criteria because when we are setting targets it has to help it has to make sure that we don't impact on our wildlife around the globe We are going to move on to questions from Stuart Stevenson Thank you very much and just to make sure that I ask the question in the right context I wanted to just make sure that we have a shared understanding of what net zero target it means basically I think it is covered in the bill at sections 1 and section 15 and is net zero and clearly that means that there will still be emissions not least because I'm speaking and therefore creating carbon dioxide as we all do there will be emissions and there appeared to be a suggestion in some of the contributions earlier that we were looking to zero each of the seven gases and I just wanted to be clear that that's right I'm getting a shake of the head that's not what we mean let me therefore move to the question as such and it's in relation to the advice that the Climate Change Committee gives the Government and that we therefore all see how should the word achievable be defined because I think a lot of it the debate anchors around different views of what achievable means I think that's a really really fundamental question to this bill and I think what this bill does as opposed to the previous act is give the latest that it never had previously feasibility technology was one of the criteria that had to be balanced along with a number of other factors science, economics etc when the CCC was giving advice here the CCC the only reason we would set in it zero target is if we know it's achievable now what does achievable mean as Jim Schee made clear in the first session to this committee the IPCC have six layers of how they consider feasibility from the geophysical to techno economic through to socio-political if you like I think the really big question about whether or not this is achievable is is there enough political will to put this in place so I think the feasibility conversations I've already alluded to has moved on considerably but I would really caution against giving it this paramount status in the bill just before I move on are we also talking about technical issues I mean 10 years ago we thought tidal energy was one of the big things nothing has happened in that but in other areas of electricity generation we've greatly surpassed so our ability to see the future is pretty limited so is it important we also look at technical possibilities yes I think we absolutely have to explore what the innovation potential is for Scotland and I think we have enormous research expertise here that we would like to see exploited towards a low carbon transition I think a lot of the CCC analysis to date has kind of centred on the technological feasibility so they do very extensive economic modelling and they look at what their models tell them at any given point in time but feasibility is an evolutionary concept we can't capture it at one moment in time for all time we need to find ways to ensure that the new pathways that are coming forward are adequately legislated for I think the cabinet secretary to paraphrase her has said show me the pathway and I will legislate for it now I think do forgive me I'm watching the clock as well as the community I know Caroline Rans want to come fine I just want to reflect you say the ability to see the future is pretty limited but actually what the IPCC report did was very accurately paint the picture of what the impacts are that we're facing if we do not do this so I think the question should be less about what does achievable mean and should we really be actually using that in our target setting criteria rather than legislating for what's necessary three sounds please thank you and I think what the IPCC scenarios also did was look at what was achievable but not constraining themselves by what was perceived to be politically achievable at the time and because that can move very quickly once the politics changes as well so I think it's a good question how do you define achievability I would go with the IPCC model of what is necessary and showing the pathways that could be done actually if we set our minds for it Stuart are you? Yes I'll skip the next bullet point I think most of it's been colour the other thing that's come up in particular I think Caroline seemed to indicate that it might be worth considering in some circumstances changing targets but I just wondered reading the bill which is moving to expressing targets in percentages where as previously the 2009 act did in tonnes so rebaselining blew the targets off arythmetically but the new bill moves to percentages does that not in fact remove the need for considering reducing targets because rebaselining will no longer have the effects that it previously had Caroline Browns The problem that we had with the 2009 act was actually that some of the targets were expressed in percentage terms whereas some of the targets were expressed in megatons so whenever we changed the baselines it was the difference between the targets that were in megatons and the targets were in percentage through the problem I would just like to reiterate on bringing targets down I don't want to see targets coming back down I always would like to see them going up but that safeguard or that mechanism is there should there be particularly big changes in the inventory to the measurement science that would require a change We have to move on where we move to percentages which is a move that we absolutely support I think it's important that we still have a view to Scotland's total emissions so that's where the CCC recommendations on a total fair and safe cumulative budget continue to be important and we need an update to that Angus Macdonald Thanks We haven't really touched on carbon credits this morning so I'd certainly be keen to hear whether the panel agrees with the Government's approach to retaining an option to use carbon credits and in what circumstances might this power be used for example to achieve a net zero target Anyone else want to pick up on that? OK We'll go to Gina Hanron first and I'll come to Caroline afterwards Just to clarify what the bill does essentially it reverses the position in the existing act to the default position where we could use credits now we will have to proactively seek to use credits in the future but we can still use up to 20 per cent in any given year I think there's a question about what is realistic in terms of carbon credits by 2050 or increasingly carbon constrained world they're not going to be floating around extensively if they are they're going to be at enormous price so I think it's right that we should seek to to use or to push forward as much as possible on domestic action because I think realistically credits will not be around long term I think there's an interesting question about how does flexibility work at a global level in a net zero world with some scope for carbon storage and other things that other countries may not have more scope for a fire station but that's different from the carbon credits question Caroline Rans So certainly friends of the earth Scotland whenever the 2009 act was coming through argued against the inclusion of carbon credits that there was a compromise then to put a limit on the use of credits which Fos was reasonably content with but I think it's just fair to say that Jim talked quite extensively earlier on about the great capacity that we have in Scotland for sequestration for enhancing our carbon sinks it's highly unlikely that Scotland is going to need to use credits at all and the cabinet secretary has certainly said that the Scottish government doesn't intend to use them and we would be minded to agree that we don't need to use them I guess that are you? Yeah well just Gina mentioned the 20% limit of the panel's view on you know whether that's you know a suitable percentage Certainly it's not a conversation that we've had about what exactly is the appropriate limit I think it's very hard to say what the principles are is that we should absolutely exploit all possible domestic action first and I think also it's critical that we we don't think about credits in the short term that is a long-term conversation but at that point that they're not going to be available and if they are they're going to be extraordinarily expensive Thanks We'll move on to questions from Richard Lyle Yes thank you, convener The bill nationalises the annual report produced by section 33 34 of the 2009 act so it only contains only information directly related to the outcome of the emissions reduction target for the relevant year so in the lordship sort of question way is the panel content or not content with the new approach to an annual reporting and are there advantages or disadvantages to annual sectoral reporting on the climate change plan Content or not content Caroline Rance So certainly we're content with the change to the annual reporting I'm sure the committee will be aware that the 2009 act set the statutory report every October to talk about annual targets but because the reports were ready in June that's when we ended up having the statement so we ended up in this situation where we would have the statement in June and then again in October what the bill does is legislate for the target results to be in June and then using that October statement to talk more about progress on the policies and that's definitely welcome so it means that in June we can look at the big picture of how we're doing against the targets and then the opportunity on October allows us to look at how we're progressing against the policies in the climate change plan so how are we doing with the policies that we've said we'll deliver and transport and we'll be doing an agriculture and energy efficiency so it allows for an additional level of scrutiny in all sectors and all departments to really see how effort is faring so we're definitely welcome to that Anyone else? Everybody's content that's good it's really nice to see everybody's agree with me John So finally the committee previously recommended there should be no limit on Parliament on the climate change plan so what's the panel's view on the 90-day limit for consideration of the climate change plan? This again was something that we touched upon in some of us in the technical discussions with the Government and what the problem was with the last climate change plan it was far too short amount of time for us to get comments in and organisations to get comments and then for committee to look at it in Parliament to give their opinion so it was kind of too short so there was various options about longer and shorter and we were content with this one with this amount of time Karen Lawrence There's certainly a balance to be struck between allowing Parliament and stakeholders a significant amount of time to adequately scrutinise the plan and making sure that we drive it forward and get to the implementation stage so I think we just need to be cognisant of that that need to make sure that it doesn't just drift on open-endedly I think there's an important point as well about the length of time between the final report from committees and when the Government produces its final plan and that was a very long period of time in this context up to I think nine months from the initial parliamentary scrutiny to the final climate change plan and actually to be fair backwards from the initial plan in that nine month period so ensuring during that period that there is a real opportunity for constructive substantive discussions on how to improve the plan Final question from John Scott Thank you convener for your indulgence and I just want to go back to carbon credits a little and Gina Henry may feel she's already answered this question but just for clarity in my own mind in correspondence the Scottish Government said that the estimated cost of using credits at the gap between what is technically feasible domestically here in Scotland and the net zero emission target in 2050 could be around £15 billion over the period to 2050 you'll I'm sure know how that pathway is derived do you just want to pass any comment on that did you say essentially that there wouldn't be any carbon to be bought or sold so it wouldn't be a cost so my understanding of how that figure has been reached is essentially the Scottish Government has taken the trajectory from 2030 to 2050 and the gap between a 90% target and a net zero target and applied current understandings of the future price maybe it's current carbon credit price or future carbon credit price to that now that is an odd sum to do if you like because we know we have not exhausted all domestic effort and why would we invest 15 billion in carbon credits when we could be investing 15 billion to create a thriving low carbon economy with all the co-benefits we've outlined so I think that that analysis is not particularly robust well know it's a very good point that you've made with others share that view one of the reasons why I think Gina is referring to the lack of availability of carbon credits in other countries is because the Paris agreement now requires all countries to develop their own NDC so any low hanging fruits that under the Kyoto protocol countries let's say the Gabon would have sold their carbon sold their mitigation savings as a carbon credit these are now going to be part of their domestic action plans which could actually be funded by climate finance directly not necessarily as carbon offsets and that would be an excellent thing but but that is why these are now going to be used up by countries and not freely available and anything else that is available is not going to be the low hanging fruit and cost efficient but the very high cost measures I actually think the answer to this question is perhaps less to do with whether there's credits available and more in terms of what will be considered to be technically feasible what we haven't touched on it's the fact that the CCC are going to be coming back in a few months with new advice it's pretty inconceivable to think that after the IPCC report after they take on board you know they're going to update their models they're going to significantly update their advice they're going to bring in the IPCC findings it's it's pretty inconceivable to imagine that when they do all of this they're going to come back with a picture and say nothing is going to change we're pretty sure that they're going to come back with much stronger targets for 2030 and for 2050 and indeed earlier this month they were advertising a vacancy for a net zero emissions analyst so I think we can take from that what you will sadly we have run out of time sorry to anybody that wanted to come in with supplementary questions but if there's anything that anyone ever feels that they didn't get a chance to say they can of course contact the committee so I want to thank everyone for their evidence this morning very very helpful very useful I'm going to suspend this meeting for five minutes to allow the change of panels thank you I'm delighted to welcome our second panel of witnesses this morning joining us are Dr Diana Casey the senior advisor of energy and climate change mineral products association Professor Paul Jowett of Heret Watt University Elizabeth Layton director of existing homes alliance Scotland Fabrice Lavec senior policy manager of Scottish Renewables and Will Webster energy policy manager for oil and gas UK welcome to you all I'm going to start off for those of you that ran the gallery and watching the previous session I asked the previous panel about whether you think the bill complies with the Paris agreement and of course the more recent IPCC report if anyone would like to if you have any views on whether it does or doesn't Elizabeth Layton Sure should we just kick off and thank you for inviting me along and for those who aren't familiar with the existing homes alliance it is a coalition of housing industrial fuel poverty bodies that come together on this agenda of improving our existing homes housing stock for both climate change and fuel poverty objectives in terms of the question about whether or not the bill meets the ambition of the Paris agreement as you'll guess our focus is very much on energy efficiency and if the bill is actually providing the plans and the direction the targets that would support achieving an overall very ambitious climate change target for Scotland and we would argue that it doesn't and we have argued for the bill to include measures that would progress action on this very important topic of energy efficiency which we believe there is cross party support for more action on energy efficiency in this parliament and we do have a very strong energy efficient Scotland programme that has been put forward but it is lacking a statutory underpinning and so we've argued for that statutory framework for energy efficient Scotland to be included in this bill and that would include targets it would include the setting up of an oversight budget and to make sure that the budget was aligned with meeting those energy efficient targets as well so that we would be able to make a point for Bruce Lovick. Hi, good morning. Thanks for inviting us along. For those of you who don't know Scottish Renewables with the industry association for renewable energy in Scotland we represent about 250 members in the primarily electricity and the heat sectors and that ranges from developers, installers, manufacturers to the legal and professional services that provide renewable energy. In answer to the question from our perspective we understand the bill to be an interpretation of the Paris Agreement which increased climate change ambitions from below 2 degrees to aiming for 1.5 degrees and for us that means really setting a political signal to businesses to consumers of the future direction of travel I think for us that's particularly crucial as an industry because we are quite a highly regulated industry and political risk is something that has to be managed political risk affects investment and affects the long term supply chain decisions that we make and a lot of the long term infrastructure that we build so for a that signal to be effective and clear we need to know what we're aiming for and by when and I think that's what's key for us really to understand the bill it's knowing that there's a firm political commitment and that can actually be translated into policy in terms of when we need to reduce emissions by and the level at which that needs to be done Anyone else want to Thank you, I'm probably a bit more of a generalist here than most of the other panellists and the previous panellists My guess is obviously the bill is intended to meet the Paris Declaration I think in broad terms it's seeking to do that but I can well understand that people from particular areas have got particular misgivings about certain aspects of it so in a sense my responses this morning will be from a slightly more generalist point of view if it helps a panel like that might be useful to say what my background is I'm an academic at Harriet Watt for 15 years I run the Scottish Institute of Sustainable Technology a spin-out from Harriet Watt and originally Scottish Enterprise and then consultancy I'm a past president of the institution of civil engineers so John Scott is one of my members I think I was one of my members I'm also actually on the prize committee for the Sultire Marine energy prize which was referenced earlier on in terms of tidal energy being the hope of the future but as yet to fulfil its dream my interests are really in systems analysis taking the big picture and the decision making so my comments this morning will reflect that kind of position I was going to go to Bill Webster anyway my office is your sector there's a lot of asks of your sector and it would be interesting to know just what the buy-in has been to something that on the surface of it might look like something that is going to mean the demise of oil and gas as you know it we represent around 400 members and that's not just exploration and production companies it's also a vast range of supply chain businesses and infrastructure owners and they are following this discussion very closely and they are very much engaged in the whole energy transition that's enabling out whether that's in terms of providing services to alternative energy providers or direct investment so I just wanted to pick up on the targets what we've seen in the first phase of the energy transition is rapid progress can be achieved if the targets are aligned and in step with the technological possibilities consumer acceptability and then what's going on in politics and society and we think that's really got to be a key part of the next phase of how targets are set the point about just transition that was made in the last session I think that we would pick up on that in a couple of ways in the sense of the positive story to tell there is the success of the oil and gas sector which has then contributed to offshore investment as well and that is more of a positive story to be told about what advantage we can take of the expertise the investment historically and the hundreds and thousands of workers in the sector not just in Scotland but all across the UK are you preparing for this transition I mean I ask as a constituency MSP for Aberdeenshire how much are you preparing for I would say the inevitability that thousands of people currently working on the gas we may have to look to other sectors as we try to tackle climate change I mean we are looking at the issue in a couple of time frames the time frame to 2035 which was mentioned earlier so at that point in time we envisage that the basis forecast actually that the UK will still be using oil and gas for about three quarters of its energy needs and our projections for production in the North Sea up to that point we will always be below what the UK the production level is still going to be below the consumption level even in the fairly ambitious targets that are being set so we are not actually competing with renewables investment and other sources of supply so we we've developed a vision for the next stage of investment in the North Sea to run to about 2035 and that's the adding an extra generation of production so we're trying to maintain production not at the current levels which is around 1.7 million barrels a day but just down to to manage the decline in production to about 1.1 million barrels a day after that there are as was said in the earlier session there are quite a few uncertainties about where different technologies will go and we really see the need for a flexible approach that can take account of how technology develops how consumer acceptability develops and how society and political discussion moves and that's why we actually appreciate the flexibility that's provided in the bill for the government to take account of advice to revise as it goes on and to have a kind of iterative process to target setting should there be a shift should there be a prepidation for the shift in the use of hydrocarbons that does not include heat and electricity supply I mean the acceptance that if we are going to be taking oil out of the ground that it might be for a different use than what is currently being used for I think we see that there's quite the policy if you look at the carbon reductions that have been achieved so far in the electricity sector more or less a lot of them a lot of that has come from increased use of gas for one thing so there's been a lot of coal to gas switching which has reduced emissions and obviously the success of offshore renewables in particular if we look forward I think we see that there's quite a crossroads in policy particularly on heat and industrial processes and that's where we see CCS needs to have a really clear government policy both developing a commercial and a regulatory framework and also the legislation around CCS, the use of decarbonised gas the development of the hydrogen economy these are all things that our members are actively investing in and carrying out research and development so they are ready to enable some of this transition into particularly the use of decarbonised gas and hydrogen should be an important part of the climate change plans that are developed off the back of this legislation Mike Ruskell has a supplementary question On the face of it the signs are really not looking good for your sector globally New Zealand is no longer issuing permits for offshore oil and gas exploration countries around the world are banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030 Sweden's banned the use of fossil fuels in heating this Government of the Bank of England is talking about stranded assets warning markets not to invest in your sector so your submission to the community is quite bullish about the role of oil and gas going forward but what's your plan B because on the face of it the sector looks finished well we see actually a pretty good future for the next 10 or 15 years in the sector and it's a sector that really needs investment both in the UK and globally and if you look at the IEAs what happens after 15 years because of jobs that need to transition we have to and that comes into the discussion about a just transition that maintains reliable services for consumers so we if you look at any of the global forecasts done by the international energy agency for example even in their sustainable development scenario there's a gap that emerges on supply of oil and gas globally so if we're thinking about how Scotland and the UK have become global leaders in climate policy which they are it's by setting, stretching but realistic targets hitting them and without damaging the consensus behind making progress in climate policy and it's not every country that's managed to do that so it's really important that the setting of targets is a flexible way that allows those policies to be developed which are credible to bring about investment the investment that's needed in the conventional sector as well as the alternative sector so that the transition is something that is difficult but it's something that consumers and the economy can take and this is really an important feature of climate policy that's needed Do you accept there'll be an endpoint for oil and gas? When is that going to be? Decarbonised gas has got to be part of the long-term picture and even oil even if you took all of the even if you took all of passenger vehicles and light duty vehicles that's about 30 million tonnes of oil equivalent out of a total demand of at the moment of about 150 for oil and gas so there's a lot of other uses for oil and gas which are in difficult to decarbonise sectors industry, heavy goods transport marine transport and aviation those things all need to be will all need to be serviced over the next decades still from oil and gas Questions from Finlay Carson The proposed bill only amends reduction targets and reporting duties so the consultation is focused on strategic ambition not delivery mechanisms so it should increase target setting be considered without realistically considering what will be required to meet the targets Dr Casey I think our main main issue is actually the delivery rather than the targets themselves the industries are represent engine intensive and the key thing is competitiveness so in meeting those targets it's how is that burden shared across different sectors of the economy our sectors along with power have taken considerable action already and I think when you go to those stretching targets it's kind of how can you achieve that the focus has to change from those sectors that have already done a lot to maybe other sectors that are harder harder to decarbonise not saying our sectors shouldn't carry on decarbonising we've got kind of road maps showing how we can get there but I think we've definitely we've got to protect the competitiveness because the materials we supply are vital to other sectors decarbonising to the low carbon economy transition and also to climate change adaptation so our key thing is how the burden is shared and it is actually in that delivery rather than the targets themselves Elizabeth Leighton Yes, we've argued that the inclusion of measures regarding to energy efficiency and targets relating to that sector would be in scope because it is part of plans to support the transition it's building on the previous Climate Change Act which did include a significant section on energy efficiency policy and also this new bill is framed in terms of setting emission reduction targets so we believe it's compatible with the principles of the bill but that aside in terms of the mechanics on to the question of need there's I think what you've already heard bit round the table is that targets are essential in terms of driving innovation, providing certainty for business and there's been evidence provided to this stage one scrutiny on the fact that we're risking winning all the economic benefits the jobs benefits and also those to the wider economy if we're not providing that certainty to invest and for homeowners to invest so having that clear pathway set in statute will also give them give them more confidence to go ahead and invest and then we can win those jobs benefits rather than seeing them gradually leaking to other parts of the UK or even Europe because our supply chain hasn't developed so I think it's critical that we do have the targets statutory underpinning even in the UK CCC progress report to the Parliament where they highlighted the energy efficient Scotland programme as an exemplar for other sectors they specifically talk about that there's a statutory underpinning to the commitments and I would argue that there isn't a statutory underpinning unless something is included in this bill that we're aware that the Government has indicated that there is a potential for consideration of an energy efficient Scotland bill at some point in the future but failing any firm commitment to that or what it might contain I fear that we would be failing the chances of meeting the climate change targets if it weren't included in this bill now taking the opportunity at hand avoiding further delays and actually timing quite well with the implementation of energy efficient Scotland which will go into implementation phase from 2020 Rhysle Vic I guess I'd like to make a couple of points in terms of near term delivery if the question is are there areas of current climate policy in Scotland that could be improved, yes there are areas of planning policy for us as well as heat policy that could be improved and I guess a bill is always an opportunity to do that in terms of whether the target works as a long term signal as I said earlier it's about setting the problem and allowing us to work out the solution I guess at the moment the way it's phrased we will endeavour to get to net zero that's roughly the ambition those are words that we can point to as an industry but that's very different to a firm target a number and a date in terms of policy risk if you're looking at that as a business and someone says there's a line in a bill that says there are some words that say this is roughly what we're aiming towards that's very different to there are some clear targets with dates with numbers attached so a firma target does give us feedback into giving us that greater clarity and certainty and the final point is around the technical feasibility and whether we should set a target now given the uncertainty around driving those last few emissions out of the system I'd just like to make a point around long term targets and near term ones so for near term targets say the 2020 renewables targets they have to be achievable because it has to be something we think we can get to that will instill confidence in terms of the long term targets being more than 30 years away that's much more around saying here's where we'd like to be that's setting a challenge and allowing us to work out the solutions so I'd just like to clarify near term absolutely and we have to be grounded in what's feasible I think longer term given the scale that we're talking about and the time there is to work out the solutions you have to allow that to come into play as well ambitious targets and credible ambitious targets are good in that they provide credibility to investors and allow them to modify their strategies and think about what sort of businesses they want to be in future the same goes for households to some extent so I think there's a positive aspect to ambitious targets that are based in on evidence of what is achievable and what can be delivered in terms of consumer acceptability and I think there's a positive essence to that in that it gives policy makers cover for giving strong positive incentives to investors so that will deliver the investment that's needed and I think that's a bit the experience of the first phase of decarbonisation in that the initial set of targets allows some positive policies to be developed that really brought about a significant amount of investment from the private sector in those particular technologies and there's a lesson to be learnt there I think for the next phase too Professor Jarrett Just on the business of long term targets it doesn't mean to say that you can leave them and not do anything about them they have to start to deal with them now so far some of the big hits on Scotland and in the UK generally and in the developing world have all been made by exporting our carbon emissions to developing countries and re-importing goods that's been a quick win for us in some ways but the longer term targets I think are going to involve a degree of behavioural change and that is much more difficult to do and needs to be started now the other issue of course is that if you look at long term targets you'll definitely get in the decision making world of politics involved in discounted cash flow and discounting and of course the reality of discounting is it discounts the future by definition that's what it says on the tin so in order to deal with these we need to start making investments now in order to get the long term benefits that we need large scale complex problems are not easily dealt with by cost benefit analysis to be honest I once gave a talk in Australia on climate change and international development and I said to this audience of admittedly mainly engineers the two most important decisions you make in your life or your house or your partner and who amongst you in this audience has ever made any of those decisions using that method one person put their hand up I have to say it was a man I didn't ask him whether it was the wife or the house but clearly large scale problems need something more mature for a decision making mechanism than some of the instruments that are commonly used in government and by treasuries and the world is at a critical point and we need to start making long term decisions and the actions to get there now otherwise it will be too late The supplementary Professor, you suggested you had misgivings in your opening statement and you also talked about credible targets is there a risk that if we don't have credible targets we will not take the investors that we so desperately need following the process simply yes we do need to start making real decisions that are going to have a real impact and not with awful ones Credible targets allow policy makers to develop credible policies so the feed through from the target into the climate change plans into actual policies making climate policies is not an easy task so you need to give yourself the appropriate framework for doing that as a government and that comes from having targets that are in tune with what is going on and what we think will be going on in the next 20 years We heard some really useful interesting evidence at the beginning of our scrutiny of this bill from Swedish sectors and they were discussing how the Swedish government put in place working with industry sector action plans particularly around the steel sector and the cement sector I'm just wondering where you see the UK sector approach have we got enough focus on transformative technologies and linking that into where the sectors themselves see themselves in terms of global markets and the way they're positioning their products and their services Probably not but we also need to be careful that we don't lull everybody into this idea that technology is going to fix this it does need some of us to change what we do as individuals rather than just hope that technology is going to come on with the magic bullet and solve it all for us I'll maybe come back to that a bit later if you like Dr Casey We have an action plan for the UK cement sector which was produced on the back of the roadmap that was published in 2015 at the sector produced in combination with government UK government The action plan isn't exactly what we thought it was going to be we were hoping that we've got the roadmap it shows what reductions can be made and the barriers to those and the main technologies and we were hoping that the action plan would then put in place what we need to get there and it doesn't go quite that far but it's the start of a conversation with government and we've really valued that we know the three technologies that will decarbonise the cement sector one of them is CCUS which is the Breakthrough Technology the sector itself has done a lot of research we're at the point a lot of the projects are in Europe rather than the UK but all of NPA and the majority of our members are involved and a couple of them are at the point where we need funding for demonstration projects so we're not expecting everyone to do the work for us we need support though I think it's about 90 million euros we need to do these two demonstration projects and I think at the moment they're kind of on hold until we get the EUETS Phase 4 Innovation Fund so it's just finding the support to help and industry has committed a considerable amount of that as well but there's definitely work to be done the latest that we might have with the EUETS after Brexit and whether we're still going to see the same level of funds going into these innovation funds if we end up with a carbon tax for a year or a return to an EUETS but under a very different guise the innovation fund I wouldn't want to say pinning our hopes on it but it is going to be quite a good source of support for those kinds of projects and I mean Brexit introduces a huge amount of uncertainty the carbon tax I think we'd be worried about for other reasons I think as a sector we would like emissions reduction at lowest cost the carbon tax that the chancellor announced at £16 a turn of CO2 we think would render us uncompetitive because in a new deal Brexit situation the chancellor the carbon price will crash paying far higher than our competitors in Europe would be and that leads on to the carbon leakage that Professor Jarrett's mentioned so that is a real concern what's at the limit of technical feasibility then with your sector the technology definitely exists and there's work to be done to get it to that commercial deployment and Professor Jarrett wants to say something or I mean the advances in cement production have been quite remarkable I think in the period but you have to bear in mind that in terms of construction you have to distinguish between what you might call capex carbon and opax carbon and opax carbon, i.e. energy efficiency in use, will dominate the carbon budget of any construction project you could construct a bridge with very little amount of carbon in terms of building it but it's the traffic usage over the bridge that's going to be the killer and that doesn't really impact on that the reference made a minute ago also to carbon tax and carbon trading I'd be very worried if anybody pinned the future of the planets on the market and hoped it would come to save you it's the idea that when the carbon price drops by 20% on Monday does that mean somehow the value of the planet has fallen by 20% of course it doesn't so we need to be very careful the extent to which we rely on the market to fix the CO2 problem and I had questions from Rhoda Grant thank you I think we're all agreed we need transformational change to meet the targets but sometimes that change leaves people behind so how can we do this in a fair and just manner and things like we've heard before movement to electric vehicles that's fine if you can afford it making sure that your house is insulated and has all the latest renewables on it people who can afford that do that and actually end up saving money so there's a win-win but those who don't have the money can't do that so they miss out twice are penalised because of taxation and they like to discourage use of energy I'm really pleased you asked that question because I think that's part of the just transition it has to be fair for users of energy and so there's a real issue in terms of fuel poverty of making sure that the low carbon transition doesn't lead to unaffordable energy just when we're trying to tackle fuel poverty in such a big commitment coming from the government in that way and I think actually with energy efficiency we have a chance to redress the balance between rural and urban we have a chance to actually invest in those properties that have been neglected for many of the programmes that have existed to date and actually say no there's going to be greater investment there so that they would be amongst the first places to benefit from the low carbon transition by investment in moving from a very expensive oil heat over to some kind of renewable heat and very energy efficient properties and so I think it's an example actually where they will benefit from these low regrets options that are available now and should be taken forward as part of the fuel poverty programme for those who can't afford it they should be part of that warmer home Scotland and that investment in terms of meeting the fuel poverty targets that are set out in the energy efficient Scotland programme so again it just emphasises the benefits of energy efficiency that it's quite mature in Scotland there's been a lot of investment in it to date and we should build on that track record and put those targets into statute in this bill Can I just ask a supplementary to that is there enough for the people I guess in the middle people and I'm thinking of you know in my constituency draft yield croft houses and we all hear about the ones that have huge amounts of money in picturesque places many of them have very little value in fact not a value that would allow you to invest and borrow against to really make the change in your houses insulation is there enough available for those people who are earning maybe not on high incomes who probably need to clad their houses totally to get them efficient is there enough there to help them in that kind of spectrum of assistance that's available That's one reason we've argued that the budget needs to be aligned with meeting the targets set out in energy efficient Scotland and we think that work really hasn't been done to see if there is enough in the programme estimating what would come from the public sector and what would be in from the private sector from householders to see is that a realistic balance what levers, what financial incentives what loan schemes and such are being used to achieve that balance and we don't believe that that modelling has at least I haven't seen it published perhaps it has been done to give us confidence and also to give the homeowner market confidence that they will be able to achieve this vision that they should be able to as part of that just transition to a low-carbon, warm and affordable to heat home all over Scotland I think just transition is a really important concept and it's an important part of what successful transition is and that means making the most of the expertise that we have in the traditional energy sectors including oil and gas and the several hundred thousand jobs that there are that expertise is a resource that needs to be made the most of in the energy transition so all of the offshore expertise that we have that Canon is being used in the alternative sectors and that's got to be a really important part of how the energy transition is put in place in Scotland and in the UK and I think the other aspect of it is a just transition is one that avoids a kind of dislocation of the energy system so that's really important for consumers and we're now approaching the winter again so you'll remember last year when we had a situation where we had to import a lot of liquid gas LNG during the winter months particularly in the latter stages of the winter that comes at a huge cost because you're paying Japanese LNG prices £1 a therm £1.50 a therm whereas usually the price is around £50 so you're paying three times the price of your supplies as a result of going an energy transition that isn't considered and in line with what is credible and what is good for consumers Is there a question from Richard Lyle? Two things on the gas I think we're not storing enough there are two gasometers on the MA just outside Glasgow that haven't been used for years in regards to your comment regarding loft insulation boiler scrappy scheme all the different programmes I've seen, I was a councillor for 30 years I've seen more in the last 10 years of the government in my local area in North Lanarkshire there's a tremendous amount of new heat saving one section of mitan type houses I'm sure you know what I'm talking about roughly in the 50s cement outside they've been encapsulated in foam and then roughcasted over in an area that I know and model which is not in my constituency so there are a tremendous amount of programmes that are going on sometimes the housing associations are not tapping into those I have experience of that also Is there a question? Just on the just transition point I guess it's worth saying that the offshore wind sector is working with the oil and gas sector looking at both sectors' ambitions to 2030 and beyond and that's really for the offshore wind sector it's about securing the skills making sure we actually have the jobs and the expertise to deliver the increasing ambitions that sector has now but costs have reduced significantly and that's also working with the oil and gas sector to make sure that there are opportunities there they have a fairly ageing workforce and that's one of the issues they're trying to deal with and I think the two of us can work quite well together and we're already starting to do that so I think it's starting to come together already To questions from Magnus MacDonald Just a couple of questions on the Scottish Government consultation which took place the summer before last on the bill you've heard me ask the previous panel about the consultation so I'd be keen to hear your views on whether the results of the consultation adequately reflect are adequately reflected in the bill and secondly should a net zero target or other matters including the delivery of the target and the establishment of a just transition commission as we've just been discussing have been properly consulted on the consultation Would anyone like to go first? No, no comments on this in particular Perhaps on the just transition commission clearly that should have been consulted on I would imagine you would say It potentially helps to have a reporting body that can make a judgement on those kind of things I mean I think in terms of the in terms of the nature of the bill itself I think our view is that the processes set out in the bill are actually quite useful from the point of view that it allows an iterative discussion of the issues of setting a net zero target and revising the targets with advice from suitable parties We didn't comment specifically on the overall target because of the focus of our organisation but in terms of the just transition commission we have been starting to have dialogue with them about this issue of fuel poverty affordable energy so they're aware that that's on their agenda Okay, thanks You can John, you want to come in? Just to give a supplementary on that one consultation, do you think the results of the consultation are adequately reflected in the bill properly reflected or would you rather the bill take a different shape? As I said at the start we thought that there should be more in terms of plans and I would add policy programmes that are supporting the achievement of those targets and we have argued specifically for these measures on energy efficiency targets to underpin energy efficient Scotland which we put in our consultation response and I'm aware others did as well so in that way I don't think it reflected those consultation responses Views? To brief the bit In terms of the detail specifics I can't answer but I guess as I said earlier our view was a specific date I think that was our key takeaway having looked to the bill Dr Casey? I think in our response we just raised I think it's commendable that Scotland set in these really ambitious targets but I think our concerns were about going above and beyond what the rest of the UK and the rest of the world are doing which comes back to my earlier point on competitiveness so I think that was where in some ways we were hoping we'd stay aligned with the UK but again I think it's commendable that Scotland set in these stretching targets Okay and talking of targets we now move to questions from Claudia Beamish Thank you convener Could I just ask a quick supplementary possibly of Will and Fabrice just about decarbonisation of heat because you highlighted the need for import of fossil fuel for that and I'd just like to have both your take on whether there is a choice in this matter and it is the possibility that there could be a transition to other forms of heat and I fully respect the issue around fuel poverty of course and the importance of that Very briefly please There's a lot going on in this area there are several projects run by the gas distribution companies including Scottish Gas Networks, Cayden Northern Gas Networks looking at the feasibility of taking natural gas which is methane applying known technologies things you can buy off the shelf to some degree to reform methane into hydrogen and capture the CO2 and then looking at the feasibility of doing that so there was an initial study of converting the whole of the leads to hydrogen heating and there's a report coming out on Friday by Northern Gas Networks of could you actually extend that to the whole of Northern England there's similar initiatives with Pale Blue Dot that you may well know about around Aberdeen area and then the Cayden project is about converting six or seven industrial users to hydrogen in Liverpool and Manchester area so all of those are at the feasibility stage at the moment they're going to be part of what those gas distribution networks are thinking about for future supply of gas and obviously there's then a CO2 capture and storage element to those but all of these technologies they're to a certain extent existing things that are being done and can be done and the work is around how do you put those together and make hydrogen a part of the heating and industrial use What's stopping us? There's a couple of... good question it's not just financial financial support is important for demonstration stages of these technologies and the kind of how do you develop a commercial framework that can reproduce to some extent the success we've had with offshore wind for example the other aspect that needs to be thought about is what's the legislative framework for all this so if you want to roll something out at scale and have people invest in it they have to have an idea of what are the parameters in which we operate so energy supply is across the board something that is pretty highly regulated so if you're going into a new product as a source of energy you already would be thinking about actually how am I going to be regulated in this world and that's something that is not very present in the moment in the discussion so it's both what's the commercial framework and what's the regulatory framework and that's something we're hoping to see from Governments in response to things these initiatives Does it just give a boost for that as well? Yeah, thank you So the Scottish Government energy strategy sets out two extremely different scenarios for the energy system and that's either primarily electrification so using electricity and for heat that would mean heat pumps either ground source or air source heat pumps in buildings and the other scenario is hydrogen and that hydrogen primarily probably produced from natural gas turned into hydrogen and the carbon sequestered so those are the two options so under the electrification scenario we see much less fossil fuel use so I don't think it would entirely rule it out but that would be a very low fossil fuel scenario and the primary energy supply would come from electricity in terms of kind of our view of which is the better one clearly those are just two extreme examples the answer will probably lie somewhere in the middle we have some concerns regarding hydrogen and that there's an awful lot of additional work to be done as we've just heard in terms of actually putting the various bits together demonstrating the full chain and rolling that out it's quite a big infrastructure project and our concern is that we don't want that to distract from building on the technologies that we have today so for example with heat pumps I'll give you there's still quite a lot more that could be done to help grow that market in the same way that we've done with wind turbines so we've provided them with confidence we've said we're going to do this at volume and that's allowed supply chains to grow and get cheaper we haven't really done that with electric heat we're only just beginning and things are getting much better because obviously the grid has decarbonised so five years ago a heat pump was roughly the same emissions as a gas boiler today thanks to the rapid decarbonisation of the electricity grid a heat pump is something like 30 25 to 30% of the emissions of a gas boiler so it's now truly become low carbon heat so we still need to do more to help that sector to help roll out that technology workouts on the issues the same goes for another near-term technology that we could be rolling out and that's district heat networks so they're essentially large pipes in the ground we generate heat and power stations we pipe it to buildings they could actually take large scale heat pumps perhaps drawing on energy in rivers or the air and I think again that's a technology that is tread entrusted proven and we don't want the focus on longer term infrastructure like hydrogen to detract from those near-term technologies that we can do Aldi Casey De-carbonisation of heat is also relevant to industry and I think in some ways the one thing that hasn't been mentioned this morning yet is biomass we've done quite a lot of fuel switching to biomass in the cement sector one of the things stopping us is that government provides incentives for the biomass to go elsewhere whether it's to smaller domestic users through things like the renewable heat incentive or to larger power generators through things like renewables obligation we unfortunately fall right down the middle and we don't get any incentive and the concern there is that we're just diverting biomass around rather than increasing its use and reducing emissions overall just another thing on the hydrogen point I think some of the barriers to its use the moment is just as the others have said more works needed I think for the cement sector because whatever fuel you use can have an impact on the cement product quality that's one potential barrier there's also kind of risks around hydrogen that have to be, safety risks that have to be really carefully assessed so yeah from an industry perspective that's there Diana you've already highlighted competitiveness and the challenges that that brings and we're all aware of those and the issues around innovation and what we don't know that's going to be happening in the 2030s and 40s I would like to move us to the final target as proposed in the bill at the moment which is the 90% target and then also to any comments perhaps in the same remarks about the net zero emission target for all greenhouse gases so whether we should be seeing these things in the bill what the options are and it's just a short comment you know anyone so 90% is the target set in the bill I think just building on Fabrizio's points we need to think about and develop all of those technologies to succeed in that objective so it will be a certain extent horses for courses so in some cases just remember we start from 80% of homes in the UK and probably a similar proportion in Scotland used to having a gas boiler at the moment so you've got to work with what you've got to some extent we need CCS to achieve any kind of target and if you read any of the international papers around there they will show that this is an absolutely necessary part of the mix to achieve those kind of greenhouse gas reductions as far as the net zero is concerned I think we understand the we understand the process that's set out in the bill and we think that's quite a sensible process in the sense that you have a set of criteria you have a process to get advice from a prominent party and then you have a decision making process that is democratic and that seems to me to be a framework that is pretty sensible rather than putting a number in a bill for a date for net zero Elizabeth Leighton Yes, as I said before we haven't commented on the overall target but we're firmly supportive of the target of the energy efficient Scotland program of the near zero carbon housing stock or rather building stock by 2050 and in fact we have said that that should be rolled forward, brought forward for the domestic stock because we are further ahead than the non-domestic stock and so it would be reasonable to expect that action could be taken more quickly in the domestic stock and just to remind ourselves that with the IPCC special report we are emphasising the need for urgent action over the next decade while yes, we need to innovate and we need to look at longer term solutions at the same time we cannot delay in doing what we can do now with the tried and tested technologies or very near term technologies we know that energy efficiency just cost effective measures it can save, reduce our energy demand and this is a UK figure by 25% and that's over the next 20 years annual output of 6 nuclear power stations so there's a lot that can be done now and hence the need to drive that action with the statutory targets and put more emphasis into things like making a jump from an F-rated property right through to a net zero carbon property that can be done with schemes like the energy sprong scheme a Dutch model that can do that on a sort of street by street basis using offsite construction with little disruption and paying for it with the fuel savings so the solutions are at hand we just really need to up the scale because just doing the area based schemes which have been a big success they're just not going fast enough or they're not doing multiple measures they're only dealing with insulation or the fuel poverty programme 4,000 homes a year really good programme but it must be multiplied many times Stevenson has a quick question that you want to make specifically to Elizabeth Leighton should we revisit the EPC definitions I just say that our house simply can't get to zero on the EPC because we have walls that are two feet thick and no place for cavity wall but you get 10 points for having cavity wall insulation actually we're better insulated than we would be with cavity wall but the EPC definitions prevent us getting to an A A rating even though we're doing better in practice and there are similar difficulties in other parts of the way it works but it doesn't actually measure the outputs and inputs of a house it uses surrogates to estimate it which are imperfect in particular cases Yes, we think the EPC itself which uses an A to G scale is a useful metric because people understand it it is simple they get it with appliances it's been used with cars but I agree that the methodology needs to be updated and keep up with the new technologies or new knowledge about traditional buildings and there is a working group that the government is hosting that is looking at that so I would hope that they would be addressing some of those issues because obviously not every house can get to an A but we should be striving to get as close to that as we can I just wanted to come back to the question Claudia Beamish posed in terms of 90% and net zero I guess to us it seems that the science is very clear but the ambition is net zero and that is mid-century if you take the renewable sector 30 years ago the European wind industry was just building its first demonstration turbines we were just demonstrating the concept of wind energy 30 years later 25% of the UK's electricity we could be doing 50% to 60% of that by 2030 so we've come leaps and bounds in 30 years I guess there are sectors that this target would affect who haven't yet really felt the pull of this policy change and what they need to do so delaying action and messages to those sectors means that maybe another 5 to 10 years elapses before they really start to work towards what they need to do should be clearly defined in the bill for sectors I think we need near term measures in the bill because there are actions that need strengthening in terms of what we're doing today I don't think we need to set out a technological pathway in the bill itself all the way to 2050 that's a very long term timescale and the point of the target should be recognising some of the technical challenges but we're setting the challenge allowing industry to innovate to deliver that Do you think the message is getting across enough about the economic benefits or I suppose the business incentives that are out there if we have investment in innovation there's some real wins here for industry do you think that's coming across strongly enough I think it has in the renewables electricity sector clearly because we're now reaping the benefits of years of investment in the long time I think in the transport and the heat sectors clearly not, I think we're just starting the conversation there I think the technologies have had an ebb and flow of support over the last 10 years, particularly in the heat sector so it's been difficult to make the same case that you could do with offshore wind by saying give us 10 gigawatts of volume and we'll deliver a turbine facility in Hull we'll deliver ports investment across the east coast uncertainty around whether there's political ambition to actually do this so I think you're right, there hasn't been enough advertised in terms of what the potential benefits are but I think there are large benefits we just need the confidence to actually go after them The latter consistency in government policy isn't everyone nervous about we're actually looking for that to come from the Government in response to the CCS report that really emphasises the regional nature of the industrial clusters where CCS can be made to work and that there's a knock on industrial policy benefit from developing those poles of activity which are in co-ordinated with what we have already there for the oil and gas sector and the renewable sector and there's really a chance to build on that in a further energy sector we're looking to the Government to come back to respond to that report in a really positive way to the Scottish Government We've got other countries that are doing things but of course we have two Governments in charge of policy around this so it's not enough just for the Scottish Government to set targets and be consistent in their approach there has to be messages going to UK Government is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's right John Scott But you haven't spoken about hydrogen relation to the transport sector and I appreciate it's not necessarily your sector's choice to be experts on but nonetheless is the future electric for transport or is it hydrogen? Yeah, I think it's it's still in the it's still the jury's still out I think it depends a little bit on the nature of the transport you're talking about so for personal and commercial vehicles which are returning to base quite a lot even public transport electricity is quite it seems to be fairly promising although at the same time so I think we we start from an assumption that the electricity future for transport is something already very real and can only get bigger we are seeing hydrogen used in terms of trains, buses in Aberdeen there is the potential to use it in passenger vehicles as well and I think we'd probably start from the idea that you don't necessarily get to a point where one will dominate over the other so it'll depend a bit on the exact circumstances and even what consumers choose as well because consumers don't always choose the best technology it's what it's what they find the most convenient or looks the nicest or whatever that's not quite the right way of putting it there is a there is a sense in which we can't as a sort of all all all powerful entity say well everyone will choose this or that and there are several technologies around there's several different types of journey that people can go on in transport or goods as well so it very much depends on those circumstances but hydrogen's probably got the most potential for large scale long distance transport, HGVs shipping those kind of things which at the moment use a lot of oil and gas and still will for a number of years as well Richard Lyle, if you have a question Would we be able to produce enough hydrogen and actually I saw I'll mention it, Shell all over Twitter last week promoting hydrogen for cars and in the last 50, 60, 100 years people changed and used so many different types of energy, is that not the case? Absolutley true before when cities were still using town gas that was 50 or 60% hydrogen made from the process at the time so it's these things are possible and they can be done and the technology is out there and it's something that we should look really closely at and think about what needs to be done in terms of commercial and regulatory framework A note of questions from Mark Ruskell Thank you, I'm just going to ask about the interim targets particularly 2030 IPCC refocused us on the importance of action within the next decade whether you think the 2030 target is sufficiently challenging just to clarify the target that we have today or the one that's proposed in the bill the one that's proposed in the bill I think it's I couldn't comment as it is it's sufficiently challenging in terms of the climate science in terms of is it achievable yes, I think the targets are 2030 it's really a question of costs rather than technical feasibility so yes we could hit those targets whether we can actually at what costs we do it and how those costs are distributed but I think absolutely in terms of the energy system in terms of electricity and heat we have the technologies there to do it we need the political backing and we need to have a programme to get costs down properly OK, other views? Anyone else? If not we could move on to other questions it seems odd I'd heard that we're still installing oil fired boilers as part of fuel poverty schemes in Scotland have we really joined up enough policy on this and that seems like very low hanging fruit in terms of making progress on this agenda so are there other areas particularly around heat where we could be accelerating progress very much in the near term you pointed to the long term picture are we going to be electrifying heat are we going to be using alternatives to natural gas but what are the kind of actions that get us back on track for a higher 20-30 target in the next few years I'll come to you afterwards thank you so in the near term absolutely so the point you've made there around oil boilers being installed through fuel poverty schemes is to replace people's heating systems we should be fitting them with something that's future proof so replacing that oil boiler with a heat pump or a biomass boiler something suitable and that's still going on and that absolutely demonstrates that there's not quite the root across from the climate targets through all the different variants of Scottish Government policy that's also the case if you look at the the new build sector Scottish Government has devolved powers to set its own standards for new builds are built with fossil fuel heating systems even oil systems as well there's currently a review going on so that would be an ideal opportunity to make sure that we're installing low carbon heat systems in those buildings it's the cheapest place to do it it also allows the supply chain to do more and that's what we really need to get the costs down we have a fragmented relatively small heat supply chain with a larger market safe from new build to reduce your overheads improve, kind of install as confidence and knowledge and expand the distribution supply chains and have be able to serve all of Scotland with the relevant skills right now some areas pay a premium because people have to travel from quite far what are the next steps? Have we got a skill shortage in this area about doing the future proofing type installation that you're talking about is that? I'd say not at all no If you look at the people who install low carbon heat systems in domestic homes that supply chain has shrunk over the last three or four years in Scotland the market has dipped partly because incentives have been cut that creates a public perception that it's not really worth doing anymore in rural areas the old price has dropped and that before high old prices drove a lot of people to look at alternatives so it's probably a bit of slack in the supply chain if we were to really be ambitious then absolutely we'd need to make sure that we have the right skills and training in place we have got that in Scotland it's not beyond us to have a planned approach to this and make sure that we set people up with the right skills they need Elizabeth Leighton Yes I'd agree that there needs to be a bit more joining up because we're still connecting people to the gas grid as well we're extending the gas grid and I think most people would assume well the best solution will be we'll just have a switch over to hydrogen at some point and then we don't have to worry about it but again you know that is very distant if that is a solution and there are lots of questions about that it's a distant prospect and so we really must do all that we can now on low hanging, medium hanging fruit with the energy efficiency scheme and low carbon heat we now have to join those together so area based schemes can no longer be just about solid wall insulation it also has to be addressing the heat issue at the same time I just think we should be a bit careful in talking about things which are either long term or distant or very long term as Fabrice says 30 years ago where we've gone from in the wind sector to where we are now and having a 12 megawatt building built so ever such a lot could be done in a 20 or 30 year period hydrogen technology is something that exists and is out there it's not that experimental but so it is to some degree just a question of overcoming the kind of chicken and egg issues that there are with any big change from one system to another system and just going back to the fuel poverty point you know that it's a bit of a it does come down to the individual circumstances of the case I think so not all homes are suitable for heat pumps for example so it depends on the circumstances in which whether you're connected or not connected to the system so it's not an area where we particularly have a lot of expertise but I think there's a specificity around individual cases that has to be taken into account Doctor Casey I think we've talked a lot about decarbonising the heat itself I think our concern is some of the Scottish Government policies around the fabric of the building we've got evidence that heavy weight building materials can save a lot of carbon and it's one of the things that's going on to the reporting side we feel that when you take cement and concrete over a whole life it can save as it can be made concrete actually absorbs CO2 and it stores it over the course of its life and that's something that's not measured or reported at the moment so going on to net zero target we need to make sure that we're including all the sinks possible and we're coming up with a methodology to help measure that so it can be included in reporting but heavy weight materials like thermal mass which keeps the building temperature stable occupants are less likely to turn up that thermostat so whatever heating choice they've got, whether it's oil or electric or whatever they're using less of it so it comes about the energy efficiency points that have been made and we've got concerns particularly with the near term targets that if we're going to promote very strongly the use of timber and construction we're going to lose out on those benefits because we could end up worse off in terms of operational carbon of a building We're going to move on to questions from John Scott Yes, thank you for that and you nicely led us into that question what scenarios might require changes to the interim targets you've just described one such are there other scenarios that might require changes to the interim targets for 2030 say and what are the practical implications of getting to interim targets and if you have no answers that's absolutely fine and can I also ask you or subsequently ask you should the ability to modify the targets in both directions be included on the face of the bill that is to that's a question we're asking all the panels Yes, I think I think that's really all the answers we're looking for If the bill sets out a good process and a governance process for doing that that's got to be something that's quite valuable in policy making We're going to move on to questions from Finlay Carson The section 5 sets out the target setting criteria including scientific knowledge technology, energy policy and so on Are the target setting criteria fit for purpose and appropriate and should they perhaps align more closely with the climate change plan sectoral approach Dr Casey I think that we actually set 5 criteria that we feel need to be included in our response so that covered whether we've got the cost effective technology to meet the targets economics generally comes back to my competitive thing that I've been going on about policy fuel availability whether there's enough biomass to go around and decarbonise sectors that need biomass interaction with industrial strategy and that kind of clean growth so I think that that would be our top 5 criteria that we'd like to see included Elizabeth Leighton I don't think in our consultation response I think we said that I'm sorry I shouldn't have noted this but that the criteria should be make sure that we're taking into account the social benefits or taking account of that because of course we've talked a lot about economic benefits or economic impacts but there are very widespread social health well-being benefits that are associated with a low carbon transition and those are well documented in the case of energy efficiency and housing so we think that that is a criterion that should be taken into account in target setting The webster I mean generally I think the targets seem to us to make a lot of sense and go back to some of the points we were making earlier about just transition etc so I won't repeat those and I think it's good to have a kind of holistic set of criteria under which policy makers can make a sensible judgment about all of the various aspects of adopting a target and what the implications of that are I guess just in terms of the technical criteria that might be attached I'm not familiar with the target criteria but I'm guessing that possibly there's a fairly strict definition of technical credibility and the ability to kind of show a pathway and I'll go back to my previous points particularly for the long term target 30 plus years to us to our members, to our industry it's a political signal it's about telling us here is where we need to be we're not expecting the Government to draw us a line and tell us exactly what the solutions will be that's mostly for our industries to do so I'd just like to clarify on the technical criteria eligibility it strikes me that possibly it's been set very strictly which is why we've kind of come to this current proposal which is a process to set a date in future but not now John Scott has a supplementary question Can I just develop that theme I know in the aviation sector that they're quite driven by the criteria and regulations that are set for them and they seem to have the ability to develop cleverer and clever engines and more fuel efficient engines and are you saying the same thing across your sectors that if I think you did rather hint at that Mr Webster that in the hydrogen sector you needed the regulation and criteria to be put in place now to drive to allow people to develop the innovation that you think is definitely out there is that correct or discuss I think it's not necessarily part of the technical criteria for choosing an emissions target but having a suitably ambitious target that's achievable backed up with the appropriate legislation for innovative technologies to come in and that can be in terms of the commercial investment framework and also the legislative framework in how you deal with your customers that kind of thing all of those things need to be in place to give investors a reasonable degree of certainty about what the nature of this investment is particularly if it's something relatively new I think that would be helpful if that was part of the bill I think not necessarily an integral part of the bill but the process set out in the bill from going to the targets to the climate change plan into the policies is a sensible way of doing it I think it makes more sense to have them as sequential in some degree rather than trying to put everything into one great big bill at the same time Can you move on to questions from Stuart Stevenson Thank you very much The bill talks about the advice from the climate change committee and particularly in relation to zero net zero target as being achievable what does achievable mean to each of you or to those of you who wish to comment Doctor Casey I'd say achievable is decarbonisation without deindustrialisation Anyone else So therefore it's not linked at some magic insight as the technology is going to be available it's simply a guiding set of principles that get you to the destination Yeah well I think the technology has obviously got to be part of it as well but I guess my comments comes from ensuring we keep our foundation industries in Scotland and you know we know what technologies we need to get there and let's support our industries to get commercial deployment of those technologies to get decarbonisation without having to import the materials that they're currently producing in this country For Bristol Vic I guess achievable means there is a way theoretically there is a way to produce the emissions to the level that we've set and my understanding is that for those very last few bits of emissions those measures, the ways you do it are still relatively speculative and would require a fair amount of innovation but I think it's within the bounds of possibility and therefore that's what's achievable The question on costs is different and I think that will be mediated by public appetite for doing this, by political appetite for doing this I think there's no worry that the costs won't be mulled over and factor into our decision making I think the danger is always actually that that's going to weigh down on what we do So in terms of an ambition for emissions achievable should be what is plausibly doable that we know that we have to do and we'll let politics, we'll let the public fight over the speed at which we do this because if we look back at the history of climate policy the reason for the uncertainty, the reason that we haven't developed manufacturing for wind turbines for example in the UK is because we've had back and forth of policy, you need clarity over decades to make those kind of investments So I think there's no danger that the business commercial competitiveness worries will feature into the debate I think for the purpose of a bill and the purpose of a long-term target it has to be around what does the science tell us to do and what is it we're aiming to get to Professor Jarrett The scientific evidence about climate change is overwhelming to most people with a rational mind I think and therefore the need to set a target should be blindingly obvious if we don't fight So it's a case of how do you get there Some people won't like it and some people won't like the impact it might have on our quality of life in inverted commas or in a phrase that's in the bill sustainable economic growth Perpetual growth defies the second law of thermodynamics so we're going to have to re-look at that one when it comes to economic development you might need rather than economic growth as we move forward to this target that we have to set it's a case of whether you do it as a technological optimist or as a technological skeptic and I mentioned before the risk of assuming technology will sort you out but the one thing is sure it doesn't matter if you start as a technological optimist there's no guarantee that that will work so you've got to think of what are the outcomes going to be if you adopt the technological optimism path and it turns out to be the games of bogey you've rather up the creek if you take a slightly more cautious approach and say technology won't necessarily fix this it's going to need some changing behaviour then if it turns out that technology could have helped you you're better off and there's a very wonderful paper written by a chap in the States called Costanza and I'm happy to give the reference to the committee afterwards and he explores this and there are four scenarios the technological optimist if it works you end up with what he calls a Star Trek outcome and if it doesn't work you end up with a Mad Max outcome and for the skeptic you end up either with big government or ecotopia and he gets people to look at what decisions they might make and what regrets they might have and it really is quite staggering members of the committee might like to have a look at it and I'm happy to provide a copy if that would be useful I think we'll take that on I've always had doubts about the second law of thermodynamics and the whole business of entropy since we originated in the discontinuity when neither time nor energy existed so it can be creative from nothing but let's not go there I just wanted very quickly to move to to collapse into nothing if we don't do something about it well indeed, indeed, sorry let's really not go there but the other remaining thing I think in what I want to ask that's worth asking is just whether the interim targets are good enough for motivating industries and good enough to get us to the kind of destinations I think we all in broad sense see that we have to get and in particular in the next 15 years where some of the things that are going to deliver in the next 15 years we probably already have to have started so please, we are running out of time we've got a couple of members still to ask questions for Rhys Lebeg I think the interim targets would increase ambition industry obviously with the ones that would deliver the most of that so it's in our interests for that to happen and yes, it would help drive investment right now where we set a target and we're struggling to meet it if you move that target maybe some of the things that we're not even doing now that I've mentioned already new build, district heat networks, rural heat those things are absolutely given under a higher scenario so it definitely would help pull through more activity right, move on to questions from Angus MacDonald okay, thanks if we could briefly turn to the use of carbon credits just keen to hear your views on whether you agree with the Government's approach on retaining an option to use carbon credits and in what circumstances these might be used for example achieving net zero anyone have any thoughts on that Professor Joe? I had difficulty actually understanding this part of the bill I have to say but I to reflect some comments I made earlier I get really worried when we imagine that the future of the planet can be left to the market and there's an element of this in offsetting and carbon credits and I find it slightly dishonest in a way that we've prepared to sort of buy some something from somebody else to allow us to carry on behaving badly it's seems like donating money to the charity for fallen women while still using the brothel and it's not a road I prefer to go down it if we think carbon is important then we should reduce the use of it we shouldn't be trying to pretend that we're helping the world by buying a few credits from some other poor country to help them improve their lot we should do that anyway actually our moral obligation is to help countries less fortunate than ourselves get to a situation where they're in a much better position we shouldn't be doing it on the pretext of helping them and we meanwhile continue to pollute the planet would you mind if I moved on to the final question Richard Lyle as I asked the previous panel content or not content with the new approach to annual reporting just for clarification do you mean the percentage bit or the no they're going to change the annual report basically the way that we're doing the annual reporting rationalise the annual report produced by section 33 34 2009 bill so that it contains only information directly related to the outcome of the emissions reduction target for the relevant year so they're changing the way it's being reported are you content or not content I think I'm probably ambivalent to be honest I take that as a defence perhaps your second question is more relevant in terms of sectors what are the advantages and disadvantages to annual sectoral reporting on the climate change plan so let's imagine that the oil and gas sector had to report as a sector we have a lot of obligations around reporting and around the cost of using carbon in our processes so we already have a number of reporting obligations I could go into a list but I won't but the really key thing that we are having actually to come to terms with is the implications of phase 4 the emission trading scheme so that piece of legislation if it is used in the UK will significantly increase the costs of emitting CO2 from our production processes and most of the other sectors that are covered so we've already seen the emission certificate price go from 25 years per ton it's gone up to 25 at a certain point and it's now at about 20 so this is going to be a significant cost for the sector and there will be quite a bit of activity involved in how to deal with this and as well as the reporting requirements these are the things that really will drive different behaviour rather than the oversight of different pieces of legislation Dr Casey? I'd say engine intensive industries are already reporting into so many different schemes it's a massive burden please don't burden us with any more May I report that my son works in the oil and gas field in Aberdeen so I maybe record that just to keep myself correct Thank you Elizabeth Leighton Yes and I'm taking sectoral from the point of view of the climate change plan and how that's been broken down and I think definitely it would be advantageous to have sectoral reporting so that we actually understand progress against the targets presumably this would be supported by reports from the UK CCC and then they would also show how it's aligned with the budget again this issue of you need adequate resources if we're going to make these targets credible and that there's some plan for corrective action if they're falling behind of what they said those policies would achieve that's been a failing of previous climate change plans even though the detail is useful and if I can just comment briefly on the achievable targets I would hope that the committee will be looking at what comes from the UK CCC that you've asked for advice on that and presumably that will give you advice on both the interim and the final target but I would think that it's saying achievable it would give you some comfort that the Parliament is a good place in providing leadership not only in Scotland and the UK but in other parts of the world of responding to that IPCC report with targets that are going to address the challenge that they've set us Good note to end on Thank you very much for all your evidence this morning it's next meeting on 27 November the committee will continue its consideration of the climate change emissions reductions target Scotland bill when it will hear evidence from the cabinet secretary for the environment, climate change and land reform the committee will now move into private session and request that the public gallery be vacated as the public part of this meeting is now closed Thank you