 Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2023 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. I have received apologies from Michelle Thompson this morning and John Mason is attending in her place. Our first item of business is the decision to consider the evidence received during the inquiry and correspondence from the Public Audit Committee in private at the next meeting. Our next item of business is the seventh evidence session of the inquiry into a just transition for the Graysmouth area. I welcome Mary McCallan, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Just Transition, who is joined by Chris Bricelland, Energy Infrastructure team leader, who is joining us remotely this morning, Katrina Lange, Deputy Director for Climate Change Division, Andy McAll, Industrial Just Transition Planning team leader and Liam Middletown, the head of critical energy infrastructure and commercial projects, all with the Scottish Government. As always, if witnesses and members could keep their questions and answers as short and concise as possible, that would be helpful. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. I'm very pleased to be here first time in front of your committee and first time doing so in my new role as Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Just Transition. This Government is committed to realising what we see as a really exceptional opportunity before us to deliver a growing green economy. We set that out as one of the primary missions in our prospectus last week. In my own section of that prospectus, I set out my commitment to working to reduce our carbon emissions, to doing so with the urgency that the climate emergency demands of us, but to do so fairly and in a way that takes people, workers and communities with us. We welcome this inquiry with the specific focus on Grangemouth and the Just Transition Planning that is going on there. Grangemouth is a cluster of significant industrial importance to Scotland and we see it as being integral to our future net zero economy and society. Our industrial emissions in Scotland have fallen by over 10 million tonnes of CO2 between 1990 baseline and 2020. However, the industrial sector of today accounts for over 20 per cent of Scotland's total greenhouse gas emissions. That is why we announced in our programme for government that work is under way for a dedicated and focused Grangemouth Just Transition Plan. The plan will be place-based, it is regional, it will be nuanced, it will have differences from the other plans that we are setting out and it will chart a vision to 2045 for the cluster. I was pleased to be able to visit Grangemouth recently and perhaps we will get on to discussing some of that because I know that the committee did as well. However, we are right at the beginning of the process, so I think that the work that you have been doing will be really helpful in informing much of what we continue to do as we develop that plan. However, I will leave it there and we can move to questions. Thank you, convener. Maybe you could expand a bit more on the Just Transition Plan for the Grangemouth area in terms of timescales. You have recognised that the committee is doing work into this that will look to inform the Government's work, but can you give an indication of when the draft plan will be ready? As I said, we are at the beginning of the process and I should say that officials that are with me here today are part of the Grangemouth Future Industry Board and the Grangemouth Future Industry Board will be the leading force behind that. I would put on a record that our chair of the Future Industry Board could not be with us today, unfortunately, convener. We were unable to accommodate his personal commitment, but there are phases to this. Phase 1 is the first half of 2023 into the second half of the year and two of the main pieces of work there will be a baseline study to map the current economic situation at Grangemouth. That will look at GBA emissions, employment and it will also identify touch points for interaction with the community. The other part of phase 1, which is again that portion of this year, is setting out the vision for 2045 and some of the aspects of that in our plan, is that when we have completed both the baseline and work on the vision we should be able to get a memorandum of understanding with stakeholders to agree to our vision. That is phase 1. Phase 2, which is the second half of this year and the beginning of 2045, will be us setting out the actions to deliver on that vision that was developed in 2023. We are aiming for publication in spring 2024. You mentioned the leadership board. There might be other members who have questions on that because we understand that the board does not contain business representatives. It is quite public sector focus, but I believe that to other members. I wanted to ask about the Just Transition Commission, which we heard from last week. The main comments recently have been on the draft energy plan. There has been an exchange of correspondence between themselves and the Scottish Government, and they have expressed a degree of frustration about their involvement in processes that have gone before. A memorandum of understanding has now been agreed between the commission and the Scottish Government. How do you see their involvement in the draft Grangemouth plan as it comes forward? Do you want to say a bit about the memorandum of understanding and what your recognition of their role is? Absolutely. I came into post two or three weeks ago, but in March 2020, prior to my coming in in this memorandum of understanding, it was agreed between the Scottish Government and Just Transition Commission. It speaks to an agreed work plan. It speaks to ensuring that the commission can see drafts at an earlier stage than they have done to date, and it involved the appointment of a series of commissioners with specialist advice on different sectors. I welcome that. I think that we have to agree, and as with much that we do in the climate and nature emergencies to respond to them, the pace and scale of it is challenging. It is right that we continue to seek to improve our relations with a body as important as the Just Transition Commission. Ultimately, their role is to support and scrutinise both the creation and the monitoring of our Just Transition plans. I absolutely welcome their input on that. One of the first meetings that I had when I was appointed was with Jim Ski, and we will speak again very soon. Ultimately, the Scottish ministers are the decision makers in all of this, but my intention backed up by the MOU is that the Just Transition Commission should have a very fulsome role in the development and monitoring of what we do. We welcome that. Given that the response to the draft energy plan was quite a detailed eight to four point response, if we can see that engagement at an earlier stage, the draft plans have come forward, and we would increase the meaningfulness of the draft strategies that have come forward. I want to ask for you to reflect on the experience in Longanna. One of the reasons why we have reduced our emissions was the closure of the energy plan in Concarddon. At the time, following that, the Just Transition Commission commented that, while there had been success in reallocating jobs, there had not been the benefit that brought to the local community and the local community had not been consulted. If there are lessons that the Government can learn from what was seen as an opportunity for a Just Transition in Longanna that did not appear to be realised when we think about the next big place that will go through a similar kind of transition as what Concarddon went through, the lessons that have been taken from that experience? No, absolutely. There are many lessons to be drawn from that. I think that the focus on Grangemouth just now is absolutely right, and it is because of how its contribution to our economy and to everyday life in Scotland sits so closely beside its emissions reduction and what it is doing there. If I have a vision for what we are seeking to do here, there is a sort of economy, jobs, emissions or tripartite issues. My vision is that we retain the economic value and grow, I hope, jobs and grow economic value and drive down the emissions. In terms of how we learned from previous experiences and you talked about the community and workers there, I think that that is why very early and meaningful engagement with communities, workers and their trade unions has been so important. Liam Kerr might want to say more about that, but there has been engagement to date. We have worked with Unite the Union. I met Union Reps when I visited Grangemouth. Obviously, we are looking to find ways to work with the STUC, just transition officers that we are funding. Another really important initiative for this specific area is that we have decided to fund a Grangemouth community engagement officer to be that liaison between the Grangemouth community and what is happening in the cluster and what we are doing with the plan to make sure that the voice of people who live in the area, many of whom are employed at the site, are heard really loudly. Liam Kerr, I do not know if there is anything to add to that, particularly with the experience of Lynn Gannott. I think that all I would say is reiterate that, albeit at quite an early stage, the work for a Grangemouth just transition plan is very much under way. We have met with my colleague Andy Leeds, the team that has started this engagement. We have met with all of the eight larger businesses in the cluster to try and get their participation, their involvement and secure their buy into the plan. As the cabinet secretary said, we are really focused on community engagement. I think that that goes back to the core of your question, perhaps what did not happen in LogGannott and what we are trying to do at Grangemouth. Just to give you a flavour of how we have already started that, we, through our colleagues at SEPA, who work on the Grangemouth Future Industry Board with us, they facilitated our Grangemouth community event. We had members from the community along to put questions to our team in terms of explaining what a just transition was, how that would impact them and, most importantly, how we could involve them in that process. We have also taken participation into another town hall community event. We have met with the Grangemouth community council, the Grangemouth and Skinnflats community council as well. I think that the big point there, as the cabinet secretary mentioned, is that we are taking dedicated action to fund a specific role for someone in the community to engage with the just transition process. I think that there can be issues with capacity funding. We are all very busy individuals, but we are putting that resource into the community to give someone the opportunity to engage with that work meaningfully. That is, hopefully, a welcome step. Other members will ask questions more on community involvement. I will now move over to Colin Beattie to be followed by Colin Smyth. Over time, witnesses have suggested that involving the investor community early in the development of plans, there is an opportunity there to get a better understanding of what finance might be available and how to ensure that policy and projects are aligned with the market's ability to deliver. How specifically will the Scottish Government use the just transition plan to highlight and package projects in a way that will ensure that they are attractive to private investors? It is a really good point. I have been reflecting in the last little while about the need for investment, not just in industrial decarbonisation, but, as we all know, all the actions that we have to take on climate change across the piece, the price tag is eye-watering, and the public sector cannot afford to meet that alone. In terms of Government's role, it is about setting the correct regulatory framework, creating confidence in the market about our direction of travel and facilitating investment from the private sector, responsible investment, additional investment with integrity, but investment nonetheless. The creation of the Grangemouth Future Industry Board is an example in and of itself of Governments providing that public sector clarity and direction of travel. The just transition plan will be an important addition to that, and we will work with industry. Liam Kerr mentioned that we have already met the eight large businesses at the complex. We will also engage with smaller and medium-sized enterprises in the area. That will create confidence in the direction of travel to allow for investment, and it is already happening, is the final point that I would make. For example, Ineos, their sustainability plan that they took me through when I met them is linked with our 2045 target, which is very welcome, and it includes over £1 billion of investment at Grangemouth. We are able to set where our economy is going. We must decarbonise, but we will work with you. It gives confidence to investors, including those of the size of Ineos, to make the investments that are needed. You very correctly said that this is an eye-watering cost that is going to have to be absorbed, and the public sector itself will not be able to meet that. Can the private sector meet it? We always hear that there are problems with people investing long-term, long-term capital, patient capital and all that sort of thing, which in part SNP was brought in to try and plug that gap. However, we are talking about tens of billions of pounds here. Is there enough capital within Scotland or the UK or elsewhere? Everybody is going to be tapping into the capital that is available in order to develop their own climate change targets. Has any assessment been done as to what might be available over a period? My colleagues might want to add to that, but I would expect that those questions will inform some of the baseline economic analysis that we are doing as part of phase 1 of the Just Transition Plan. What is the lay of the land? On the wider point about availability of capital and investment, I suppose that globally we recently had the IPCC AR6 report. Among all the dire warnings that were in that report about the climate catastrophe that we were heading for, there was a sort of silver lining, which is that there is sufficient finance globally in order to fund the transition. Again, it brings us back to our role as Government in making very clear that this is the way that Scotland's economy and society are going and that we are open for investment of the right kind. Liam, I am conscious that you have asked for short answers, convener, but I wonder if there is anything that we want to add about investment in Scotland? I know that you work quite closely with some of the investment bodies already. I would not underestimate the significance of that £1 billion investment from INEOS. That is a major step towards the immediate cluster, the wider central belt and Scotland's wider move towards net zero. I am sure that we will discuss that later today. I think that two comments I would make if that is okay, convener. The first one is on the quantum of Scottish Government funds that we have got in place. I know that you have heard this through various sessions to date, our just transition fund, our energy transition fund. We have a £100 million capital programme as part of the hydrogen action plan and we have a specific £60 million fund set aside to promote industrial decarbonisation as well. To go back to Mr Beattie's question, they are not going to subsidise the whole transformation of Scotland's industry. That is going to take huge capital sums, but hopefully what that shows industry is that the Government is willing to embark on this endeavour with them jointly, create the conditions, perhaps be a co-investor, and that is something that we speak regularly to SNP about. It is through the Grangemouth Future Industry Board. In my final comment, on the scale of major capital that we have to attract into Scotland, I think that some of the geopolitical events are going to be hugely significant to that. The inflation reduction act in the United States has put in almost £400 billion of subsidy to try and attract net zero investment in industries into the US. The European Union's green industrial deal is doing a similar mechanism through their net zero act, and it is important in minerals to try and meet that legislation and attract the supply chain in the businesses. We are in quite an acute phase in the UK just now. We have seen what is our response to that. I think that the chancellor has said that we will see that in his autumn statement. For example, the chief exec of the CCC has said that the next few months are really critical in terms of how we attract and lure that private investment into the UK. I think that there is plenty of capital out there, but it is about trying to create the conditions and really sure that we can funnel that into the UK and indeed Scotland. One of my concerns is that if we do manage to attract the volumes of capital that are needed, it will obviously want to return on their capital. That will be one of the most compelling reasons to invest. Outside of that, there is a great pressure on capital at the moment in order to be absorbed into the economy and grow the economy and so forth. Is the market capable of handling both at the moment? I think that it can be. I think that we have to recognise the wider economic circumstances and inflationary pressures. We are also responding from Covid as well. Many really significant businesses have been in survival mode over the past few years and I think that that is fair. Previously, our approach was to try and encourage decarbonisation as I almost felt me engaged with businesses as a sort of discretionary capital programme for them, something that was nice to do. I think that we are trying to move that narrative into that could be an economic opportunity for businesses. One of the main levers towards reducing emissions and industrial decarbonisation is energy efficiency. If we can work with businesses to show that if you invest in the right industrial processes that improve the efficiencies of your plant, that so too will impact and hopefully improve the balance sheet as well. It is trying to work with them to explain how net zero can be an investment proposition for them and also an economic opportunity. Let me move on to the community and their involvement in the immediate Grangemouth area. There have been lots of consultations in recent years with the local community, which is good, but they do not seem to have seen any tangible outcomes that are linked to those consultations, which is not good. How will the Scottish Government ensure that the co-design process leads to stakeholders, including the local community, feeling that they are being listened to and that policy will address their concerns? That is a really good question. I come back to that point. When we are trying to act with the pace and scale that the emergency demands of us, we have to make sure that in our efforts to respond in that way, we do not forget about the really basic important fundamentals of very close and meaningful engagement, not just listening but being able to demonstrate that what we heard was acted upon. I am absolutely determined that, having come into this post and with the piece of work in front of us of the Grangemouth Just Transition Plan, that community involvement, community engagement and a clear line of sight of how the community have—their views have been reflected in the plan should be very much part of it. I make no apology for coming back to the point about us deciding to fund the employment of that community liaison somebody from the area coming into this work to give that really invaluable insight as to what it means to live in the area, how you relate to the industrial complex, what you want to see it do for you in the future. That will not just relate to the complex itself or the decarbonisation thereof, it will relate to what it feels like to live in the area, to travel around the area. For example, we have the flooding issues on going in Grangemouth, and I know that that is a concern for many people. I want to have as early and as broad a consultation as we possibly can, and it is my intention that we will be able to demonstrate exactly how our views have been borne in mind and built into the plan. If we have a track record of having, as some people said, heavily consulting the local community already and we are going to have another consultation, surely at some point we have got to deliver something as a result of these, otherwise we are going to find disengagement from the local community? Yes, absolutely. I do not blame any community for having consultation fatigue, but that does not mean that we do not do it, so we have to do it. As you say, we have to be able to demonstrate in fairly early course tangible ways in which it has been listened to and reflected upon. I come back again to the point that I mentioned to the convener initially about the phasing of that. That is not going to take long. We are talking about having a plan, a publication in spring next year. By the middle of this year, we will be able to set out that economic baseline work that we have done. We will have set out the vision for 2045, taking into account what we have heard from the consultations that we have done, and then, by the time that we get to spring next year, there will be a very tangible plan for the community, for workers, for industry, for us and the public sector bodies involved in the future industry board to reflect upon. I welcome that and look forward to seeing that. Colin Smyth, to be followed by Fiona Hyslop. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. The Grangemouth plan will be the first regional just transition plan. How it will differ from the sectoral plans that have been published and how, specifically, I suppose, how will you measure success? We know that any energy transition is likely to reduce emissions, but what we have seen in the past, for example, through the growth of onshore wind, is that it has contributed to that reduction in emissions, but the criticism has been that it has not delivered that economic boost that it had the real potential to deliver. How do we make sure when it comes to the plan for Grangemouth that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, and how will you measure that? Will there be specific measurements within the plan that we will be able to assess whether it is a genuine just transition plan? Thank you. How does the first part differ from other plans? How is it the same? It is, by its very nature, different in that it relates very closely to one area, one complex, one group of people who live and work there. That is different to the others on energy as it applies to the whole country or transport as it applies to the whole country. It is place-based, and I know that that is something that the Just Transition Commission has welcomed. There are interconnectivities with the other plans, so they will certainly relate to one another. We can see that because our economy is interconnected. We cannot have an energy plan that is not mindful of Grangemouth. We cannot have a Grangemouth plan that is not mindful of transport, given how 80 per cent of the central belt fuel comes from Grangemouth and 100 per cent of aviation fuel comes from Grangemouth. There will be differences and there are interconnectivities, and we will work through all of them. In terms of monitoring, I am working quite closely on that as I have just come into this portfolio. The question of building a Just Transition is one thing, but how do you know if you have succeeded is another. I am working on the theory of that. Practically for Grangemouth, our plan—and maybe Andy will want to say more about that, because him and I were discussing it yesterday—was that we need to do that work on the base-lining of the economic and social position at Grangemouth. We will develop the vision for 2045. Once those are in place, we will be able to set out key performance indicators that monitoring could be had against. Monitoring will be part of it. We are at a very early stage of the development of it, and the two key pieces of work that we are undertaking in phase 1 will inform how we monitor. Those targets will be contained within the plan for Grangemouth when you publish that plan. Andy, on that point, when and what will you publish? The cab six is totally right. When you are talking about our baseline and our vision, the beauty of that is that you are able to benchmark the two, and hopefully what that will throw up is a series of indicators that we would look to see change over the 20 years or so between having the baseline now and the vision in the future. It will produce a series of indicators. We are confident that we measure what you want to measure in that plan. One of the criticism in the past has been that the Government promised 120,000 renewable jobs by 2020, and Fraser Alder, a piece of work recently concluded that there have been 27,000. However, one of their criticisms was that they had to work out what a renewable job was, because they would not actually measure it. Are you confident that we measure what you will want to have in that plan or that you have to start to measure new things as well? I think that it is probably a mixture of both. I do not want to pre-empt when we go into these conversations to build up a vision that has taken into consideration what industry we want to see, what community we want to see, and what we want to see as Government. Some of those things that we will need to start measuring will come out of that workshopping approach to develop that vision. However, there are other things that we can measure just now such as green jobs and things like that. I think that we will want to measure that too. I think that that is absolutely right, Andy. I would just add to that that we cannot pretend that we know and we can track with absolute certainty everything that is going to happen now out until 2045. Like much of the climate change work and the portfolio, we have to be willing to adapt. We have to treat plans as iterative. Learning as we do, because that is the challenge of making policy over 20, 25 years. Your question is, will you monitor now and will that change? Yes, we intend to monitor and Andy has set out how we will do that, but we also have to realise that we have to have scope for adaptation over the next 20, 25 years out to 2045. On the wider energy just transition plan that was published recently, one of the reasons that I asked the question is that there was, I think that it is fair to say quite a lot of criticism of the lack of detail within that plan, not least from your own just transition commission who were consulted on its development. They said that we are deeply concerned about the lack of evidence of adequate policy actions to deliver a just transition for the energy sector, particularly given the urgent need to shift gear in the rest of the 2020s. Friends of the Earth said that it was more of the same when we know that more of the same will not actually deliver net zero targets. Do you recognise that criticism of the draft just transition plan? It did lack the detail that we need in order to deliver that just transition that we all want to see? I am happy to answer that, convener, although it strays somewhat out of the remit of this particular session. Although I appreciate that I have, although I am not the energy secretary, a responsibility for just transition across Government. We mentioned that there were 43 or 44 odd recommendations in that. We are currently considering them and will respond to each of them, and I will do that jointly with Neil Gray, the energy secretary. However, I acknowledge themes about monitoring and evaluation, engagement and skills, and the Government will actively consider how we can adapt to responding to them. Good morning. I will follow up on that. Who is responsible for the just transition plan for energy? Who is responsible for the just transition plan for agriculture? Are they the respective other cabinet secretaries with oversight? How will that work? It is a really good question. It is exactly as you described. It will sit with core responsibility for the development of the policy, and it sits with the cabinet secretary with that portfolio responsibility. Mary Gougeon will lead on agriculture and land, Neil Gray will lead on energy. However, in the same way that I have responsibility to make sure that all my colleagues are uphold rising to the Government's targets for climate change, I also have responsibility to make sure that the just transition work is how it is being done across Government as well. I like to think of it as finance used to be a portfolio where you were empowered to go across Government and see what everyone is doing in their portfolios. Next year, I want just transitions very much like that as well. The Just Transition Commission, which is clearly independent, has suggested that effective communication requires co-design of the plans. It has to be two-way. It is important to demonstrate clearly that the stakeholder feedback can lead to policy changes. Will the Scottish Government seek to do that through the co-design process of the Just Transition Plans? For Grangemouth, who would you define as the stakeholders? I am committed to co-design. As I said, the work that took place in the development of the energy strategy was before my time. However, in my coming in, we have this new memorandum of understanding in place with us and the Just Transition Commission, which I think has been welcomed by everyone. It speaks to that need for close engagement, to early sight of drafts, and that is how I will expect the plans to be developed going forward. It is of our benefit to really closely engage with the Just Transition Commission. That is why they have been set up, because they bring that cross-civic society knowledge that will make those plans better and more sustainable in the end. It is an absolutely early sight of drafts and close engagement. In a similar vein to Mr Beattie's questions about communities, we are able to demonstrate how we have listened and where change has been made. And the stakeholders? Oh, the stakeholders, absolutely. First of all, we have the public sector stakeholders who are important to Grangemouth, many of whom are already on the Grangemouth Future Industry Board. Other stakeholders are industry, and we have a question, and I think that we might come on to this afterwards, about the extent to which they ought to be involved on the Future Industry Board. Then we have workers, their trade unions and communities in and around the area, and I see them together with the Just Transition Commission and the Scottish Parliament as being key stakeholders. Can I just check who is the cabinet secretary that is responsible for the Just Transition Plan for Grangemouth then? That is me. We welcome that Grangemouth is a place-based approach, but you could see, and others might want to touch on later on about the prospect for the transition for the site itself, the industrial processes, if they can move into the hydrogen sector and the acroplastic sector. All things being well and the industry and the industrial site can transition, it could effectively do that in parallel, a separate universe from the community itself. Focusing on the community of Grangemouth, and we know from the previous consultations, that one of the key aspects and concerns that they have is transport, because if everything goes successfully, they are actually looking at expanding jobs at Grangemouth, but that would effectively bring in more cars because the public transport is not what it can and should be. There is not a real link, there has been in the past. There is quite a serious point about looking at what does success look like, that transport would be absolutely critical, and also of housing because they have also told us that for local businesses that are not on the industrial site but are businesses within Grangemouth, for them to benefit, to grow, they want to have more of a fruit fall, which means making sure that people live in the area. There are also housing challenges, quality of housing, to attract people to want to live and stay and spend what we hope will be good wage levels as well. To what extent do you see the Just Transition Plan addressing those issues, which are quite independent of the success of the industrial sites transition, but are absolutely what we already know from the many consultations that have taken place in Grangemouth? I think that that is right. I think that the experience of the community can be both independent of what happens at the cluster and deeply connected with it, so both of them have to be born in mind. I suppose that just a few points we are at the beginning of this process. I talked about the desire for and my intention that there is close engagement with the community. I expect that those issues will come to the fore, so transport in and around the quality of housing and the living experience in and around Grangemouth, how that is now and what it might be as we move into a decarbonised cluster of the future. Our community engagement officer will be able to feed in those views as they arise in the community. I cannot pre-empt that that is what will come up, but I think that we are right that it will. On transport, I know that a new station at Grangemouth was appraised as part of the STPR2 but was not recommended. That was owing to the current movement of people in and around the area and from Edinburgh Glasgow, Stirling and elsewhere into the area. That is not the only transport issue. We need to think about how well served the communities are by bus and by other means. I expect that all of that will form part of the feedback that we get from the community and our thinking as we develop the plan. Finally, that is part of the preparation. We want to input into your plan, so we are not expecting you to be definitive as to what will be and are not, but we are discussing what we have heard. Colin Smyth talked about the need for a route map, but tangible points along the way to 2045 in realising the final vision. One of the things that we have heard of in terms of transport is congestion around the site because of the many vehicles transporting the high levels of fuel that you have talked about already being set in your key to the central part of Scotland. That is an area where there seems to be lack of ownership or responsibility of who owns that to resolve that. That would be a very quick and easy one. Another one would be looking at the connections north-south from the M8 to Grangemouth. The Avon Gorge road is the only non-trunk road that was the STPR2, and that would stop 40-mile-round trips for the same big lorries, tankers and so on. That is probably the only green road in Scotland. In terms of priorities about seeing winds along the way that are meaningful, whether it is in transport or housing or flooding or other ways, those are the things that we have heard. Is it possible to make sure that when we produce your plans—I am not saying that it has to be those ones—I would argue that it should be, because I have a constituency interest in the Avon Gorge road in particular, but it makes a wider sense. There needs to be tangible winds that are not just about the industrial site, but for the community around it. Is that something that you expect to be considered over the next few months, those issues? Yes, absolutely. Any of my colleagues can come in, if there is anything that they want to add in terms of the planning for that. All I can say is that it is my expectation that those issues will be borne out of the discussions that we have with communities and that, when they do, I will expect that we are able to demonstrate how they have been taken into account in the plan. Already, through the Grange Mouth's future industry board, which I have to say is a novel approach to the public sector coming together of such importance as Grange Mouth, there is already close working with Falkirk Council, for example, on roads issues, congestion and heavy goods. The work is already on-going, very open to hearing the priorities of the communities and to be able to demonstrate how that has been taken into account. I take absolutely the point about the staging posts, the tangible outcomes at various points along the way that people should be able to expect. I come in with just one or two extra points. Just building on what the cabinet secretary has said, I think that you are completely right to bring in those wider sets of considerations. It was one of the driving factors behind having a Grange Mouth site-specific plan alongside the sectoral plans that there should be mutual learning between those plans. The co-ordination on the sectoral side is teaching us what kinds of things we need to prioritise in order to decarbonise sectors. Grange Mouth will bring that into stark relief for us. The sectoral plans will benefit from the Grange Mouth plan and vice versa as we go along. I just wanted to touch also on a previous point that you made about co-design and learning the lessons from the energy strategy and just transition plan. Again, building on what the cabinet secretary has said, I think that what we have done is learn from the feedback of the just transition commission particularly around that co-design point. We are going to be approaching the new sectoral plans in a rather different way, which is bringing out discussion papers before we bring out draft transition plans. The discussion papers will be shorter and much more accessible to a wider range of people. We will have some analysis and guidance as to what we are looking to achieve but without trying to predetermine those outcomes too much. That will make the co-design process more meaningful. We have also engaged with the Just Transition Commission very early on those discussion papers and we have been able to take into account their feedback to us in terms of the structure of those papers and what should be highlighted. That has prompted us to think about the analysis that we will need to underpin each of those transition plans when they are published. I think that Professor Ski has acknowledged that we have started along the right road to make those improvements. Clearly, we will want to build on that relationship as we go along. Thank you. Before I move to Maggie Chapman, the cabinet secretary might be interested to know that we did an inquiry into town centres and retail last year. I think that some of the findings in that would be relevant to your arrangements, so yourself and the team might want to look at that. Maggie Chapman will be followed by Jamie Halcro Johnston. Thank you very much. Good morning, cabinet secretary and panel. Thank you for joining us this morning. I was going to bring up the place-based town centre inquiry because I think that there is something about seeing the place as a whole and not just not those different sectors coming together. The place is more than just all of those sectors coming together, so I do not underestimate the challenge that you have just spoken about, that bringing those sectoral plans into sharp relief. If I can just follow up briefly on some of the points Fiona was making around community engagement and that co-design work, I appreciate what has been said on the co-design and that engagement with the Just Transition Commission, but there is also something around including communities and workers in that co-design process in a meaningful way that does not just channel those views through the Just Transition Commission, where people might think that they get lost a little bit. I urge the Scottish Government to think about co-leadership and co-ownership of different elements of the plans, of the delivery and implementation approaches that we take. I think that this is particularly important when we are looking long-term. Cabsec, you said very clearly that we are not thinking short-term chunks of time here. If the community and workers own it, they are invested in it and will make it work for 2045, rather than just involving them in the process and giving them ownership of that process, that is a difference. It is scary, because it is not something that the Government does often or regularly, but that is really important. From that, we will get not only the questions around transport and housing that Fiona has highlighted, but other infrastructure needs of the local area, such as the flood prevention plan and that kind of thing, and other environmental infrastructure needs. I wondered how you saw the plan being able to take account of those issues that do not speak directly to the energy issues of Grangemouth or the chemical industries that happen there, but speak to the community more broadly. Yes, of course. I agree that the cluster of people who live in the public sector bodies is much greater than the sum of its parts. While I am breaking them down in order to demonstrate the way that we are engaging, I appreciate that it is more than the sum of its parts. I take on board the point about co-ownership and co-leadership. It is really important, because when it comes to changes, it can be frightening. The more people who are involved or impacted by that change are empowered to lead it, to design it, to be responsible for its working, the more sustainable and successful it will be. I think about that. That is a core concept to me as it applies in just transition but equally in a lot of the work that we are seeking to do to rise to the climate emergency right across Government. We can all think of a few examples that are pertinent on that. I have talked before about the fact that I need to have the feedback from all the interested parties, be it transport, housing, flooding, employment, the industry's views before I can say with the surity that I would want to bring to committee exactly how that will be taken forward into the plan. If I can come back again to that phase 1 work that is very much under way, it is about that vision for 2045 on the basis of close consideration of the economic and social issues there just now. I am afraid that it is difficult for me to say just now exactly what the issues will be and how they will be built in. No, I appreciate that. I do appreciate that this is the start of the process for this plan. I think that it is linked to that. It is really just to get a sense of how you see some of the connections with the bits of life that are beyond the industrial sectors of the cluster, the bits of life around schooling, around that transport piece. You mentioned people coming in from Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow and around the place. If we could, in the just transition time for Grangemouth, crack what I think we failed to deliver or what grew out of, for example, the energy sector in the north-east, which is something that I am much more familiar with in Grangemouth, where we got a two-tier economy. We got those involved directly and the energy sector did very, very well. The rest of the community, Tory, for instance, to the south of Aberdeen, pretty much left behind. I think that we have already heard elements in this inquiry about bits of that coming into or being people's experience, and people who have nothing to do with Grangemouth cannot be left behind. I am curious to see how engagement with communities and workers, because they are workers in other sectors that have nothing to do with Grangemouth, is the energy cluster. How do you see that working through this plan? No, absolutely. I would say that one of the most important things that we will do in bringing all that together is setting that vision for 2045. It will say to the people employed, the people working, the people with investments, the energy security needs of the country, what does the Grangemouth area and cluster look like when we hope to reach net zero by 2045? That could never just be emissions reduction to the exclusion of everything else. It has to be working, living and what Grangemouth continues to service for Scotland. I come back to that sort of tripartite of issues for Grangemouth, which is its economic importance, its importance to people, people who work there, people who live in and around it, and its impact on the environment. Those are the three key strands that that vision has to cover, and they will be developed hand in hand with people who are affected by it. At this early stage, that is all that I can really say, unless there is anything that officials would like to add. Those three key points and a vision for how we get there built in collaboration with the people who are affected. I know that others want to come in on more worker-focused questions. I want to ask about SMEs. We know that they face particular costs and challenges and barriers to just transition, such as resources and training and the like. We know that 21 per cent do not have a plan going forward. I imagine that awareness among the SMEs sector is probably quite limited. How can the Scottish Government support—firstly, increase awareness but also support SMEs in that? Also, as a second part of that, how can that be done in a way that provides or strengthens a Scottish supply chain to do so? That is an issue that has come up a number of times in a number of different areas around just transition and other sites. I think that that is a really important question. First of all, I completely sympathise that, again, it comes back to that fact that we are seeking change quickly. There are certain sizes of organisations that are able to absorb that and to keep up to date with it. There are certain sizes of organisations that are not as well-placed to focus on those issues outside of just their own bottom line and keeping in business. Liam Kerr mentioned a lot of the pressures that are bearing down on the cost of doing business just now, so we absolutely recognise that. There is a need here to be clear that the big emitters at the cluster are the ones that require our focus first and foremost, because they are the big industry businesses and they are the big emitters. We should not underestimate the task of having to drive down the emissions in the way that is required of them. However, that is not to say that SMEs will not play a really important part in that. You touched on it when you said that the supply chain is the key part. There are two touch points that are really important for SMEs in that plan. First, as we decarbonise the big industry, the supply chains that are connected with that will be vital to small and medium-sized enterprises and we must engage them on that. The other point is to say that smaller businesses approximate to the cluster are stakeholders in its development and they should also be part of the planning. In a number of meetings, I have had not with regard to just transition, but on other areas where Scottish Government is acting on DRS and on short-term lets and things like that. A lot of the time, there is support there for the principle, not so much on short-term lets, but on DRS. One of the concerns that comes up time and time again is engagement, that either they are engaged with too late in the process or they are not really engaged with at all. How are you making sure that SMEs are involved in the process right from the beginning so that further down the line, when they become more of a focus rather than the larger emitters, it is done in the right way? We will engage with SMEs. I have to come back just to the point that I made initially, which is that we have to be quite clear about the fact that we have to start with engagement with the large businesses, large emitters, because that is where the real challenge lies. However, I absolutely expect SMEs to be engaged as part of the plan because of the supply chain work that we need to do and also because, if any of them are based in the area, they have a stake in that. I should add that my colleague Richard Lochhead, who previously brought a lot of this work to where it is just now, is now the minister for small business and I will be engaging with him on how he expects and what he can do to support me in the development of this. Have I got the time for one brief question? Yes, just very quickly, slightly pivoting. Obviously, the Scottish National Investment Bank has said that there is less money available for some of the oil and gas companies and I appreciate that that may seem logical to some extent in terms of the just transition, but obviously they are still going to pay a massive part. Do you have any concerns about how that might impact on their ability? This is still a vital sector. There is still going to be a major role for fossil fuels going forward. How might that impact on their ability to play the most active part in this transition? Can I clarify Snip's role or the oil and gas industry? The impact of less funding being available to some of the oil and gas sector in their role in the just transition is really the sector and the lack of funding available. From what I can see in my experience of speaking with NEOS and some other companies, it is that there is funding available, be that within oil and gas companies who are increasingly referring to themselves as energy companies because they are diversifying, there is funding there and for our part in government, as we said earlier, what we can do is set the direction of travel, set the regulatory environment, give confidence and, as Liam White rightly pointed out, provide the it's not seed funding but it's a small proportion of funding to back up what what the companies are seeking to do. John Mason, to be followed by Gordon MacDonald. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be at the committee today as the cabinet secretary probably knows that I am a substitute member so I'm not being involved in this quite as much but quite a lot of interesting stuff. Particularly in relation to the workforce, and I suppose then we're thinking both of direct employees but also contractors and people who are a little bit further away from the main players. I'm picking up that there's a certain amount of concern from some circles and I take the point that was made that there's to be, you've met with the unions and there's an engagement officer but for example in the GMB evidence it said a just transition is happening to workers not with workers so how would you react to that? First of all I would say that the point about the workforce and the extent to which that's made up by permanent workers and agency workers is a really important point. When I was at Grangemouth last week we discussed how there's an estimated 2,000 full-time equivalent jobs at the cluster but they can employ up to 2,000 more contractors and actually up to 7,000 at peak times when there are maintenance work to be done so that complicates the picture and it means that we have to rise to that challenge. I mentioned the baseline study that we're doing as part of phase 1 that will map the extent to which the workforce is made up. It will clarify those figures basically and there's another bit of work that we will do alongside that and it's currently going on within the future industry board and Liam might want to say more about it but it's a skills audit so it's us working with Skills Development Scotland via the board and it's basically looking at existing skills and alongside that looking at what the future needs might be as we make the decarbonisation journey that we are on. Those two bits of work where we are now together with the skills audit will give us a really good picture to rise to some of that and of course trade unions will be absolutely critical to that and I don't want anyone to feel that the transition is being done to them. It must happen with them. Thank you. I have only a couple of comments to supplement what the cabinet secretary has said so I must admit that you're absolutely right to decide the GMB evidence but the unites written response to the committee's calls for views was quite positive in terms of the engagement that they are seeing with the Scottish Government and indeed the UK Government today on just transition plan and Grangemouth and they actually said that that could perhaps be a model for further exercises going forward so I think that's quite positive. Just on that theme of positivity if you speak to the workforce particularly the immediate cluster and I know that you heard from representatives earlier in the committee process they are so passionate about the role and their capabilities going forward as you move from fossil fuels and petrochemicals into lower carbon opportunities and I don't think we should underestimate that and then finally we have through the Grangemouth and Future Industry board as the cabinet secretary mentioned we have a dedicated skills work stream which is led by experts at Skills Development Scotland and a social enterprise spun out of the local area called Fuel Change and what they have done already is they have commissioned Optomat the sector experts to prepare a skills analysis of the Grangemouth cluster so trying to really get some detail on the existing skills and capability now we know that there's world leading expertise there but that's quite notional we'd like to get some evidence to support that into our decision maker and policy maker and I think once that that reports back with us we're expecting around June time I think that might be quite helpful for the committee's consideration. So we clear that if workers need reskilling to some extent even though they're highly skilled they will need some reskilling that who is going to take that forward is it going to be they themselves personally or is it the present employer or is it somebody else and then secondly I think again one of GMB's concerns which is a bit wider but which I share is that are you know for young people coming through to the job market are we placing enough emphasis on practical skills and apprenticeships or are the schools still putting too much emphasis on the academic side? So I think on the first part of your question terms of who is responsible for that sort of up-skilling or reskilling I think that'll be a combination of government, SDS is our skills industry and the business themselves and I think there's different degrees in terms of how much up-skilling is required so I know when one of the Niosh representatives presented to the committee earlier on I think there's a real passion and confidence that if you can maintain those assets on site today with the right training and instruction manuals you'll be able to do that in the future so I think they're less concerned about that sort of skills gap there and I think that's something that we are quite supportive of and I think that with the right support from SDS and government they'll be able to take forward okay. Okay and younger people coming through? Oh sorry yeah the younger people point just two points in the catch when I might want to come in. I think the immediate cluster is already feeling relatively optimistic in that regard so I think there's about 40 apprenticeships at the moment at the Niosh site really high subscription rates in terms of a plan for those apprentices they're highly sought after and I mentioned that our organisation fuel chain jailer which co-leads our skills work stream that is an entity that is designed with its primary purpose to engage young people in the transition and how you bring them through education into training into the workforce and I think that their sort of ethos is that it's the young people themselves that have got the energy, the skills and the knowledge to try and drive that change in the business community and that's that's what they're trying to do but I don't know if any of my colleagues want to expand on the the young people point. Yeah could I add a couple of points so so just just kind of stepping back from Grangemouth for a moment and looking at the wider energy industry as part of the energy strategy and just transition plan we commissioned Ernst and Young to do an analysis of the oil and gas industry as it currently is and part of that was to do with the opportunity for jobs in the future and they concluded that there was if we get it right if we can maximise the opportunities of renewable energy there is a possible opportunity for quite a serious expansion of jobs up until up to 77,000 jobs in the future but that is firstly an opportunity but secondly a challenge because it does require the very skilled workforce that currently work in the energy industries to be able to reskill as you say but it also means that we've got to maximise the young people coming through who will currently be in primary school some of them into the industry and I think in terms of responsibilities your question about that it has to be a huge collaboration to get that right. I was speaking to the chief executive of Scottish Power two weeks ago who was talking about the strong workforce planning that he is needing to do now in order to be getting the right skills up through working with colleges and working with apprenticeship schemes and I think that that will be true across the industry and I think the other point though is that there are workers in oil and gas at the moment who really do want to reskill and who want to go into renewable energy but there are too many barriers in their way at the moment and I think one of the roles of government there can be to work across with people like the global wind organisation to try to reduce those barriers by thinking about how some skills can be seen as transferrable from one industry to another because there can be silos that are built up that are artificial so I think we're working with Apeto at the moment to try and break down some of those barriers including through a skills passport but I don't think we're yet doing enough I think there's more we have to do to build on that. I realise it's an early stage in the process I just wanted to touch on one other area which was other parts of the public sector for example planning and consenting regimes which I think have been mainly local authorities but I mean Mr Middleton already mentioned the US subsidies which are kind of competing with us and I think planning would be another area where if another country gives planning permission more quickly than we're able to it might attract jobs there so can you give us a kind of reassurance that other parts of the public sector like Scottish Enterprise like local authorities are really on board for this? Yes happy to and I think it's a really important point and I should say when I visited cluster last week I also met with fourth ports and planning and the speed of consenting and comparisons with their experience elsewhere were raised with me and I think it's always going to be a balance between speed of consenting versus any risk of deregulation and we have to we have to get that right and the change that we're going to see over the next 10 20 years I think puts pressure on us as government to to consider all that and how quickly it can work. The point about public sector so again I come back to the Grangemouth Future Industry Board a really novel approach bringing the public sector bodies together on that we have Scottish Government Falkirk Council, Scottish Enterprise, Transport Scotland, SEPA Skills Development Scotland, Fourth Valley College and now that we've done that we will consider bringing industry in so already in that group you can see how something like planning where we have Scottish Government around the table where we have Falkirk Council around the table that's going to help us to and it already has helped us to shortcut some of these issues that arise where we all have different responsibilities and the second point on planning that I would briefly mention is MPF4 and the inclusion of Grangemouth being recognised as an industrial green transition zone I think that was probably something that the Grangemouth Future Industry Board worked on and were successful in achieving and that will by being in the MPF4 and by MPF4 being made part of the development plan that should I hope give the certainty and hopefully the speed of consenting that I think industry not only want to see but actually need to see if we're to make the change that we need to over the next week while. Thank you. Just a couple of points for being in Gordon MacDonald just for clarification the committee haven't heard from a representative from INEOS we did have a trade union representative who came from the plant but INEOS himself have not given evidence to the committee as a panel and secondly just to pick up on the Grangemouth Future Industry Board the committee were really keen to hear from the board but our understanding is it's not really a board it's more a forum and so some of the issues that you talked about in terms of they're looking at roads are looking at planning you know we were quite keen to engage with them but they haven't been a body that see themselves they don't have representatives as such so I don't know if that's we have struggled a wee bit with the understanding of their purpose and how they relate to us as a parliamentary committee and I think the cabinet secretary seems to hold the responsibility to speak on behalf of the board would that be correct or no I don't think that is correct I haven't so first of all the I think that the industry board wrote to the committee they gave writing in evidence my colleague Andy Hawke who's a deputy director within the Scottish Government he's one of the co-chairs he really wanted to be here today and that's why we asked if we could change the timings but that wasn't possible but my colleague Liam is also part of it so he'll probably be able to say more about the constitution of it and potentially who's the spokesperson for it I mean I think I'm probably more concerned with the work that they're doing rather than who the spokespeople are but cabinet secretary we were concerned about what we're doing but we couldn't get anybody to engage with us directly here on what the work is we did receive our paper briefing but we were actually keen to take evidence and it's been a bit piecemeal so and we do we do appreciate there was another official who was due to come and we do understand the reasons why he's not here that's totally understandable and he's a really key part of GFID as well which we were hoping he could come but I think it's a couple of comments and hopefully this clarifies the board in itself isn't a sort of legal entity it's a combination of the Scottish government and all of our public sector partners and we'll discuss about how we're bringing business into that but it's not unusual for government to to form a board to sort of solve problems or or take forward long-term planning so that's what the gauge with future industry board seeks to do I mean I head up the team that provides the secretariat to that board so I'm more than happy to take any and all questions on the board today and that was also part of the reason we sought to put forward what I hoped was quite comprehensive written evidence on behalf of the board to assist the committee in your inquiry so that that response to the calls for views sets out the genesis of chief apply it was constituted and its priorities its work plan and for 2023-2024 the sort of two main primary drivers of that work plan is firstly the signatory model to bring in industry to be active participants in the board now that we have effectively got a much more streamlined and coordinated public sector and then secondly to drive the delivery of that that just transition plan as the cabinet secretary set out and we've got strategic work streams across the board so we have work streams that look at the just transition to net zero so we have officials that drive that work and that will deliver the just transition plan and I mentioned we have a skills work stream earlier so that's led by experts at sds and fuel change we also have an infrastructure work stream and what that does is that unites Falkirk council and Scottish futures trust is our infrastructure agency we have a work stream on project development which is led by Scottish Enterprise and an SDI and then we have a regulatory hub which looks to whilst we're ensuring regulatory compliance at the site with colleagues at SIPA also trying to promote innovation and regulatory practices so essentially what the board does is it's a forum it coordinates government and our public sectors wider activity it tries to sort of unify all the senior decision makers in the one direction to plan for a net zero range mouth so I think perhaps some of that that confusion could have been borne out of sort of perhaps viewing the board as a as legal entity or something that's constituting its own right it's a combination of of the public sector to work as that forum to try and deliver a net zero range mouth and it is new in that regard isn't it so it's probably not surprising that you're wondering how exactly it works and what it is because it's quite a novel approach okay and there is an intention now to bring business on to that board that was one of the yeah so um just just a couple of comments on that if I'm making a winner so I wouldn't want to have any sort of perception that the board has not engaged with businesses so to give you a sense of the structure all of the eight major businesses at the cluster are account managed by Scottish Enterprise all of those account managers feed into the board to give us that intelligence and the original purpose was to sort of coordinate and and sort of get arms around all the public sector activity and I think just a couple of weeks ago when you heard from bankers from net zero they were saying that actually getting that coordination through the public sector is absolutely critical when that's what this board tries to do and and finally in terms of business representation we publish our our minutes and the board has a web page the minutes from December talk about the next phase of the board being how do we best secure active industry participation and when the cabinet secretary was out meeting two of the larger and sort of corporations at Grangemouth in any awesome four ports last week we asked them in terms of you know how willing would you be to engage in the board directly and receive positive responses so now that we've got those work streams in place we've got the right resources and and the people across the public sector I think the next phase is to try and bring in bring in business to the forum directly okay thank you Gordon Macdonalds we're followed by Graham Simpson good morning cabinet secretary I wanted to ask you about the acorn project and the Scottish cluster so Scottish Government has previously highlighted that in the acorn project is a vital part of the strategy to reduce industrial emissions in Scotland can you update the committee on how important the acorn project is and support the transition to net zero and what discussions are taking place with the UK Government in moving this project forward yeah that's a really important point so the Scottish Government you're quite right believe and consider carbon capture and storage to be absolutely vital to the net zero plans this is backed up by our statutory advisers on climate change the committee on climate change who whose advice is that it's a necessity not an option you couple with that the fact that scotland is exceptionally well placed to to have cc us functioning across the country most particularly of course feeding into acorn at st fergus it was an inexplicable decision for the UK Government not to include acorn in the track one process I think that was certainly my view it was a view shared by people across the political spectrum and importantly outside of the political spectrum that it was inexplicable but we do welcome UK Government's confirmation that acorn can form part of track two what exactly we are trying to establish now is when that will close so that we can understand and track how and when cc us as such an important component of our net zero planning can come on stream in scotland and it's it's linked with grangemouth in many ways because it's a core part of their sustainability plan as well in 2021 net zero t side was awarded track one status and was named the UK's leading carbon capture scheme and it was awarded a slice of the UK government's £1 billion funding that was despite the UK government's department of business and trade highlighting on their website that scotland is helping lead the way on this work benefiting from cutting edge rnd activities a talented workforce and a significant geographical advantage and it goes on to say the north sea also has enough co2 storage capacity to support the UK's demands for hundreds of years yesterday the shell pulled out of the t side scheme followed by national following national grid pulling out on sunday and shell has said that they will now focus on the acorn scheme in scotland where it will act as technical developer developer given this news what further pressure can the Scottish government put on the UK government to reconsider funding for the acorn project and when do you expect to hear any announcement about funding again i agree with with much of what you've said mr mcdorald it is you know what you read initially from the UK government's own comments made clear that acorn and scotland is uniquely well placed to lead the way on cc us with skills with capacity with existing infrastructure and i think that's why the decision over track one and you know i'm deliberately using that word inexplicable i don't i don't understand that i'm not alone and not understanding why that didn't come to pass but we do we we have to welcome progress as and when it arises and um their indication that the acorn can be part of track two is good the clarity that we're now seeking and i'm seeking it my colleague neil gray is seeking it is exactly when that will close and we want it to close in short order so that we can get on with doing in scotland what we think we ought to have been doing before now okay and my final point is it was mentioned earlier that if we get this right there's a possibility of 77 000 jobs if the acorn project in the scottish cluster doesn't get UK government funding how many of those 77 000 jobs are going to be at risk it's a really good question but i don't have the figure to hand but i would be more than happy to go away look at the earnest and young funding and maybe come back although i wonder Liam did you want to add anything to that yeah so just a couple of points so on that earnest and young analysis what what that did was it looked at um oil and gas energy generation and mapped that across to to low carbon and it was that low carbon energy generation that gave that 77 000 figure and there's a combination of onshore offshore and hydrogen and cc us so we can get the breakdown and of how many jobs that that would generate and give it back to you miss mcdonald i think the larger point that i would really want to reiterate is that we have a sort of well-renowned petrochemicals cluster from ingrain's mouth with huge entities that have committed over a billion pounds to get to net zero that project is critical to realising that investment i think if you can give scotland's industry the opportunity to capture transport and safely store it's co2 we could have a real competitive advantage so um as its cabinet secretary says we are we are doing all we can to call the UK government to to bring forward the the action we require them to do at pace so that that investment can can be executed okay thanks so much thank you um i've had a request from chris briseland to contribute chris would you like to come in yes thank you i just wanted to clarify on some of the timelines on the sort of cluster sequencing process at UK government so the intention is that the track 2 process is now open and so UK government are inviting expressions of interest up until the 28th of this month so this week that process closes and the acorn project doesn't have to submit an expression of interest because they do not already have met the criteria in a range mouth perspective you know it is absolutely critical that this project gets to go ahead the potential for carbon reductions you know from this combined with hydrogen investment you know is circa a million tons of co2 and it forms a core part of you know any of the processes you know 2030 would map to net zero so um you know as a Scottish government um there's been lots of pressing um of UK government and there remains an active dialogue with officials in UK government um about trying to secure that status um thank you i'm delighted we heard from chris briseland i was feeling rather sorry for him um so i've got a i've got a follow-up question chris um do we know um have the UK government actually set a timescale for making a decision on this i don't know the answer to that perhaps you do that that's the million dollar question mr simpson um the timetable has not yet been published and that's what we're really pressing for is certainty over timescale because that's the really critical bit in unlocking you know the significant private sector investment that will follow you know why are you know companies like any of us interested in this you know it gives them certainty um around you know being able to secure certain business models support and through both that you know industrial ccs business models but also um that opens up the hydrogen business model support that you know is going to provide such a city um essentially to um you know producing hydrogen at scale on site thanks thanks for that um i've got i've got a few questions um which arise from the the session we've already had there i've got a couple of ones that haven't been asked already so going um back to the the plan that you hope to produce i'm just wondering obviously we can't tell us what's going to be in the plan i understand that but i just wonder the sort of level of detail that might be in it um are you going to you know set out we we we hope to do this by then or you know i mean going back to Fiona Hyslop's question about transport would it be in that sort of level of detail we will fix this road or that road or is it just going to be aspirational um so that the the straightforward answer is i can't answer that just now with the as i said earlier the surety that i would want to bring to committee because we're still developing all i would hazard a guess that we wouldn't go well no i'm not going to actually i don't i don't want to because i don't want to create a hostage to fortune on on any of that because i have laboured the point this morning that what people tell us they want to see is going to be important here so i don't want to start preempting exactly how the plan will be formed well you're quite quite right not to make it up as you go along um can i just check i just want to double double check on the makeup of the Grangemouth future industries board and Liam and indeed cabinet secretary you both alluded to getting the private sector more involved is that going to be um are you actually going to ask for people to join the board or just as you said Liam engage with the board well i think it will be more um more of the former so it will be joining the board in some capacity um we are doing a piece of work just now to actually work it well what is the most appropriate model for for doing that um you see other examples around Europe where clusters sort of start to form as a sort of helix between industry academia and government and sort of equal parts so that that's something we're given active consideration to just now there will be certain perhaps certain discussion points that business may want government to sort out first with the public sector and sort of present a united front i think that that's fair um but to the extent that businesses are willing to engage and be at the table and delivering that a just transition plan that's credible for them um i think myself the cabinet section our team want them to be a like a huge part of that conversation with us and with meaningful representation on the board okay that's really good um cabinet secretary you you've obviously visited the site as we as we have uh and you mentioned earlier that you mentioned aviation fuel which has already produced there um but one of the big um it's a big opportunity i think for for Grangemouth in Scotland in producing sustainable aviation fuel and i wonder if you if you discuss that with within your when they were there and what do you think needs to happen in order for SAF as it's called to be produced at Grangemouth which would be a massive opportunity for Scotland yep i'm happy to answer that and i'm happy to answer that in the context of the discussion i had with Grangemouth about their sustainability plan but i do have to caveat that with the fact that i'm not the energy secretary and therefore i am not involved on a day-to-day basis on for example the development of hydrogen policy cc us sustainable aviation my role in government will be to make sure that the energy secretary is having those discussions and is supported to do so but i would say that that there are generally three ways i think as far as i can tell that industry can decarbonise and rise to the net zero challenge one is making their industrial processes more efficient one another is switching to low carbon fuels and the third one is capturing carbon which we have discussed and when i was with when i was with anyos they took me through their sustainability plan linked as it is to the government's 2045 and we talked about their 350 million pounds investment in a more efficient energy plant at the centre of the complex a 500 million pounds upgrade to the 40s pipeline system their plans for cc us their interest in sustainable fuels but in terms of my understanding as an engineer on from a technical point about the production of sustainable aviation fuels i think i'll leave it there on that one in particular but Liam maybe you know with your role in critical infrastructure maybe you've got more to add to that yeah just just one or two very brief points so i'm a my some sort of the sort of the aviation cross party group in your interest and that and i think we see it as potentially a huge market opportunity for a grains mouth and we're starting to see across the downstream oil and gas sector across europe moving that way so looking at low carbon fuels looking at bio fuels but particularly sustainable aviation fuel and we are speaking with the sector on on the feasibility of deploying that in scotland and in terms of barriers i think there are a couple that's worth citing quickly you have to look at getting the right feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel and engaging with the the sector as a whole and the supply chain on how how we can realise the the great feedstocks for for those processes we have to ensure that if you're asking businesses to invest in that new technology and that new sort of product pipeline there's sufficient market demand for it now at the moment grains mouth provides all of our aviation fuel in scotland but at the moment not all airports in scotland are are placing orders for a sustainable aviation fuel so that's something we'll have to look at and then thirdly i think there's there's a piece around commercialisation so you'll be where mr simpson the the price of sustainable aviation fuel or or saff is some way off current kerosene in jet fuel so any sort of market mechanisms working with uk government that can be put in place to close that commercialisation gap i think we'd be really welcomed yeah you're completely right but it's i mean is that i think it's does relate to just transition because it is you know i think you and neil gray have to work closely on this and with the uk government but if we once we start producing saff in greater numbers the price comes down scotland's airports can benefit because airlines will go there because they've got you know saff is available there huge opportunity um i also think the uk government and by the way the aviation cross party group did send this report on this to both governments i think we're still waiting to hear back from both so that would be useful to get i'll move on to hydrogen because that's been mentioned cabinet secretary you were quoted in one of the papers the herald i think saying you think that hydrogen could be a major export for scotland what did you base that on um well i based it on the the work that was done to produce our final hydrogen plan which was published 14 december 22 it sets out the government's strategic approach and the actions that we think are required in order to harness our capacity to produce hydrogen both to service our own domestic needs but equally to be an export opportunity for scotland in order to service the needs of countries across europe who have to decarbonise their industrial bases and actually whose industrial bases are far greater than ours here and so as i say we have the we have the plan it's backed up by 100 million pounds worth of investment that that Liam mentioned earlier and there is a chapter in that plan dedicated to exactly how we build the export market for hydrogen that we we know scotland can and i would just add finally that whilst we have done all that and whilst we know the potential is there a great many of the powers and particularly over the regulatory framework that are required to really launch scotland's hydrogen potential they rest at uk level so it's another one of my top asks of uk government yeah well that's that's correct but gymski who you've mentioned earlier said he didn't see the evidence to justify your belief let's hope you're right and he's not but your belief that we could be a major exporter of hydrogen and friends of the earth called your predictions pie in the sky so who's who's right so i understood so i'll take them to both of those points separately i understand that there are concerns among some stakeholders friends of the earth included about hydrogen about the different about green and blue hydrogen and the different ways it's produced and whether in their view they are appropriate in a climate emergency scotland support both blue and green incidentally in terms of professor skis quote i think i know what you're talking about and i think he was responding to the energy the draft energy strategy and just transition plan so whilst i don't know exactly well if if mr ski was referring to the energy strategy not explaining exactly how we intend to launch the export market i would just point professor ski to the chapter dedicated to that in our hydrogen plan that's what he was was referring to kind of one more question because i've been reflecting on what you've been saying throughout throughout this and the uk government's been mentioned quite a lot and it just it just occurs to me that when you're producing this plan for grange mouth that maybe they should be involved in some way you might i don't know how you feel about that i mean they've come up in our discussion today um they clearly have been investing through various schemes in in the area um it would seem to me appropriate that they would you know maybe be involved at some point it's absolutely appropriate um whilst we are in the uk and whilst the uk government have powers that are so directly in play here including over energy macroeconomic policy etc they have a really important role to play in this our climate our respective climate targets are absolutely interlinked whilst we're in the uk so i haven't had it yet i've only been imposed for a couple of weeks but i have net zero inter ministerial government meetings and i would expect this that to be a forum where i would raise with my counterparts the issue of this just transition plan and others okay i'm going to take some brief supplementaries if you on his look so clearly the green hydrogen potential for scotland is enormous but we'll need to have a bridge to get there and the equal cluster is is key on that and the net zero energy and transport committee cross party um your last year last spring produced a report recommending and importance of that but bearing in mind that we won't necessarily be able to see that shift to the sustainable aviation fuel or indeed the big green hydrogen market that we anticipate scotland could realise for some time but it will have an impact on the just transition and particularly for grains miles when you produce the just transition plan it won't be set in stone i'm assuming because there will have to be this every time as a milestone of an intervention of what we hope will be a positive decision it will affect it so will we make clear when you publish next year how you're going to keep it set on an iterative basis current but also forward looking in visionary um yes absolutely i think that's a really well made point i i tried to make it earlier when i was talking about policy baking over the long term um we need technological advance to come to our assistance over the next 20 25 years we need uk government to do and make the interventions that they require to so the planning that we put in place has to be able to be responsive to that so i'll make sure that we when we present the plan we're clear about the iterative nature yeah thank you and i'm supposed to link to the question from miss hislopic flexibility of the plan or responsiveness of the plan is the plan will necessarily contain a number of risks and assumptions it will have to be made when you talk about new technology it is you know we're not at the commercial stage yet it's not certain what will come to our rescue as you put it will the you know will there be plan bs and contingency will there be a recognition that that is actually the area but then while we can be aspirational and know where we what we think we need to deliver by 2045 that is not a certain that's not a certain to yes absolutely so and this is again it applies here in the development of the the just transition plan it applies in the development of the climate change plan which we are also working on just now and we'll hope to present a draft of this year we have to be able to demonstrate that technological advance will come on stream and we try really hard to present that in different ways so that if there's a degree of certainty for example if we have certainty over the closure of track 2 and acorns roll within that we will be able to say excuse me with a great deal more certainty the role that cc us will play if for example we're talking about agriculture and some of the early stage developments for the capture of methane for example in cattle sheds we have to indicate how early in the development of that it is and when we think it might come on stream so we just we try to be realistic about the developments that are in play and the timescales at which they might start to reduce scotland's emissions and contribute towards that those emissions reduction targets. I just wanted to come in on the back of some comments that Liam Middleton made and you know maybe they're daft laddie questions I don't know but sustainable aviation fuel what does that consist of so there are different methodologies if you like to make sustainable aviation fuel you can get synthetic fuels which are made through electrolysis as well but I think they are there some way off I think in the medium term we're looking more at biobase content for sustainable aviation fuel and I think I think when you speak to the industry they see that as more of a realistic progressive near term step but going back to the question from Mr Simpson earlier I think that if you have an asset that provides the majority of or all of Scotland's aviation fuel and we're starting to see potentially a market feasible pathway to produce a decabinised product that will be for the benefit of wider scotland and also with the right support and incentives provide a commercial opportunity for that asset I think it's right and promising that the whole sector and government are starting to look at it as perhaps a viable option for them. Given that we've already got hydrogen fuel planes in the air where does that fit in? I think that if you speak to airlines they view SAF as a more realistic near term commercial proposition for them we are speaking to the downstream sector more broadly in terms of the use of hydrogen and transport I think when you engage with them they look more at HGVs in the first instance rather than planes as a sort of commercially viable market opportunity for them so I think it's more SAF than hydrogen in terms of aviation at the moment but I can see Mr Simpson's got his hand up so I'll give him the floor. I just remind members we're not the transport committee but I'll hand over to Graham for a short. I feel like I've joined the panel to help Mr Beatie out. I think that the simple answer is that hydrogen at the moment cannot be used for larger planes whereas SAF, the airlines will tell you that SAF could be used so you know it's basically a like for like replacement that's a very simple answer so hydrogen we're not quite there yet. That now brings us to the end of the session this morning thank you to the Cabinet Secretary and officials for attending and we'll now move into private session.