 Welcome to the 31st meeting of the 2018 Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move on to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone present to switch off their mobile phones as they can affect the broadcasting system. We first of all have apologies to one of our members, Finlay Carson, and we will move on to the first item on the agenda for the committee to consider whether to take item 4 in private. The second item on the agenda is to invite Rhoda Grant, who is joining the committee. We will also welcome Rhoda Grant to the committee for the first time today to declare any relevant interests. I do not think that any of my registered interests are relevant, but I am a member of unison in the trade union and a member of the co-op party both who have a record in environmental issues. Thank you very much for that. Welcome Rhoda Grant to the committee. I want to thank her predecessor, Alex Rowley, for his contribution to the committee's work. I am sure that everyone joins me in that. The third item on the agenda is for the committee to take evidence on the climate change emissions reductions target Scotland bill. This is the third of the committee's evidence sessions with stakeholders. We are going to hear from two panels today on behaviour change and on governance. I am delighted to welcome our first panel this morning. We will look at the behaviour change required to achieve targets set out in the bill. Joining us today are Shane Donlan, the senior behaviour change specialist at Changeworks. Welcome. Dr Rachel Howell, lecturer in sustainable development, school of social and political science at the University of Edinburgh. Mary Sweetland, the chair of Equal Congregation Scotland, and Jamie Stewart, policy officer with Citizens Advice Scotland. Welcome to you all. We are going to go straight on to questions. My first question is from John Scott. Thank you. Good morning and welcome to you all. My question is how well has the Scottish Government's approach to encouraging low carbon behaviour change, including through the climate change plan, worked so far? Are there examples or success stories from other policy areas that we are telling us about or could be adopted? I have a question for all of you. So just indicate to me if you want to. I think the question on whether it has worked so far kind of comes back to how much behaviour has been included in policy in the first place. So I think within the climate change plan there was some criticism that maybe behaviour hadn't been front and centre that it had been kind of included somewhat as an add-on. So when it isn't the kind of driving force behind some of the policy, it can be difficult to say exactly how it has worked or hasn't. I think there have been some really good examples of it being front and centre. Through some of the intermediaries there's been some work with Scottish Water, through EST, I know they've done a kind of pilot to try and change behaviour. There have been some learnings and successes in terms of reducing energy use and making people more aware, but in the greater scheme of things I suppose maybe there hasn't been as much. Eco-congregation Scotland has been working on this for the last eight or nine years, I think, supporting congregations about bringing about change and trying to encourage them to look after gods there. We've had a lot of success within the different congregations that are part of it. On recycling, looking at energy in the churches and things, we won an award from the European Churches Environmental Network for a project that was done in Medardgyau. We looked at all the churches that were there and saw what alternative energy sources they could be using to actually heat them rather than oil. The agenda is well known at the different behaviours that need to be taken forward. There's always a different way how they can do it. This is spin effect. I heard the other week about Orkney where there is no gas, where instead of being pushed to put in renewables, air-source heat pumps or to redo their housing, they were actually installed an oil boiler to reduce the cabin use within their house. In Orkney, all the energy there is from renewables, but if they use only electricity within their homes, they still can't get their certification above a band C for energy efficiency in their house because the way the system is set up, electricity is highly weighted in the calculations. I live in a passive house and I can achieve an A, but he still asks in the passive house certification whether you've got a boiler or not and have you got gas. I don't have any of that. It's great when the people come on the phone trying to sell you, and he's saying you don't have a boiler. It's the way that commercial side have adapted things, trying to tick a box to say they've achieved it, but they're not delivering the move to zero carbon. What we see is that in terms of energy-saving behaviours, there have been some really successful trials, and the Scottish Government has quite a good platform for looking at how those trials work and what the barriers might be for householders. Across the board there isn't a general recognition amongst households and Scottish households that energy-saving behaviour is something that they really need to be doing. It's not high up their agendas. I think that there's growing recognition and recent surveys have shown that people are more aware that climate change action has to happen now. We surveyed people in 2017, which was a representative sample, and 73 per cent of people surveyed said that action needs to be taken now, but they still perceive recycling and reducing waste as being the best thing that they could do to save energy. We've seen small pockets of success stories where households are really targeted. They're given advice on how to save energy. They might be given free measures, but again, it's pockets of success and I think it's looking at how we try to expand that so that it's effective across the nation. Mitchell Hill. Yes, I think two of the really good examples of where policy has changed behaviour will be recycling and also the plastic bag tax. It's interesting to think about why that has worked. With recycling, it's all about making it very easy. People no longer have to get in a car and take things to a big bank at the car park of a supermarket. It's now very easy, curbside recycling. And because it's easy and because it's noticeable, people are putting boxes or whatever out in front of their house, that has changed social norms. Unfortunately, it has had this slightly negative effect that people then feel they're doing their bit and that recycling is a big part. Recycling is very important, but in climate change terms, it's a relatively small behaviour change. The plastic bag tax again has changed norms and that's worked because it is such an easy behaviour to change. Putting a price on something which previously was free is again extremely noticeable and it's very, very simple to change it. There's not really anything to be annoyed about. But in terms of some of the other bigger areas for change, transport for example, emissions have not decreased since we started on this. Transport is still a really big problem. However, I was very interested to discover from an excellent master's dissertation, which I looked at that was submitted this summer, that Edinburgh itself has a very well kept secret that it is the city with the largest proportion of public transport users and lowest proportion of private car drivers outside of London in the UK. Now, why is that? That isn't so much because a lot of integrated policymaking, it's for a whole lot of structural factors and it does come down to structures. So this is about us having an excellent bus service run by a local authority, which is very noticeably cheaper than most other bus services. It's about the density at which people live, which makes it very difficult to own certainly two cars and in some places one car, there aren't places to put cars. It's a very walkable city as well. I think we need to be looking more. I mean we'll come on to this later, I'm sure, to be looking more at how structures change behaviour and not just about the kind of public engagement policies that are often part of the behaviour change agenda. Thank you. So it may be something to do with the size of it in Edinburgh, I think. I've often thought that it's big enough to be a city, yet it's big enough to be. It's also a town too. It has that feel about it, that intimate feel about it. And the need actually be an optimum size of towns and cities in the future, if you see what I'm saying. Possibly a lot of the others that have high rates of active travel and public transport and so on are also relatively small, Oxford, Cambridge, York and so on. But London is the prime example. No bigger city and yet it has the lowest rates. So I think it actually can be done in different ways in most sizes of city. But there might be something to do with density of living as much as size of city. Fascinating. It leads me nicely to my next question to ask the panel if we can provide examples of international best practice in terms of achieving low carbon behaviour change and what can Scotland perhaps learn from that in a desktop way or other ways? I think again I'd like to draw an example of cities particularly in the Netherlands where cycling is completely the norm. And again it's all about infrastructure. How much that has to do with deliberate policy and how much to do with how these cities have simply developed and also as you say geography it is indeed flat. I don't think it's impossible to overcome things like that. Cycling is just one example of a low carbon transport behaviour. But I really do think we need to be looking at places where the structures have made a big difference to behaviour. In ten years of research on this I've done a lot of research about the behaviour change agenda in terms of persuasion and values and all those kind of things which are the individual factors in the ISM model. And I've come to the conclusion that although the individual factors kind of need to be right so that they don't inhibit change it's the structural factors, the S and the M factors in your ISM model that the government uses that are the ones that actually do most to promote positive change. And my whole research agenda is changing more towards looking at structural factors because of that because I've kind of given up on the hope that we're going to achieve huge strides that we need to make through focusing mostly on the individual factors and on persuasion and small nudges which encourage people to make choices to change their behaviour. James Stewart. I think to slightly echo what Rachel is saying. If we look at one example, which is the take up of electric vehicles in Norway. So there's a tax incentive on electric vehicles which is encouraging people to buy them. But you've then also got the sort of that structural infrastructure so there's a good charging network and we're seeing the results that it might not be exactly replicable in Scotland but I mean I have more electric vehicle car sales than the diesel or petrol in Norway. So that kind of has become almost a social norm but I think it's a result of having that structural support there. Presumably consistency of that support as well because I know that certainly in London they had an incentivised having an electric vehicle because it was very cheap to charge them and then the contract completely changed and it's a new provider and suddenly it's more expensive. So has that been consistent, would you agree? I think consistency is important. Certainly something like tax incentives so we've seen in the UK the grants for low-carbon vehicles, electric vehicles and ultra-low-emission vehicles has reduced slightly. So whether a grant can be guaranteed forever is one thing but I think having some sort of consistency is important for households and consumers to have confidence in a system. Right, we have some other questions around this theme first from Mark Ruskell. Yeah, it's interesting you're talking really about system change really to tackle climate change and it's difficult to unpack the different elements but in terms of pricing and financing then how effective would a measure such as free public transport be within cities? Are there complexities around making things free and then potentially consumption increasing or are there good approaches of where you've got a system that works in terms of decarbonising transport but also providing effective service that's competitive with use of the private car? I think you've had on a really important thing. Price and finance and costs are hugely important to people and they tend to be what people see. How will this affect me? What will this affect my pocket or my family's income? It is kind of the single biggest factor in terms of so many things, transport, getting retrofits on your house, upgrading the efficiency of your property. It's admirable when people say which to cut down on domestic flights but when a flight to London is maybe a third of the price as the train it's very difficult to expect people to actually make that change. They can have the best will in the world but ultimately that's a lot of money that they're depriving themselves for for kind of one simple action. There's no I don't think straightforward formula as to what an incentive should be or you know if as you say free transport people could then kind of abuse it or it becomes something that people take for granted. I'm just kind of assuming that could be kind of one side effect. I think there needs to be consumer research into any kind of incentivisation but unfortunately it is one of the biggest motivators is either cost or what people are getting and the financial value that they attribute to that. Jamie Stewart. I think it's obviously finance is a really key factor as well and if say public transport in Edinburgh was free I think we'd see the use of it increase but there are also I think there are other factors that might almost be more important. So how often are the buses are they going in the right places? Are they going to GP surgeries? Are they going to hospitals? Are they going to schools? So I think it's the sort of how useful the services is really important as well and especially in rural areas where we see a lack of bus services. Stewart Stevenson. I think also with something like public transport you need to look not only at whether making it free or very much cheaper is going to work but also the other side what's the alternative that people might choose the private car for example and you've got to work on both sides of that equation so I think to encourage people onto buses is not just about the price and the ease of the buses although I think the ease of the use is very very important as well as the price. You've also got to make it more expensive and less attractive to use a car. I think in terms of a question about whether there might be potential drawbacks I think you've got to be very careful about a very consistent policy because if you hook people into behaviours using the financial motive you can crowd out some other motives and then if the financial motive isn't there it changes people's reaction. So for example at the University of Edinburgh you get 50p off every time you buy coffee if you take a keep cup. What worries me is if people are also using coffee houses near the university that don't offer that have they actually become sort of hooked into the idea that they ought to get money off if they're using a keep cup and therefore if that isn't offered why should they have the inconvenience of carrying that cup which then needs to be cleaned out and so on. So I think you've got to be very careful that it's a consistent incentive and that you know that you can keep it up for quite a while if you're going to go with the financial incentives. Stuart Stevenson. We're talking about individual behaviour and I want to make it very personal. I live in a remote rural area. We burn 4,000 litres of oil a year. It was 6,000 until the government put 400 millimetres in our loft and that cut 2,000 litres off, that's great. It's quite an old boiler. If we replaced it with a new oil boiler that would cut our consumption by about 15%. So about 25%. So that's 1,000 litres. That's about £600 a year at the moment. It costs 2,000 so you get your money back in about three years. However we'd like to go where our source heat pump that's 15 to 20,000. It would give us a 10-year payback but fundamentally the service engineer for the oil boiler is 15 minutes drive away. The service engineer for their source heat pump is two and a half hours drive away. Why would I not continue to burn oil? Mary Sweetland. Because you have a commitment to reduce your cabin footprint rather than the funding on it. It is an issue. There was a big gear up in Scotland for companies that would support associated pumps when there was incentives. That demand didn't develop because of the costs and therefore they've gone out of business. You have great farmers in particular of difficulty in getting engineers to come. My cousin has an air source heat pump and it broke down because somebody had installed it poorly. So it's about making sure that the industry is prepared and ready to go and you actually support them and gear them up to do it and the price for air source heat pumps has dropped. It's worth saying that my wife has the money. The engineer that's the reason she's not doing it. Because she's similarly got experience of Nebus. The set up for putting in electric car plug points in Orkney they were sending someone up from Cheltenham to go and install the electric point rather than there's now somebody who goes from Stirling so somebody was going to drive all that way up in a diesel van. So it's that shift that people really want to do it and incentivise that. Forgive me, we're trying to explore here we understand the problem and I think we've well defined it but what can the government do to move my wife and others to that different position? How do we do that? I'd like to come in before we move on. Shane Donlon. Just briefly, I think it was mentioned already that there's obviously a need for a bottom-up and a top-down approach both regulation along with some of the more softest of the public engagement but right now what is missing so say in your situation you're motivated to but the cost of benefits just aren't weighing up. One of the things that is kind of missing is the responsibility actually. It shouldn't be up to you in a sense don't take me out of context but your responsibility as should everyone in Scotland. Some of the policies are saying that the changes the lifestyle changes in the next couple of years are going to affect everyone in Scotland but if that is genuinely believed in we need to get people buying that message actually this sits with you and yourself and myself that we all need to actually take bigger changes it's not just LED light bulbs anymore that isn't going to get us to the 2050 targets that there is actually a need for investment and then that goes hand in hand with the systemic approach support. Do forgive me I'm really looking at rural versus urban I mean I wouldn't own a car if I lived in Edinburgh I'm two hours walk away from the nearest bus stop and current generations of electric cars don't get me to Aberdeen and back with one charge. What am I going to do? It's a very short supplementary from Richard Lyle before we move on to Claudio. Doctor Richard Lyle mentioned Holland my mother-in-law was Dutch I first went there in 1973 and subsequently I visited quite a lot Holland's transport system is fantastic and very cheap so you're talking about buses bus comes along every 5-10 minutes so in Scotland should we have a more reliable bus service and should we promote park and ride more because you can buy some park and ride areas and they're just empty. Anyone like to answer that? Yeah, maybe sweetland. This is a park and ride at Ingolston it's not empty, it's full and there's no charging places available they're always filled up for electric cars so I mean it may be some places maybe the original location of the park and ride is what's the problem but there are some that are very well used. I certainly agree with the fact that we need a cheap and reliable bus service I think if you look at some of the targets for emission reduction from the transport sector we're looking at possibly using electric vehicles or some hydrogen vehicles but again the costs of them are prohibitive at the moment but there's also a big section of society who can't afford private transport at the moment so I think they need to be supported and having a good and reliable bus service I think is really an essential thing to do. Which way? Yes, I think a reliable and affordable bus service is really important and I want to come back again and just suggest other measures to make using the car less convenient and cheap as well and we can look at the co-benefits one of the things that's happening in Edinburgh is there are more and more schemes where the roads close to schools are closed at pick up and drop off time for children and parents and children are behind that because of concerns about air pollution I think that could be rolled out that could be one of the things whereby we sort of say this needs to be joined up this is not just about air pollution right by the school gates those children live on the streets near schools and you could actually have driving bans at particular times in the whole areas rather than individual streets we can close more streets to private vehicles and make them places where only cyclists, walkers, taxis and buses can go Just before we move on to Claude Bimish we were here from two experts in Sweden last week and they made the point that you're never going to be able to in rural areas have the kind of bus services that you're talking about it's just not going to happen a very radial going into our cities certainly where I come from where Stuart comes from where other Rhoda Grant's and Highlands and Islands MSP so you're going to have to incentivise the electric cars that are the way forward so could you see a situation where you have to have almost a kind of dual policy something incentivisation for electric vehicles in rural areas but then more structural stuff happening in urban centres as well is that something? Absolutely yes and we've heard from the First Minister there's going to be a phase out of fossil fuelled cars by 2032 so there's going to have to be some kind of help for people who we're going to have to set up the charging infrastructure for people who live in rural areas but it will become the norm and we will start to see that whole system setting up we will have to see that system setting up so we've got to treat rural areas and urban areas differently and so in answer to the question slightly earlier I think the government has got to bring out he's got to think strategically about very large scale rollouts of structural changes but it's got to target where they're going to work first so air source heat pumps even though they're best to replace oil boilers might not be best to target at very rural areas where the engineers are very long distance perhaps target some of the smaller towns that are close to those rural areas and so that the network of engineers will start spreading out and then you target the most rural areas once the engineers and so on are in place Is that not disadvantage rural areas that they're not getting the opportunity to access the new technologies because of this and you have a situation where it's yet again more expensive to live in a rural area we're almost being penalised for populating those so we have this drive for people to live in the cities because they've got better bus services they've got access to all this new technology It is, I'm afraid there's no perfect policy here I think what we need to work out is where do we have to get to what are we trying to avoid because we've always got to keep in mind all policies are going to have some downsides for some people but what's the biggest downside the biggest downside is if we don't tackle climate change that is going to create a world in which we just an inhospitable world so we've got to do the next best thing that we can do to avoid that huge problem rather than say well we can't do this, that or the other because it's not perfect we can't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good or the good enough Thank you, convener Just as a quick, very quick supplementary to that would the panel agree that one of the issues is the development of skills for smaller towns for rural areas so that rural dwellers such as myself and Stuart who I hold my hand up in shame and say I'm another one who has an oil boiler and has kept wanting to change and even on my salary has sort of wondered and I just say that so it's skills one of the areas everywhere from my mouth to Orkney that we should be developing There are a lot of nods of heads you're just here from yourself I think skills and having the appropriate resources to provide support services to rural areas is really important if you look at the smart meter roll out as an example that's generally at the moment being focused on on urban areas and we know that smart meters will bring lots of advantages in terms of people being more aware of their energy use but also to facilitate lots of different smart technologies and we see that the roll-outs quite slow in rural areas Install tomorrow because of a phone call to me I hope it works but we it's always going to be a difficult issue when you have isolated areas but ensuring that the companies or whether it's companies or government support programmes are well resourced enough to make sure that rural and remote communities have that advice and support is really important Mary sorry, through the convener carry on it was just that Mary was going to come in on that I was pausing as an inhabitant of a rural village 22 miles from Glasgow who does not have superfast broadband yet in part of the national park for rural home and atrocics the infrastructure is an issue and it's reliability it's engineers, I have an electric car but how often do I go to a rapid charger and discover it's not working so they're installed but the engineers aren't in place to keep them up to date and if there's a storm suddenly they go off because they're not getting the broadband signal it's things like that from a skills perspective we need to make sure if we're developing a circular economy which we need to do to meet the targets we've got to become more thrifty which is a good old Scottish word and actually the expanding growth in the economy has got to move to environmental topics rather than some of the big commercial one of the things that we had a meeting going back to the international breast practice climate justice is a major concern for the churches because it's the people the communities who are suffering most who have done least to increase their carbon use and they want Scotland to share the knowledge and experience they have rather than to sell it to them for profit so we've got examples of solar ovens in Bolivia how solar panels work wind and things the developing world are looking for Scotland and we have been doing some superb work on that in sharing the skill sets that we have but we need to change industry to developing when I built my passive house there were very few people around that knew how to build a passive house and the only new single skill sets so a joiner and an electrician you were waiting about it's a big change within the building sector that you bring about Thank you convener Could I just follow up on the international issue with you Mary before I come to my own question which I'll ask the whole panel I was very interested in your written submission that you said that on a quote from eco congregations one of the principal drivers of climate action in churches is the impact of stories from around the world now those stories as I understand it are from places where the impact of climate change are happening and I wonder the degree to which you think it's appropriate or useful for beyond the churches for those stories to be told in terms of the effect they can have on us changing our behaviour in the developed world I think it's essential you see it with disaster and emergency committee I mean the churches work with Christian Aid Tia Fund all of the big charities and a key part of our supporting international development that's one of the roles if you are a eco congregation that you take that responsibility for that development but technology is great we can actually share these stories they can have an impact and we are all enjoying the plastics impact of David Attenborough so we can use the media to communicate to show what's happening and share that knowledge and experience and what we can do and it's actually the millennial generation that are having the biggest impact churches we tend to have the people who are responsible for bringing about the use of carbon use, high use and there it's for your grandchildren that you need to make a change now but now they're actually beginning to think oh it might actually be in our generation that we see the impact of climate change on Scotland and for all the panel could I ask you in terms of the climate change plan which Scottish Government has developed and we've scrutinised in this committee as you may know I'm sure you do it focuses on seven key sectors just for the record I'll highlight what those are they're electricity, buildings, transport, industry waste, land use change forestry and agriculture and I'm wondering the degree to which you think well it's going to be updated to reflect the bill's new emissions reduction trajectory if I can say the word out to 2050 but are there particular sectors there or indeed additional sectors such as was raised with us by the Swedish evidence last week where fashion and mobile phones not being able to be reused because they're glued together and the plastic is corrupted are there particular sectors that you think it's important to develop further behaviour change in and if so which are they and what can be done so out of any of those sectors perhaps ones that you have the most knowledge and experience of the heaviest emitters or however you wanted to take the question I think you know people have been highlighting the importance of emissions reductions from the residential sector so I think a third of our current emissions come from the residential sector so there is an opportunity there to try and reduce that I think coming back to my earlier point the problem is that households don't associate the energy that they use at home with having a big contribution to overall emissions I think people to some extent feel that what they do in their home is tokenistic so I think we need to either provide people with more information and education to make them realise that something like reducing their heating their thermostat can actually have quite a big impact if people across the country do it and that again might relate back to having some sort of awareness raising campaign and making things really aspirational for people rather than being told you have to turn your thermostat down making them or helping them to realise that they can actually have a positive impact I think it's important to focus on the positives and you know that will that if they have a small action it can actually facilitate the change and a reduction in emissions I'll just tip in and I'll try not to cover anything Jamie's already said but one of the other sector's buildings obviously huge important has kind of been described as the low hanging fruit and there has been huge amount of progress made Scottish Government have the great internal wall installation programme has been running for many years to upgrade existing stock but if if that is happening completely in isolation of any behavioural advice so someone's house becomes warmer some people might just take those savings other people may open the windows to cool it down a little bit and we're seeing that again and again and in some of the kind of large scale retrofits this is a common problem the rebound effect I mean this has been known about since the industrial revolution and it's the equivalent of buying a tub of low fat ice cream but because it's low fat you can eat twice as much and that kind of happens and we're seeing a lot in the building so if there isn't if people and their behaviour aren't front and centre there's no point in spending giving interest free loans or full on investing in upgrading properties and just ignoring the inhabitants if they're not giving the skills to be warmer, that's how you work with homeostat and then tying it in together that's a kind of a missed opportunity and just one other point to kind of bearing away one thing that in my opinion was kind of absent in the climate change plan is aviation obviously it has huge impact on the environment and a lot more than some of the smaller things that might be seen as slightly tinkering around the edges I just thought it was a notable omission but I'm sure there are other reasons for that It's well In terms of sectors to focus on or behaviours to focus on I think one that needs quite a lot of focus is on food because this is one of the behaviours that's perhaps least understood the links between diet and climate change and here again there are some fantastic co-benefits we don't have to rely on a narrative about climate change which not everybody is really connected into because the needs to change behaviour particularly from reducing meat and dairy intake is exactly the same advice as for healthy lifestyle so this needs to be one of the things to focus on and there are ways to tackle this which don't have to be about climate change legislation for example the least stringent animal welfare legislation which would be very popular with a lot of people will drive up the cost of meat and will change the balance when people are making choices about what their main protein source should be you can work with GPs and hospitals to make sure there's plenty of advice about eating healthily and that needs to include how to meet alternatives I'm always astonished when my students tell me that it is more expensive not to eat meat I think they must be substituting meat with expensive processed meat alternatives like corn or recipes which involve very expensive things like cashew nuts and pine nuts and not realising just how plentiful and cheap pulses and so on are transport we've talked a lot about so I won't go over that in which we haven't seen the progress that needs to be seen that we really need to focus on getting emissions down from transport because they've been static for a long time in terms of land use I think this bill needs to establish a nitrogen budget to drive changes in farming but all of this I just want to say one more thing because the last comments I made may have sounded rather harsh and one thing I want to make really clear is all of these changes are going to have very significant impacts the sort of level of change we need to make significant impacts as you mentioned in various different whether it's urban, rural, differential impacts or whether it's particular sectors in terms of jobs and so there needs to be a tension paid in this bill to ensuring a just transition there needs to be some kind of commission that has oversight to ensure that these transitions are just transitions to work out how to mitigate the problems for example for people who live in rural areas and don't want to just say well it's tough look there needs to be a tension paid to that Sonny can I just I'm sorry I'm quite exercised by all that you've just said and where you're essentially saying that the rural areas should be disadvantaged for you did say that earlier I appreciate you've now corrected it but that's the practicality of what you're saying that the rural areas would be disadvantaged for the benefit and I don't actually think that that's progress to benefit the many by disadvantaged in the few so if that is what you are saying then there does have to be something done and I also think it's a fairly grim picture your painting of a meat free livestock free landscape where we're all encouraged or if not forced to eat pulses that's not a future that I welcome I think you're putting words into my mouth here I wasn't saying that everybody needs to eat a meat free diet I was saying we need to reduce the amount of meat and dairy that people take in they don't have to eat pulses at every meal but I'm suggesting that people will be healthier they'll be eating a healthier diet which will be cutting down the heart disease and so on I'm certainly not imagining that this has to be everybody turning vegan and that's actually one of the very unhelpful messages that's coming out this is not about extremes this is about very large numbers of people making reductions rather than very small numbers of people going to the extremes and in terms of the rural areas I'm very sorry that I perhaps did not express myself clearly enough I certainly don't feel that rural areas should be disadvantaged but no policy at all can be brought in without some disadvantage to some people and we've got to try and mitigate that disadvantage but we can't simply say we cannot do anything if there is some disadvantage to some people we've got to look at how we can offset that and there are ways that you might be able to offset that but if we say well we just can't bring in the sort of policies we need to do to change behaviour at the level we need to change it then what we're saying is we are accepting 3 to 4 degrees warming by the end of this century and that's going to be a tremendous disadvantage for everybody There is another issue and we won't talk about it as well and that's people on low incomes who really are not thinking well I want to change the environment therefore I'm going to eat this that and the next time there's this thinking about how they can get through the week we have to make things work for everybody and I'm just wondering particularly I'm sure you've all got points the just transition has to not disadvantage those on low incomes as well so things like getting a better boiler it's just not a thing that would even cross someone's mind if they can't even pay their electricity bill they can't even put food on the table how do we deal with that majority of people are not in a position to talk about getting a heat pump installed can anyone come in Shane Donald you spoke earlier about the two-tiered kind of approach and that's where the people who can afford air source heat pumps need to be encouraged to do so so that funding can be directed to people who cannot as is currently practised but the self-funded body that maybe haven't been prioritised over the years they're more difficult to engage with people don't necessarily lots of people don't know how to walk and I don't think it's been fully cracked yet but by placing expectations on people and the term self-funded it's gone through different iterations I know we did some internal research initially we've been referring to people as able to pay anyone who wasn't at risk of fuel poverty was able to pay when we actually kind of completed the research we found that people don't see themselves as being able to pay just sitting on a huge pile of money just because they're on a higher income they don't see themselves as squandering money in opening windows when the heat is on but their threshold is a little bit higher I think that the example of a coffee machine they say well I like good coffee so I've got a coffee machine I've got a 50 inch TV but I don't waste energy I just like my quality life and that's kind of the threshold just gets raised a little bit more energy these are the people that really need to be engaged going forward to get our source heat pumps to invest in energy efficiency that the likes of home energy efficient programmes can't fund where they're funding people more in fuel poverty so I think that would be the approach it's James Stewart wants to come in I think it's a really important we certainly see through the citizens advice bureau network that people are coming in they're in stressed chaotic environments they might be in debt they might be in energy debt so the thought of them having the financial capability or the time or the engagement levels to invest in a new boiler is a big risk for the Scottish Government I think and where targets rely on people in those situations making I think there's a big risk that we will then miss targets I think in terms of solutions it's very important that we provide sort of holistic advice and support to people so if you're giving advice to someone it should be holistic you can look at giving people benefits checks so looking at maximising their incomes alongside that and maybe a little bit further down the line what grants and incentives might be available to upgrade your property but again it's about tackling the sort of there's a priority of issues almost and I think you need to tackle the most pressing issues and then once that relationship's built up and often this advice needs to come sort of in a face to face scenario you can then look at trying to provide people with support like the grants that are available through the Scottish Government to install boilers for certain people Mark Ruskell Just coming back to the kind of rural issues again I think there's some interesting examples from Nordic countries around how services and the economy get kind of focused on a rural area and I'm just wondering how much of a change you believe that broadband the new economy if you like the new way of organising the economy might have an impact on rural areas going forward because there's a tendency at the moment to think everybody going to the city to work or to access services or whatever and I'm just wondering to what extent that kind of cultural shift around real localisation and Mary Sweetwood I think there are examples Scotland could be doing more on green tourism but to have that if you want to stop all the visitors to the national parks using cars then you need to have the infrastructure there you need to have broadband there that's reliable and then that would develop rural jobs as well but it's quite a shift to actually even encourage the visitors to Scotland to do without their cars and the congestion that that causes when you're going to Balmaha on a weekend when there isn't tiny parking so you know it's a whole economic shift that you've got to think about as well as you push it through in some areas like going back to the community effect of mitigation for energy there are community hydro schemes that are in place that are potential of bringing in an enormous amount of funding to local communities but the costs of moving them forward putting in a turbine and apparently most of the old rural houses that are the big county type houses all had a local hydro their own hydro scheme 100 years ago which has gone into this repair now that could be brought back in re-commissioned as has happened in near Tain Old to produce energy community bases and instead of having to pay 10 million pounds I think it was to put in the new hydro scheme maybe there could be some way that Scotland could be pushing forward in rural areas to find those old schemes re-establish them and generate electricity locally that could then be used to charge electric cars would put the infrastructure in a place around the community and attract some green tourism there Claudia Beamish has one last question before we move on this is kind of a vision question which if anyone knows the answer to we'll all sigh with relief but I'm going to try it anyway what would anyone on the panel say would need to change in terms of behaviour particularly to go beyond the 90% target which Scottish Government has in the bill at the moment to meet a net zero target by 2050 at the latest as I say it's a probing question if anyone has any thoughts in terms of behaviour change we'd value them anyone want to take go first on that just very quickly I would say it's very difficult to see where behaviour change fits relative to 90% given that behaviour rule targets mightn't have been put forward in the first place that was my opening comment so if we don't know what the targets are the climate change plan refers to widespread uptake of EVs how widespread is widespread or societal shifts in how we work and live how many, what is that so for me it's difficult to add 10% on to that if that makes sense James Stewart I think looking at the sector, the domestic sector again which I apologise it's the one I know most about I think if we're looking at making certainly all properties EPCC by 2040 and I think that would certainly have to be met if you're going towards even a 90% target I think you're then relying on the owner-occupier sector and again we're looking at potentially quite expensive measures so you need again for it to be aspirational for people and I think you need the right grants and incentives to encourage people to get to that stage where they are upgrading their properties to be energy efficient as you recognised there isn't a nice neat answer to your questions I can't give one but I'm feeling uncomfortable that we're perhaps focusing too much on the individual and choice to me when I hear questions about behaviour that's what I'm hearing questions about is the individual and choice and I would like to come back again what we're looking at to meet the sort of targets we need to be aiming at which needs to be net zero by 2050 not 90% we are looking at huge structural rollouts we're looking at an urgent phase industry with just transition to a huge programme of renewables which Scotland has the best wind and tidal, sorry, wave and tidal resources in the whole of Europe so it can be a tremendous leader on so we're looking at going quite a long way beyond now that doesn't mean that we're just going to ignore individuals because we need engagement with new technologies we need engagement with this programme of change but we certainly can't put the responsibility on individuals to get as far as we need to go it's got to be much more than just persuasion and volunteerism the sort of behaviours we need we basically need to make it's either the cheapest or the easiest or the most normal thing to do to travel in ways that don't use fossil fuels to heat one's home in ways that don't use fossil fuels to eat a lower carbon dios so on and that also comes back to the question about people on lower incomes there's a very strong correlation between income and greenhouse gas emissions so we don't actually want to be targeting the lower income people with messages about buying air source heat pumps it just sort of you know people can end up feeling sort of guilty and stressed about what they can't do that's why we need the kind of structural change where you're aiming at the landlords the social landlords who can make a difference and you get the benefits for the lower income people from this change you know in cities it's the lower income people who live in the inner cities who are suffering most from air pollution so the changes we need are actually going to be of benefit to them and that's part of the message that we need to get out okay maybe sweetland then we're going to move on to Richard Lyle's questions the answer is reduced consumption and that doesn't fit very well into macroeconomic models we'll have to go and get back to it I make do and mend stop having through a way culture that will bring the skill sets up as well being able to repair things again and that's the drastic changes that are needing to be done and bring that through back to thrift but economics people might struggle with that one a good question to follow on we've got businesses in front of us we're going to move on to Richard Lyle's questions yeah I think Dr Howland Mary Sweetland basically I'm going to agree with what I'm going to say we all need to change we need to change because if we don't change we're looking we're grandchildren, we're children the future of this planet down so are we not just kidding ourselves on are we not just touching the edges and doing the easy fixes do we really need to get real and basically my question is what barriers currently exist to achieving the required behavioural changes and how can these be overcome and who should be responsible for that I'm sure that gives you plenty to say Shane Donwan because are we kidding ourselves are we and that's a question to the Scottish Government and to the wider public we can't celebrate the ambitions which have been recognised globally and as being particularly ambitious since the climate act 2009 and since I think there have been some really good targets but we can't congratulate ourselves if we're not then trying to achieve them and actually really trying to derive that change so like some of the barriers that are feeding into that are this acceptance that actually no we will it might not be the most comfortable for everyone there's going to be a need for some tough political decisions, there's going to be a need for members of the community to step up and do more than they're doing business as usual solutions or approaches will lead to business as usual solutions and the targets really are they are ambitious we do need to step up in terms of other barriers I think Jamie had mentioned earlier about people not recognising the impact of their own individual behaviours I think that needs to be emphasised but there also needs to be good leadership people say well you know I can I can turn down my thermostat by a degree but there's an industrial plant on the outskirts of town belching out CO2 regulation so that this is a kind of a systemic approach and it isn't just kind of carrot and stick of you know Mrs Jones on the street having to change this needs to be across society, businesses, industry local authorities having a lot of role in that which kind of leaves me in I think there is a strong role for local authorities but also community groups not necessarily that people always want what's best for their community they want in my experience what's best for them within their community so the community organisations are great at engaging with individuals who are concerned about their family and how things will affect them and what changes they will have to make as a kind of an in between the local authorities if that makes sense one of the things that we found within the Congregation Scotland Network we started off and most of our members of churches are in the grey haired arena nowadays and their view at the beginning was what's the point, we're not going to be here and actually we've seen a change they now with the communications and things they now accept we need to do this to grant children and children so that is a big shift that we've managed to bring about through the 450 odd churches that are involved across Scotland but the churches also are the main source of volunteers within Scotland and by bringing about the individual action and things that they're doing they're talking to the community groups that are using church buildings and seeing what they're doing so they can actually make sure that polystyrene isn't used anywhere and educate the people that are coming to the churches so we're beginning to roll that out through different networks and it's like the community asset model that's there that we can bring forward and we want to make sure that there are ministers and priests in Scotland that actually say climate change isn't happening and part of the role of our environmental chaplain is to make sure that there is nobody from any of the Christian face and even working with other face in Scotland that actually question that they haven't got a responsibility to be bringing about the behaviour change that looks after the world. Rachel Hill I do agree with Ian part but I would like to begin by saying that the Scottish Government is genuinely really trying to lead here and I think that's excellent I think there's a real attempt to make changes so I don't think we're just kidding ourselves in that sense I think this is very very genuine I do unfortunately think that we will be kidding ourselves if we stick with the targets that are currently in the bill we are kidding ourselves if 90% by 2050 and 66% by 2030 which doesn't represent very significant change from what we've already got is enough for A where we need to get to and B in terms of justice and that is important in terms of psychologically engaging people with this because we are going to be looking at very significant changes now why would you make that if it's going to get you perhaps nearly to where you want to be quite there it's not going to be helpful to encourage people if they're hearing from organisations like climate chaos and from academics like Kevin Anderson that actually the targets put in place are not going to be good enough that's not an engaging narrative so I think that's one very important thing in terms of whose responsibility it is I actually have a lot of sympathy with policy makers I think you're between a rock and a hard place I think that a few years ago I was saying this outside to Jamie I think a few years ago there was quite a strong narrative from the public of we really want you to do something about climate change but we don't want you to do anything that really impacts us I think that narrative is actually changing now and I think people are looking for very strong leadership and I think Scotland is in a fantastic place to offer leadership and to offer a very positive aspirational narrative about leadership within the UK and leadership within the international community on climate change so I think there's a huge responsibility on the government but I think we share it too so myself as a teacher my colleagues here as public engages we all share that responsibility and this isn't ours now in this moment because it is our generation that has to do this we have to make these changes now it's the policy makers, the teachers and so on of today that have got to change this it's our moment Jamie Stewart Just to stress what Rachael said as well I think that the Scottish Government are quite leading in this area and they do have a low carbon behaviours team there they have the ISM tool which is a good tool to look at how behaviour should be incorporated into into public policy I think it's important though to have a bit more clarity about what is really expected of people I don't think that at the moment necessarily needs to be immediately communicated to individual households in terms of meeting targets there's within the climate change plan there are set targets for the one-off behaviour changes like installing energy efficiency measures but people don't really know and organisations don't know beyond that what's expected of individuals and whether individual changes is required or not and I think in terms of the Scottish Government they should maybe be trying to make that clearer so that the delivery organisations on the ground the grass roots organisations almost know what they're striving for in terms of behaviours as well I've got questions for you I mean we heard from as I mentioned before from two individuals from Sweden and they said that up until now there was no change but transformational change is now required what do you see that transformation being and who is really going to be incumbent on Government in order to put things in place for that transformational change you were in a position where you had to say I'm going to lead this transformation and I'm going to do X which is going to make the biggest difference I mean that's a very difficult question to ask but what do you think should be tackled first in order to drive this transformational change that's not going to disadvantage ordinary Scots so much in making this being part of this transformation I've asked a really difficult question I'm aware of that but that's the big question what is the transformation and how do we bring people with us Mary Sweetwood part of what we do through the eco congregation networks is it's the early adopters somebody asked me yesterday why I had gone to an electric car why didn't I get hybrid my answer to that was there was an interest free loan from the Scottish Government and I wanted to show that you could travel from Gattahar to Edinburgh using an electric car and it was reliable so I adopted it but now three or four other people have followed that lead and I think that's one of the things that local networks can do we had plastic free western baton someone there talking to us in a local network meeting yesterday and again there were people there that were sharing ideas and having communities that can do that to bring about that transformational change is how we see things going but having the leadership that says we need to go there and clear messages coming not just from the environment but across the whole Scottish Government because you sometimes think that it's not joined up and I think the environmental issue of tackling that needs to give a straightforward approach every department needs to think about what the impacts of their policies are that could have an impact on the environment James Stewart I think it's almost a cause of anxiety that people feel like this big transformational change has to happen but they're not quite sure of what they need to do I think the recognition that a lot of that transformational change will come from different sectors as well so maybe if we look at sectors like the agricultural sector like the transport sector I feel that all the emphasis shouldn't be put on that individual and a guilt driven agenda to try and make them change I think there needs to be agreement that that transformational change will come from all sectors and as an individual you can play your part and potentially electric vehicles will be a route for individuals to reduce their transport emissions and beyond that I think the other changes in terms of how we heat your home insulating your properties things like that, potentially eating less meat it shouldn't be a big scary change it should be simple changes that you want to make like reducing meat consumption I think there's we should try and steer away from this build up of fear of we need to make really big individual changes Stuart Timson We're trying to tease out the barriers to behaviour and I just wanted to briefly explore perception versus reality and the context for doing that is something that Shane said earlier he said it's cheaper to fly to London than to get the train I've just done a check on the 10th of December leaving at 8 o'clock in the morning the train is 34 pounds and it flights 58 pounds not only that you're at an airport, you're not in the city the additional surface travel for getting to the city centre is a further 2160 therefore the train is 34 and flying is a total of 71 pounds 60 now that is bookey a month ahead is it not the case that there's a perception problem that when you fly when you get the train you buy a walk up fare and when you do that then the flying looks cheap how do we tackle that and in a sense I'm very gently accusing Shane of perpetuating a myth and I would say personally I've never found except perhaps one example when I looked at the cost of travelling between Edinburgh and London that it's cheaper to fly and it's not quicker and it's certainly much more hassle so how do we tackle perception and reality of which that's one example well Shane you might if you want to come back then I'll take Rachel Hill Shane wants time to think I think you're right in some ways and not always right there is definitely an issue about perception and reality research for example shows that people underestimate how long it takes to get somewhere by car and overestimate how long it will take to do the same journey walking or cycling we also have very different ideas about delays if a train is 10 minutes delayed everyone complains about how poor the train service is you would never expect if you were making the same journey in a car to say to the people you're visiting I'm going to arrive at 3 minutes past 12 you will say I'll probably be with you around lunchtime or somewhere between 12 and 1 something like that so there's a real interesting issue about how people approach decisions one of the things is you can just make people aware of that sometimes people can change the way they think simply by being aware so for example the bystander effect which is the effect where if there are several people who witness something that needs action taken all of them wait for the other people to do something can be reduced or eliminated by telling people that that's what's happened so that they know that actually that's going to happen and they need to be the one who makes the effect so if you start telling people about this sort of thing that happens and getting them to think about how long do you plan in advance for a flight and how long do you plan for a train that might help change people's behaviour I don't think it is always the case I think we do also need to tackle the actual real barriers it is actually often cheaper to fly because you've got to think about why people are going to London are they taking the flight just to London or are they going on so one of the real problems is that you can buy a through ticket if you're flying down to London in order to get to Singapore but you want to try and do some long distance journey by train you can go to a very wonderful website The Man in Seat 61 but it will tell you a whole load of different train companies and you will not be able to buy a through ticket and there we all sorts of different deadlines by which you need to book the cheap ticket in advance so you're booking from Edinburgh to London and getting your £34 or whatever it was by one date but you can't be absolutely certain that you're going to get the follow on ticket from London to Paris or wherever else because the booking window for that isn't yet open so we need to think also about all the different kinds of ways that people are doing these things and making sure that everything is much more joined up but yeah Seat 61 I use Cracow to Bucharest to Budapest by Had to Fly was 11 times more expensive than Budapest to Bratislab which is actually further I'm sorry we're really going to have to move on rather than talking yet to Bucharest apologies but we have got some other questions that we really need to answer I'm going to move on to Angus MacDonald Okay thanks and good morning in the evidence that's already been mentioned that we took from Sweden last week from Stefan Neustrom and Anders Weigman the spoke of how easy it would be to communicate a net zero target to the general public as opposed to lesser targets or speaking in percentages which can make it difficult for the general public to comprehend fully so we've already explored this to a degree this morning but just quickly would it be possible for the panel to expand on how policy makers can secure popular support and more importantly buy in for Scotland's climate change targets Shane Okay I the communication involved someone mentioned this before and it's a bit of a shockphrase but war effort a lot of people who are still with us refer back to the war and how it was a case of everyone getting on board and doing your part and every single person was part of the war effort and I'd like to stop the analogy at war I don't think bringing doom and gloom will be a helpful motivator for people but really having this you have a role it's up to you it's not a case of just doing one or two really visible clear behaviours it's a lens building on momentum again coming back to the meat eating a survey this week found that 600,000 Britons are identifying as vegan which is fourfold increase in four years and this is because it's now okay to be so we don't all need to go vegan that's not what I'm saying but that has been normalised there's now better options in supermarkets, in restaurants it's no longer just the pursuit of the elite who don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from it's now an option or if not vegan vegetarianism because everything needs a label which is just reducing the amount of meat to eat and two thirds of Britons in this national survey two thirds of people have reported reducing the amount of meat they consume within the last couple of years largely due to environmental reasons largely due to the fact that other people are doing it so this kind of idea of a war effort that we do need without calling it a war effort that we do need to bring everyone on board is going to be key Mary Sweetland I think that the media coverage that the IPC recent report has had actually says that people are very keen on doing the bit and a net zero target would be well accepted across Scotland because it would then make people realise that they do need to take some action Jamie Stewart Just a brief point I think almost gaining public support for a net zero 2050 target is the easy part I think the more difficult bit is getting public support for the actual programs that come into place next year so if you look at the sector again, is there a regulation that says you're going to have to do something to your house you need the public support for the short term programs that facilitate those long term targets and I think that's the important part and it's important to do consumer research and research to understand what makes people want to participate in those short term targets rather than just thinking by 2050 yeah we should be net zero it's important to think about what actually takes place in the next few years Very briefly an attractive and engaging narrative is the justice narrative so justice within Scotland and justice across the world I think framing this as something that is going to be about us playing a just part is very attractive to people and I think there's all sorts of organisations that will help to push that narrative for example Scotland has ties with Malawi so there are lots of different organisations that will be interested in that as part of their work and I think that the economics of it should also be an argument the opportunity, economic opportunity for people is something that I feel sometimes doesn't get talked about The kind of structural changes I'm suggesting will lead to a huge programme of jobs building as long as we do it properly and with proper thought and as I mentioned the whole just transition thing you don't just allow people's jobs to drop away but you bring in There was a tendency sometimes to bring stuff up changing things in a negative way and we wouldn't have reversed that changing things in a positive way This is about gaining healthier lifestyles, safer streets cleaner ways of living being looked up to as a leader there's a whole lot of very positive narratives and I keep using the word co-benefits it's very very important this doesn't all have to be about climate change legislation either this can be about all sorts of other concerns I feel very strongly about air pollution and healthy lifestyles Angus are you moving on to questions from Rhoda Grant Yes, Citizens Advice Scotland has identified four areas which are likely to influence how certain policies will impact on consumers differently and those are ones we've spoken about already, those living in urban and rural areas socio-economic status of consumers but also local authority area and consumers housing tenure Given what we have heard this morning and I suppose a degree of disappointment especially for those in rural areas and those maybe of a lower socio-economic status it looks like this could build in huge disadvantage and already disadvantaged communities so I'm just wondering how can these considerations be built in to the future of climate change policy and a just transition that doesn't leave people behind or doesn't damage other people's interests that would take people ahead so I think that's certainly something that's been concerning me this morning I think, thanks for raising the points I think again it's trying to look at the potential co-benefits and opportunities rather than the negative impacts I think there are risks that there are negative impacts but if we look at the people in fuel poverty so there's 26.5% of people in fuel poverty at the moment in Scotland and a lot of them are living in energy inefficient homes so I think looking at programmes where there's appropriate financial support from the government to help people insulate their homes that will hopefully not have a negative impact on that household if there's the grants to help them and there will be positive health impacts so I think trying to look at programmes like that where you help to reduce emissions but you also have the co-benefit of improving health and wellbeing I think it's really important to look at programmes that focus on those co-benefits Mary Sweetland I think I wonder if the challenge is actually in setting the targets to make sure there is something that is focused on the rural specifically because if you think about the roll-out of superfast broadband great target but any company will go ahead and take the low-hying fruit and push that and it's the final 5% which are the rural communities that don't actually have the broadband there yet and it's making sure there's a target there that is specific to rural communities so that they don't get left at the end but are actually up front and that might be something for you to try and focus on and think about to make sure that they aren't left disadvantaged in the climate change but the rural if people are able to work from home they can video conference into meetings rather than have to travel 2 hours to come to Edinburgh for less today that is the societal change that needs to happen we won't have meetings for meetings' sake we'll have other ways of communicating and people can stay in the rural areas and do that Don't talk to me about that at the moment John Scott I should have declared an interest as a farmer and a one-time rural dweller myself and my previous exchange of Dr Howe much has been said about what needs to be done particularly in rural areas which are already disadvantaged as Rhoda Grant has already said lack of services, like a broadband fuel poverty and if a two-tier society is really being envisaged I think the fact of that is what is being said what are the practical things that can be done I mean what is that for example academia I threw it back at you the challenge doing about now knowledge transfer you appear to have given up the voluntary approach so what perhaps you should look at are you entirely satisfied that you've done all you can in terms of advising businesses rural businesses how they should best proceed in terms of what they should or should be doing in future I'm not certain that that work is being done by the Government at the moment I'm not sure it's being done by academia and I'll just be interested to hear what you have to say on that No academic is ever satisfied they've done enough in terms of research transfer in knowledge the job is never ever finished and the pressures on my work at the moment mean that my main avenue of knowledge transfer is to students it's becoming harder and harder to do the job of going beyond the university because of the pressure of the numbers of students so I suppose I see my main sphere of influence partly because actually I'm in the job because I absolutely love teaching and facilitating learning my main sphere of influence is with those students I personally have certainly not done enough about talking to rural businesses because that's not my expertise and I'm feeling quite sorry now that I've been misunderstood in terms of perhaps my expertise and what I was trying to say I'm not envisaging a two tier society at all I was envisaging that there might be different speeds at which things are rolled out and that there should not be penalties on people who live in rural areas if they are not able to roll things out in the same speed so for example I'm into the idea of having a huge carbon tax precisely because it would disproportionately impact on poorer people and people living in more rural areas there definitely does need to be a whole load more research to be done and there needs to be more people doing it yeah, that's all I can say that's what any academic is going to say always I mean don't mean it badly I really don't but would it be fair to say that we're long on analysis here today about what the problems are but we're short on solutions and I just think well maybe I'll just disagree with me Claudio right well that's fine but this is what the debate is about well I would like to hear more about the solutions and I'm just not certain that we're being told that absolutely practical solutions that need to be done because I agree with what the finalist said in as much as there is a willingness to change and I think that is manifest across every aspect of life in Scotland but there's an uncertainty about what needs to be done to take one's shoulder to the wheel I don't think we're short on solutions I think we're short on a very detailed roadmap of exactly how to get there and how to do that justly but this isn't entirely the fault of researchers when you do research you cannot be certain what the outcome is going to be so for example cancer research UK has not yet managed to eliminate cancer that doesn't mean that they're not doing work and every time that something is published where we find that such and such a treatment doesn't work that's just as valuable as where we find what does work now I started early by saying I'm sorry to say that in 10 years of research I've learnt a lot about what doesn't work or what doesn't work very well what works only in incremental terms in terms of persuasion and working with values and that kind of thing I that isn't therefore useless work because it then points to the direction we do have to go and that's why I'm changing my research programme all I can do is kind of tell you honestly what I have learned and how that has led my thinking to change so yes it is much much harder and I share your frustration you know I read academic papers for example with lots of critique of governments for focusing too much on psychological and economic levers and not focusing enough on the structures and I'm saying oh but please tell us exactly how it would work and you know some of these papers do they talk about kind of whole system change for example the London congestion charge is a good example but there aren't enough good examples but it isn't necessarily because people are not trying it's because this problem is really difficult but I think knowing knowing the analysis of what the real problem is is really important in order to find those solutions and I do think that there are still some people within society, within the policy world who are not accepting exactly what the problem is exactly how serious it is you know I was very struck by Kevin Anderson's talk I was at his public talk last week many of you I'm sure were at his private event with you and you know his analysis was rather short on very detailed solutions although he had some broad picture solutions but nevertheless it was still very valuable to hear exactly where he thinks we are at in terms of a fair carbon budget for Scotland and the big picture overall Mark Ruskell Thanks, perhaps this final question I could just bring us back to the actual bill and the targets and the scale of ambition the UK climate change committee has offered its view on targets it said that the current targets in the bill are at the limit of feasibility I wondered what your definitions are of what you consider to be feasible whether you do believe that we are at the limits of feasibility or indeed are there ways that we could be going further what does feasibility mean in terms of behaviour change Mary Sweetland I'll tackle it as someone who has the experience of setting targets in health service and always saying that it should be a goal so to set a goal that says that we want to be zero carbon in that time it's a long time out and the predictions that people are making will be adjusted over the next 30, 40 years so I know that politicians get concerned about setting targets that they know won't be met but actually if you're about changing behaviours to know that that's where you're driving to okay it may be missed at the end and we may only get to 95% but at least you know what you're trying to get to you might bring about the change better I think in terms of I agree that it seems like a long target and we have lots of time to change but if you look at more structural behaviours things like buying a new boiler people have boilers in their homes for 30 or 40 years so I think we're relying on programmes like Energy Efficient Scotland being successful I don't think we've got the time to risk another green deal where we have a programme that looks really good on paper but that's as far as it went so I think in terms of feasibility those targets you know feel relatively feasible if these programmes work well and are designed well I don't think we've if they don't work in this opportunity we don't have that much time for it to you know to try again consideration then in the UKCC's advice around the structural changes and the opportunities there and around technological innovation or are we still very much relying on people just making the right choice cos they see an electric vehicle on the full court or something like that I think there is maybe a tendency to do that or more efficient cars electric vehicles as opposed to why we're driving thinking actually we need to stop tweaking and start changing I do think going back to your earlier question change is inevitable society will change it's how what that change looks like that can be shaped things are very different now in Scotland to how they were in the 80s to how they were in the 60s and there's any number of factors at play but strong leadership can shift what that change will involve so if it is a case of people really thinking about how they're consuming how they're contributing to emissions that can be a focus that can be capitalised on the UK Commission on Climate Change I'm thinking about feasibility in terms of what it can see a complete roadmap to and I think that's a mistake personally because the landscape will change as we move I know in my own life that things that I thought were unfeasible for me to do have now become perfectly feasible because as I have made certain changes that has absolutely changed the landscape in which I'm making those choices in terms of what feasibility means I think there's actually two quite different ideas here so there's what seems to be economically or psychologically or politically feasible and then there are the immutable laws of physics and that's a totally different level of feasibility it is infeasible for us to imagine that we will solve the problem of climate change unless we set strong enough targets and that is a sort of a wall of a different quality of hardness of a different quality of impenetrability to the economic and political stuff I think that's the absolute and the economics and the politics will change so I don't think we have to know the absolute total details of getting to the end if we have a strong enough narrative about why the end is net zero emissions by 2050 or whenever and I think that will make things feasible as we go Come back to behaviour and the green deal was mentioned and I think did you get a feeling in terms of people's behaviour and that because of the way in which the green deal was jumped upon by certain companies doing the cold calling that that has immediately I mean I remember about a good six months of just not answering my phone at the house because it was just you're picking it up and it was about things in public confidence and these things which were a well meaning aspiration to have solar panels or whatever became hijacked and then public confidence around that so where would you see government coming in there to ensure that public confidence any new incentives that come out in order to drive behavioural change actually don't end up having the opposite effect Shane Donnell between local authorities, community organisations and strong leadership from the government no project, no big infrastructure project is no one ever intends for it to fail the green deal didn't work but that wasn't anyone's intention that was kind of systemic issues things that hadn't maybe been considered in the planning phase or aspects of the change that just hadn't been prioritised earlier on we spoke about incentives and I mean this is an example of an incentive but an incentive that didn't work because it wasn't kind of considered in the wider context of all the other factors that would contribute to someone making a decision or not and then when you do things like the cold calling and that it can just completely run away and completely lose its purpose people don't associate it with accessing finance suddenly it's associated with the green deal or with the cold calls and that becomes the meaning of it so I think a holistic approach that is that from day one has involvement of local authorities as well as the government to kind of create a holistic plan I know the holistic can be a kind of a buzzword that's thrown around but that's what it will come back to people know that they can trust and they're not going to be ripped off because I think that's what actually happened in a lot of cases I take it that citizens advice have got some thoughts on that I think public trust in any kind of what seems to be government led program is really important and things like consumer protection might be on the kind of drier side of things but it's really important because if you have a scheme where someone within the system whether it's a company doesn't treat that household right or they have a poor level of service if public confidence drops in that program then there's huge risk that the word of mouth spreads that no it's not a good thing to do and like the point I just made we don't have that many opportunities to implement these changes so I think having some sort of body that's well trusted with the appropriate consumer protections is really important Okay I think we've reached the end of our question I want to thank everyone in the panel for their time today I'm going to suspend this session briefly for the next panel to join us thank you very much everyone I'm delighted to welcome our second panel for today's session we're going to be looking at governance in the context of the climate change emissions reductions target Scotland bill welcome to our panel joining us are Paul Gray chief executive of NHS Scotland my Mohammed energy manager of Aberdeen city council Tom Thackery director of infrastructure and energy of the CBI Scotland Chris Ruggie chair of sustainable Scotland network good morning to you all I'm going to ask a general question about the role of public and private sector in driving the changes that is incumbent upon us to make as a society what role can the public and private sector play in supporting wider low-carbon behaviour change and I guess I'll take the public sector first in that I mean if we start with Paul Gray thank you convener and just one thing in opening my response to your question if there's anything that the committee wants to know in terms of facts that I don't have I'll be very happy to provide that a swift response after today's session so I just wanted to make that offer I think the public sector has to demonstrate a degree of leadership in this and that's not to say that it rests exclusively with the public sector but for example in terms of the way that we procure new build or refurbishment I think we have to be exemplary in our design and specification I think in terms of the way that we prompt people through our public health initiatives to take more exercise that's not just about public health and improving the health of the population but also reducing the use of motorised transport the way in which we help our staff to understand what this really means because it can sound like quite an umbrella term to change and reducing emissions and so forth what it means in practice and I do if the committee wishes have some examples of what we're doing in these areas would that be helpful so in terms of governance first of all since you mentioned governance at the beginning we've established an NHS Scotland national energy forum and a national sustainability steering group now these governance bodies are intended to review and manage the requirements of NHS boards and the steering group in particular provides oversight and governance of sustainability issues including the responsibilities with respect to public sector climate change reporting and it also provides guidance to boards on production of reports so that we're reporting on a common standard there is quite a lot we're doing in terms of procurement our capital investment group when it reviews business cases and investment appraisals takes advice from architecture and design Scotland on any build or refurbishment elements of that unless and until the architects are satisfied that the sustainability elements of that are sufficient the business case will not be signed off so the business case will not be signed off even though it may meet other value for money criteria or deliverability criteria the sustainability elements of it are critical to getting signed off we've just just launched in September of this year a sustainability action branding and campaign now again I can provide some detail to the committee but in principle this highlights that all NHS staff whether they be clinical, public health they have a part to play in acting sustainably anyone working on a sustainability related topic or wanting to promote change can use the sustainability action toolkit that we've developed to promote their activities and these examples will be shared more widely as they're gathered do you want more detail or will I pause there? It would be good to hear from my Mohammed on what Aberdeen City Council are doing in that regard as well and what you feel local authorities have got to offer in terms of leading the charge I suppose in terms of local authority I feel Aberdeen is well placed because we have several strategies in place namely we are the pilot for the low carbon heat energy efficiency strategy so that's funded by Scottish Government so we're looking at a pilot area where we can deliver low carbon heat energy efficiency in an area wide basis which includes the private sector and local authority so that's one very current example other examples is we also try to introduce internally a building energy performance policy and that looks at any new builds especially new schools which are building for the future these are future buildings that will be there for the next 40 years and it's obviously for the teaching of the children today and for the future so it's like future proofing our buildings in terms of energy efficiency what it looks like in terms of technology so we're trying to introduce policies internally to look at this so every project needs to then go through a checklist of what it means in terms of building performance we also have a powering Aberdeen strategy a spot of sustainable energy action plan and that again is a city-wide initiative where we had a person that actually manages that programme and tries to get in all the private sector in Aberdeen as you know which is a large oil and gas sector but obviously businesses small, medium and obviously the larger investments that are in Aberdeen so asking them about what they can do in terms of climate change so that the council can work with them and I think that's very key it's one thing to show obviously we are leading it but more importantly to show a partnership approach and I think Aberdeen is trying to do that and I think we're doing well so we're trying to engage a lot and carry a lot of meetings with the theme of sustainability low-carbon energy efficiency so it's constantly there and obviously we also have a well-established ESCO funding heat and power who deliver district heating network and that again we're growing that business within a city so in terms of what we've got in place for climate change plans going forward I think we are doing a lot already but obviously there's a lot more work to do given the new climate change bill the public sector also own a large portfolio buildings and I think that's the same across most public sectors in Scotland so we have a duty of care in terms of making sure these are again fit for the future in terms of energy performance but also in terms of how we use these buildings in the future will they be used the same way as they are today so it's thinking ahead of what buildings will be like in the future and obviously we are one of the largest employer in the city so we've got again prosperous people is one of our local outcome improvement plans so it's how we develop a climate change strategy that also benefits the people and the city of Aberdeen we are also part of the public bodies duties reporting in terms of carbon emissions so we have been doing that now for the last two years so we are participating in that as well so we can see how our emissions are obviously tracking the emissions profile over the last few years as well and we're reporting that the three of you are obviously leading large organisations that engage with the general public in a significant way how do you think that you can encourage, incentivise or are you encouraging, incentivise behavioural change around everything that's going to help us meet our targets you've got contacts with the majority of the populace as well as your employees so the committee may be aware that in the process of establishing a new public health body bringing together some of the responsibilities of NHS Health Scotland and NHS National Services Scotland and part of what lies behind that is improving our impact on influencing population level and behaviour change but I think there are also small things that we can do for example one of the health boards unless you press me I'd rather not say which one because I'm sure it's in more than one has a sign up in its bicycle part that says more or less you're bringing your bike at your own risk and if anything happens to it it's not our fault now I'm paraphrasing but we could actually encourage people to use bikes by saying here is a place where you can leave your bicycle safely and here's an opportunity to padlock it and so forth rather than saying adopting what I would describe as quite a defensive attitude so I think that that's one thing we can do another thing we've sought to do and I will say to the committee with rather limited success so far but it doesn't mean we'll not keep trying is to provide access to public transport so that people don't have to use their cars to get to hospitals and other facilities now as I say I'm accepting here and now that that's not been a resounding success yet but it is something I think we need to get better at I think also another thing that we can do is to try to make sure that we're maximising the use of technology and that we need to travel to come to get access to health and care services and we do have a number of examples of that for example people with cardiac obstructive pulmonary disease so heart and lung disease in Cymnac are now provided with facilities that mean that they can be treated from a distance and it saves them coming to hospital which is good for them but it's also saving on travel and emissions as well our own internal sustainability action plan which we've just launched as I said is providing people with supporting tools and programmes to allow boards to baseline themselves not just on what they're doing in terms of buildings and the other sort of infrastructure things that I've mentioned but also our overall progress towards the Scottish national performance framework and the UN sustainable development goals and why that matters is because I believe that with approximately 163,000 people employed in NHS Scotland we have a huge reach not just with the people we treat but the people we actually employ and if we're not demonstrating exemplary behaviours it's quite hard to be persuasive with the rest of the population when we say you should take more exercise and we're not doing that so I think it's about being an exemplar employer it's about being an exemplar in the way that we design and build things and there is also more I think we could say about what we're doing to save public funds by adopting more sustainable approaches to delivering services so for example in NHS Ayrshire and Arden-Girvan community hospital was designed in a way which minimised environmental impact and without going into too much detail although I can if the committee wishes there will be a 3% reduction in NHS Ayrshire and Arden's overall current CO2 emissions because of what we've done in one hospital and that's really important that the public understand that we're taking this seriously in the services we provide in the way that we design and build things and moving on to the private sector because it's not just incumbent on the public sector to be leading the charge as well and particularly I want to hear from Tom Thacker about what we can do in order to encourage behavioural change in the private sector which follows on works in partnership with the public sector and helps the country to meet its climate change targets so I think you've hit the nail on the head there by saying that this is about partnership the challenge of climate change is bigger than either the public or private sector could meet on their own so what are the mechanisms we put in place which enable businesses to invest in climate change and green initiatives I'd say at the outset that CBI members that we speak to are instinctively positive about the climate change agenda and having ambitious targets so in that sense the proposals in the bill to set more ambitious targets are met with enthusiasm and there's businesses the opportunity there and the leadership role that Scotland can play alongside Westminster in driving that changes is really really important I think the thing that members of the CBI would stress that those targets have to be accompanied by a policy regime which is systems wide which makes them achievable and affordable and I think at the moment we need to see policy gaps which in some instances prevent them from playing that leadership role that I can yeah absolutely so for example we've seen massive cuts in carbon emissions from the power sector over the last five years and going back further than that but actually if you look at carbon emissions from the wider economy from industry from buildings from transport those emissions have been largely flat over the last few years so the policy agenda which we've seen to drive those emissions reductions in the power sector hasn't been quite so evident elsewhere in the economy I would say that there's still opportunities in the power sector as well so for example providing a route to market for onshore wind and solar technologies through the CFD is one sort of very quick wind that I think most of businesses would be aligned in supporting providing certainty around the carbon price in the context of Brexit and EU emissions trading scheme these are the types of policy frameworks that really matter to businesses if they're going to go on and make the type of investments which enables them to play the leadership role and bring their customers with them we heard from their previous panel about the consistency of incentives and that's obviously an issue for anyone making investments in the private sector as well as the public sector consistency around policies so that they know when they're investing for example in a wind turbine for example that they know that they're going to not be disadvantaged in a couple of years if there's a policy change would you agree with that? Absolutely fundamental so the time horizons that you're talking about in establishing these targets are up to 2050 so you need that policy certainty for example the moment with which we transition towards electric vehicles and making sure that that is set out far enough in advance which enables the companies that are manufacturing those vehicles to invest accordingly that's a prime example of its importance I think we have seen a lot of chopping and changing in the policy environment over recent years at one case in point we're looking to establish a more ambitious target for emissions reductions as is proposed in the bill then carbon capture and storage is going to be absolutely fundamental to meeting that target and since the support from the Westminster Government was drawn a few years ago that hasn't been rebuilt with the same scale that would be necessary to see real progress in that area so as we're looking forward to policy decisions over the next few years that's a gap that I think business would like to see addressed Chris Woodgie an overview obviously doesn't just look at the private and public sector in that asilo you have an overview of the responsibilities SSN sort of lead on the public sector climate duties reporting and I think reiterate Tom's comment what I scribbled down when you asked the question about public-private was partnership if we're going to build a building we generally have a private sector partner we'll always have private sector partners in there so the relationship between the public and the private is crucial I think the examples that we can garner and pull together through climate change duties reporting helps to build the evidence base that private sector can dip into public sector dip into to understand what's possible to actually achieve the targets we're heading towards I think the comment you made about the consistency of support is really really crucial we are on a long-term journey with this so the best will in the world support for doing things over a couple of years is really useful and we'll do that level best to buy into that but some of the projects and some of the activities that public sector need to achieve might take several years to set up so if you've only got short term support you don't really have the wherewithal to take them forward you get partway through and think can't carry on with that so we do need that long-term consistent support we need to have good examples of what works we also need to know what doesn't work so we can work in the right direction I think John Scott would like to come in I hear what you say about consistency of approach and I perfectly will understand that coming from the business sector myself but the vagaries of life and climate change and indeed Government and political events not yet foreseen would consistency of change be substituted by a direction of travel a consistent direction of travel because things might change over time not unreasonably and I just wonder if that could just be kind of factored in a consistency of approach to targets although they might change over time I don't know I'm just being slightly devil's advocate to some extent possibly two sides of the same coin aren't they we know where we're heading for so you have that consistency of approach the technologies that come with it will change as time goes on as we get better carbon captain storage is a prime example I was always very skeptical but I haven't read a bit more about it it does seem to be a sensible approach to deal with it we've got some big holes in the ground that we can actually put the carbon underground and get rid of it so I think a direction of travel is really important having that sort of policy strategic direction to follow whether it's public or private I think private sector I suspect would like to understand a consistent direction of travel to the public sector yes, just to reiterate that I think that setting the strategic direction over the long term is something that doesn't change which is consistent regardless of political colour or whichever way you look at it but a little bit more granularity about what the expectations on a sector by sector level go a long way to provide a bit more certainty for business Matt Ruskell Just following that I'm wondering to what extent you all feel that the planning system is really delivering that kind of strategic focus for carbon reduction particularly in the way that we plan out places for example, Paul, you're planning out a new hospital or Tom, one of your members is planning out a new industrial estate are we building in opportunities there for low carbon transport and heating etc to what extent is this being embedded in the planning system is that delivering the kind of certainty that we need and how we create low carbon places going forward do you engage with that I can respond to that for obviously the council's perspective we feel that planning has a huge obviously role to play in terms of influencing infrastructure for instance, whether it's buildings or services what I find slightly frustrating is obviously given enough power to then say to development you must have for instance district heating network infrastructure put in before you build anything else you need to consider what is that carbon of the services you are going to provide we don't ask these questions all we ask is what does your building look like what's the footprint what buses are you going to put on it's not taking it to the next level we need to be so it's looking at digital infrastructure how do we service that well in future proofy again you don't want to dig a road over and over again for instance, we have that a lot in the council and it's the homes what type of homes are we allowing them to build for instance under the planning it's current planning guidance for instance again doesn't give room for innovation I don't think and it's quite limiting in terms of powers that we have I hope that in the future in terms of the next 10, 20 years that transformational change can happen is how we look at how we deliver either health services, educational services businesses and people living in that same space and how we look at that whether it's a city, urban or rural environment or community environment it doesn't seem to be cohesive as it is today but I feel that there has to be step changes in order to achieve where we want to be in 2050 I think there's a lot of work to do still and I feel planning has a very very big role to play and I would love to engage with that because I think in terms of what I do energy infrastructure for instance it's very key to put the early doors in your design of whatever development you're making be it a hospital or anything else because it's too late if the building's up so that's where I'm coming from and we're always trying to retrofit and that costs a lot more money if it's any type of business manufacturing, industry, hotels services, anything, hospitals that will cost you a lot more money tomorrow than if you would do if you put in the money today so it would be good if the Government can support us in terms of whatever that shape may be funding or otherwise but I think it's very important to get a message across just to add one point to that so I think if you're commissioning services from the private sector one of the things that prevents innovative dialogue and more partners coming together is a tendency for some public sector bodies to procure on the basis of lowest cost rather than having that long-term view looking for the innovation if you speak to a lot of our members that's the major bugbear they have of public sector bodies as well as inconsistency of the approach I think we sort of accept that different areas have different priorities and businesses can respond to that with different processes and approaches that it takes time for businesses to learn the uniqueness of every single area There's a brief supplementary particularly to yourself about Aberdeen Council but others are welcome to comment as well there is a planning bill going through the Parliament at the moment and some of us have begun at stage 2 to have probing amendments on the planning structures and future-proofing them for large infrastructure projects as you'll know and I'm wondering how you would see a robust and good way of setting that at Scottish Government level possibly I'm not asking you to design an amendment right now but how could that happen while at the same time enabling local authorities to have the respect that they deserve for shaping the future of their communities I think the local heat energy efficiency strategy is part of the energy efficiency route map that is put forward and local authorities are going to be put into statutory obligations to do that that should be taken into account in any future planning bill for instance understanding how the councils and its partner communities is going to make a place be better in terms of living area and providing services et cetera in terms of transport as well so I don't think it's linked up well and it seems to be in silo at the moment so you've got different strategies still looking at different things energy efficiency for instance and then this planning and then that's looking at place green space transport not so much on energy efficiency and how low carbon impacts on future use of that particular area so I try to engage with my colleagues for instance it's people who look at flooding risk and understanding how do we build our buildings to take on climate change impacts for instance I haven't seen a new school yet that's considered that I've asked a question but in a climate it's getting warmer what are we doing about that it's very as if it's because like I say it's not taken into the discussion very early stages all those are not included in any of the planning requirement as it is and if the bill in the future takes into account all those different impacts I think we are in a better way forward than where we are now Mcdonald Okay thanks and good morning to the panel the previous RACI committee in the last session of Parliament and this current declared committee have been very strong on public sector reporting and we see that the majority of reporting bodies agree that mandatory climate change reporting is welcome and it's also helped them to build on climate change action so I'd be keen to ask members of the panel to what extent is public sector reporting affecting real change across the public sector and beyond Chris McGee I think it's starting to work as local authorities we've been going through the climate change declaration report for since about 2007 and now we have the mandatory report and that's now in to its third full year quite a lot of work to get the information together but it does help to understand what we're doing and to understand what we're doing across the broader sector the whole of the public sector and I think that's really crucial I think it will need tweaking we now have worked with it for long enough to know what the good bits are and maybe where there's opportunities to improve and that's something that I think would be good for the Scottish Government to look at but I think it's really crucial that we do continue to report so we do develop that understanding of where we're going to because it's in the past we had climate change, CRC climate change reduction but that's only gas and electricity really really good I think about the climate change duties report is it's looking at what we're doing as individual organisations in terms of our emissions in buildings but it's also looking at what our impacts are in the wider scope how we actually govern things which is one of the key issues about I think this discussion point is how the governance works within different organisations and then we can learn from the people who do it best so we can all hopefully head in the same direction but I think it's yes it's quite a lot of work but I think it's worthwhile work and I think we can get more out of it as our data sets develop and we start to interrogate those and find out the best things that are happening and make best use of the information we've secured I think it's well worthwhile Paul Gray Thank you Mr MacDonald I hold strongly to the view that public services are accountable and publicly accountable and therefore there should be no resistance to reporting it may be difficult it may be complicated we may not have all the data but there should not be resistance to reporting because we are accountable to the public whom you are elected to serve but I also think there are advantages to reporting one of the things that brings out is when you can baseline and see that there are unexplained differences between different bodies some of the differences can be explained but some can't so if one body's energy efficiency is 25% better than others and they have roughly the same state and footprint then that's exposed to something that you can very quickly begin to look at and tackle if one public body is far ahead of many others then again are there some examples there or are there things that we could be following through now clearly we can't begin to knock down buildings and replace them with new ones just on an ad hoc basis but it does mean that when we're planning we have a basis on which to look at best practice and I think the points that have been made about partnership with the private sector are important in that context and clearly when we're talking about capital infrastructure we are more than likely to be engaging with different parts of the private sector whether it's on civil engineering or implementing digital services whatever it may be and if we've got some good baselines that say well this is the best of the best but I would also like to link it to the point that Mr Scott raised earlier it's also a bit forward trajectory it's not just about what are we doing just now but if this is our baseline now where would we like to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years time and planning ahead for that so there are probably areas in which reporting will be difficult there are probably areas in which reporting may expose people like me to criticism but I don't think that makes it wrong I think it's absolutely essential that we do this and do it thoroughly and that we do it in a way that is publicly meaningful and can be compared thank you thank you convener I'd like to just follow up on that in terms of the fact that both yourself Paul and Chris have been highlighting in terms of the public sector climate change duties and as we all know they are now mandatory and that was a difficult process but that's where we are I personally believe that's the right place to be it was difficult for some of the smaller organisations to and indeed some of the larger ones without naming and shaming to get to where they should have been at that stage but there's been a lot of progress but I do wonder the degree to which yourselves or anyone else on the panel think that there is a place for penalties once this is really bedded in if the examples you were giving Paul of those that have a similar estate for instance of buildings are not doing what others are with warnings but is there a place for penalties maybe but let me say what I think absolutely no no I entirely accept the question and it's a fair and reasonable one let me put it like this we've been retrofitting some of our energy centres to take advantage of the latest energy efficiency technologies and the recent example is one that we did within our three main sites in Tayside it was procured under an energy performance contract so there was no upfront cost to the board and we put in latest technology combined heat and power at Ninewells and two other sites we've saved over 12,700 tonnes of CO2 and that's equivalent to almost 30% of Tayside's total energy emissions what's that got to do with penalties well in my mind that's saving CO2 emissions also saving money I could give you a similar example from NHS Lothian where it's been quantified at a saving of 2.7 million pounds as well as the efficiency and so forth so to me I would start with the positive advantages and say look here are some examples of health boards that have been able to reduce their carbon emissions and save money but there has to come a point where I might say to these health boards do you know what you've had five years to think about this now so we're going to set your budgets going ahead on the basis that you will make these savings now is that a penalty but let's put it this way there's a big incentive to make the saving and there has to come a point where there's no incentive to avoid making it so that's the way I would look at this Richard Lyle we've got 32 councillors in Scotland and many other public bodies too many to mention Aberdeen City Council called for a stronger public body duties in its submission with a desire to see strengthen frameworks for and expectations on leadership accountability, target setting action planning and reporting across other tiers of public sector what would that mean in practice maybe Aberdeen first I will probably try to answer that the best I can what we think is having it managed treats well and good it establishes a baseline as well and to see how you are performing in terms of comparison or a standalone where does that go to in terms of information, data or improvement so all the penalties were spoken about what we think is maybe we should look at why are other some of the authorities not showing a reduction and understanding and giving them the necessary assistance in terms of improving that so penalties not necessarily might help because that's just a monitoring it doesn't maybe resolve what it actually is the issue accountability and leadership we find that that is very important if anything to do with climate change energy efficiency in particular we need a clear direction in terms of leadership the consistency across all the different departments within the council everybody needs to understand where that sits so that's where we're coming from in terms of the leadership because what we find a lot of this is almost like a silo effect on the planning or otherwise it's taking on delivery of the climate change reporting for instance and the others just feed numbers so it's not accountability as you can see there so there's no answer yet but that's what we think that there should be some development in terms of who ultimately is going to be responsible for those information that's been submitted and who monitors that who looks at any improvement or otherwise and then it's up to SSN to try and assist those in whatever way that's where we're coming from so we see it slightly differently because a bit like the CRC experience a lot of people report and pay the carbon and that's it for the year and it could be the situation because there is no incentive or penalties or whatever it didn't deliver I thought what it initially set out to do and I feel if this is going down the same route that it might just the CRC is changing the carbon reduction commitment so that's where we're looking at it we just didn't want it to become a similar situation where the CRC is at the moment the point you were making I think it is we do need to improve the governance side of it we have really good examples of good political leadership we've got good senior management leadership but sometimes the delivery is down so far down the organisation it's not actually getting right the way through and I think it's really important I think one of the key benefits from the reporting side of things is being able to pick up the good examples for people to learn from those to share the experience where there are weaknesses speak to people who are getting the job right and find out what works and what doesn't work and that's a bigger job as putting the numbers down is disseminating the information and for us to all understand what works what doesn't work and there has been in the delivery of the reports some organisations haven't done so well but there's been some really good sharing experience I think NHS with possibly one of the examples where they helped another organisation get themselves up to speed and so there is that natural inclination I think across the public sector to share experience and to find out what works what doesn't work and then to hopefully for us all to use the best examples and to go forward as most effectively as effectively as we can What is your view on leadership structures and commitment to delivery across the public sector and communication of a vision through strategic planning through organisations and do we really have clear group maps of what is required of the public and private sector and are these being translated across all areas of organisations Probably not yet I think we're on a journey My mention local heat energy efficiency strategies that will be one of the mechanisms we use to get an understanding of where we need to go across local authority areas and how different partners within those areas tie into that process I think we're heading in the right direction but I don't think we're quite there yet so it is a learning experience and again back to the reporting it gives us a means of recording where we're up to and where we need to go in the future The panel What is your view of the governance body model proposed by the climate change plan? In response to the points that Mr Lyle has been making if I may give this committee some credit one of the things being invited to come to this committee prompt was to go back and look at the extent to which the issues that the committee is discussing today had been discussed at chief executive level in the NHS and the simple fact is not very often not never but not very often now that doesn't mean they're not discussed in boards at chief executive level but I have a monthly meeting with the chief executives of all the health boards and this month, the 14th of November I've therefore asked that the official report from today's session and the background papers and the other ancillary documentation be put on the agenda for that meeting because I think to respond to Mr Lyle's point we do have we have reasonably sound governance within the NHS it's there, it's not all in the future it's there now and it's happening it's been there since 2015 we've got our sustainability action branding and campaign and that was launched in September so we are taking action and we can point to some benefits from it but I do want to assure myself that the health boards collectively are taking action that is consistent and also looking at the partnership opportunities that exist so that we're not viewing this in a siloed way so I think the very fact that this committee is taking an interest is in itself useful in prompting I think some leadership action In answer to that Lyle's other question around the governance arrangements does anyone get any points to make on that the term's accurate Just one point not closest to the public reporting side of it but the practice from the private sector obviously very much buy into what gets measured, gets changed so in the spirit of reporting that seems a positive direction of travel and particularly of that conversation is one that's been had at the board level and not just within the delivery function of the organisation within a business we would say from the business experience that when it comes to reporting sometimes you can become less transparent by reporting on more things so the kind of profigacy of more and more things that businesses are being brought on does that actually give more transparency and accountability to consumers and are we reporting in a way which enables them to interact with that conversation which is perhaps as much a question for the public sector reporting side as it is for the private sector and the final point would be relevant to what I said previously are we incentivising the behaviours within different parts of industry to deliver on those plans I think at the strategic long-term target level and the build goes even further in making that clear but on a sector by sector basis what's required of industry year to year those granular plans haven't been set up yet and I think it's a dialogue which needs to take place between Government and industry to make that happen Richard Lyle I'm sorry I'm not having a poor part to ask this question but I just can't miss asking this question Do CVI members have any concerns about climate change having an effect on their profits? It depends which members you talk about I think the most common it doesn't feel like a pop by the way that seems like a perfectly valid question the most common response we get from people who want to talk about climate change to the CVI is that they recognise that becoming more innovative in green technology is a business opportunity rather than a business risk Basically climate change and new technology could actually mean more profit It can do, it can do I think there are caveats to that businesses operate in a global marketplace if you're in an energy intensive industry for example and you're operating on a global basis and your competition is in China or in India who aren't subject to the same kind of regulatory regimes we are and that kind of enterprise is very mobile then you can see that there's challenges, immediate challenges with some climate change initiatives those are not insurmountable if you have a long-term policy framework which enables businesses to adjust if you couple the domestic ambition with international diplomacy which helps other countries to meet those same standards then you have a good chance of appealing to that segment of the business community as well Thank you Just go back to public sector governance again you've got mandatory reporting, you've got sharing good practice and nudging each other along what about actual carbon budgeting because I'm aware that Aberdeen Shire Council does this they set a carbon budget they link actions to targets and reduction of carbon emissions from their assets and services and that's reported against each year and it's linked to the financial budget so what the council is spending and commissioning is linked to that is there anything beyond just seeing how you're doing that actually goes into the budgeting and is that explicit in terms of financial planning within organisations that you represent you've got no energy S.U. stated that Aberdeen Shire is carrying out the carbon budgeting for a few years now in the city Aberdeen city we feel at the time we didn't have adequate resources to do that because we looked at it obviously there were presentations at the time it was looked at we didn't have the skills or the resources in order to deliver properly a carbon budgeting to our financial obviously reports that in itself is quite resource intensive I've spoken to some of them who are actually doing it because it's almost like another piece of financial reporting that you've got to do and it's had to link and everything else exactly like you say different budget lines etc so we we decided to approach it if you like in a more traditional way in terms of if you could reduce your energy and you could set a budget for energy forecast it well reduce energy spend your carbon spend should also reduce and in terms of monitoring that obviously the remit will fall into my team for instance to make sure that happens and that's reported, the governance is there and I need to explain any increases and this is where where I think the climate change reporting sometimes fails to pick up is the absolute figures for instance to not reflect how you use a building, weather patterns that kind of issues that we've got occupational changes and we feel sometimes it's difficult to put that in a financial report because a financial report does not take all those numbers into account it's absolute figures why are you up 3% say of whatever it is so that's why sometimes I feel although carbon budgeting is good it might not capture the reasons for instance and actions that need to be put in place to manage why you're not meeting your targets or your consumption has gone up that year or whatever the reasons are and that's why the city has decided to focus on reducing your energy added through measures, actions or actually delivering projects that do that and of course you've got to report it in a governance way through the existing governance route I suppose this falls into one of my categories of just because it's hard it doesn't mean you shouldn't think about it otherwise we would never do anything hard because we wouldn't want to think about it so I would like to make two offers to the committee if I may the first is that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport has committed to publishing a capital investment strategy by the end of this financial year and I think we should reflect on that point in terms of how we might describe our strategy and how that might relate to carbon budgeting the second is that although I'm principally here today in the part of my role that is Chief Executive NHS Scotland I'd be happy to as a member of Scottish Government's corporate board get a brief note to the committee on the Scottish Government's current position on carbon budgeting if that would be helpful to the committee Yes, yes it would Claudia Beamish It was just to ask if there were any views on the governance body model proposed by the climate change plan in relation to the public sector whether that is something that has come across any of your requests and if you have any views on it or if it's too early to say because I think it has just reported for the first time but the stakeholder engagement has raised a significant number of questions which we don't have time to go into today but I'm just wondering if there were comments on it in a broad sense Paul Gwyd Thank you, convener I should have been a little clearer in my response to Mr Lyle My intention is to bring this to the NHS Board chief executives to discuss with them how that governance body aligns with or does not align with the governance arrangements we've got in place at the moment so in other words what are the merits of the proposal and how would it work with what we've got I will confess to being keen not to dismantle something that we've only had in place since 2015 unless there is clear evidence that there is something better that we could be doing but again I'd be happy after that meeting which is as I've said fairly soon I'd be happy to come back to the committee with some better formed views on that once we've had an opportunity to discuss it Scottish Government responded to our committee saying and I quote that the final plan that's a climate change plan is the functions of a governance body which will oversee the implementation and monitoring of the climate change plan so it is a very important aspect of it that we will now have a monitoring body and that there's buying I perhaps should have said beyond the public sector with the private sector and all the sectors so I don't know if there's any further comments about whether that's come to your attention at the moment probably not sufficiently up to speed to make a meaningful comment but I think actually having a governance body formally tied into things I think will make sense but I can't really comment any more detailed I have read about it but I just can't pull it straight to the front of their mind at the moment but I think it's useful that we've, you know, we need governance at all levels, at the appropriate level at the right levels as well Any other comments? I haven't read it in fully so I cannot comment in totality so I agree that, you know, the governance should I think overarch the private sector and the public sector and it has to be some level of consistency in terms of maybe reporting what are you reporting what are the sectors to be defined in a clear way what actually you are monitoring what are we evaluating and what's the output of that because I think at the moment now there's a lot of if you like being put on to the public sector in terms of reporting and all that I'm not saying that the private sector is behind on that but I feel there's a lot catching up to do and I feel this is where I think a proper governance route that is a level playing field I think would be fairer for us and even within the public sector at NHS you know this functions maybe slightly different than how a local government functions so it's understanding we should have an overarching governance that I think a level playing field is what I would like to see John Scott I'm interested to hear what you say that particularly Paul Gray saying that meeting with chief executives and we'll discuss this further and not having discussed it hugely up to now which I think is probably a very candid and welcome statement and I do wonder if that's the context of the question I want to ask and do you think there's a lot more room to achieve targets as it were on a voluntary basis rather than a regulatory basis for and as much as we have heard people propose that the only future that is left now is to everything to be legislated for and driven in that way because the voluntary basis will not deliver and we'll discuss that briefly so since 1990 NHS Scotland the state's energy consumption has reduced by over 38% and green house gas emissions have reduced by over 49% and that's well ahead of national targets and my point Mr Scott therefore is it is possible to make good progress and not simply to you know aim at the targets as though they were a limit rather than a target you can exceed them I think there is and remains considerable willingness to do better but it's equally the case that the future is more challenging and many of the quick wins I think have already been taken into account you know you're asking me about whether we ought to you know go for more mandation or not and I suppose my safe answer is that's clearly a matter for the Parliament but my other answer in part I think given to other committee members was there is very clear evidence that this is that more is possible and there is very clear evidence that where boards have invested meaningfully in this that change does happen and savings are secured so the most recent example of NHS Lothian among any other things has been delivered at no net cost to NHS Lothian in other words they've improved their performance in emissions their performance in efficiency and there is no net cost to them in doing so so I think the path for me has to be making sure that the best practice is clear and exemplified and as I said in a previous response that where people are declining to follow that best practice then whether you call it a penalty or whether you call it an incentive there is an incentive in the system to do it and there is a disincentive not to do it however some buildings that we have for example were designed for 25 and 30 year use and therefore the capacity to retrofit is limited so we would also have to ask ourselves what mandation we would actually produce you know if you mandate an improvement in energy efficiency for example that will be most randomly delivered in newer buildings or new builds and you know they'll be there for a disproportionate skewing that said I did give the example of Gervan community hospital which in and of itself has delivered a 3% reduction in the ocean and the islands overall CO2 emissions by actions in one site so I think I would want to understand very clearly before giving any view at all what mandation would really be what it would mean and what it would produce because if it simply produces a lot of perverse incentives then it could take us off the trajectory we're on to something else I also think we'd need to engage very closely with our partners in the private sector to understand what they could actually deliver because there's no point in mandating something that can't be delivered to hear from Tom Thackeray as well of course I think I'll go along with that entirely I think it's my comments of the outset were how do you make targets affordable and achievable and a quite strict regulatory approach at a headline level it's probably not the way to secure the investment which is needed to make those swift gains I would say that on a more sort of granular case by case basis the private sector is very much up for a dialogue with public sector partners about how you improve the regulatory landscape so that it does encourage investment a good example would be in building standards for example a great example for Germany where the German house building industry has partnered with the German government to set standards which they're then basically writing the building standards for the BRICS countries at the moment which is a massive export opportunity born out of a regulatory approach with the private and public sector working together is also evident in things like disruptive technologies so drone maintenance of wind turbines for example at the moment the regulatory approach doesn't enable businesses to invest in those type of areas but with the right partnership with the public sector that could become very possible I've got another question for you which is related a little different and just about the targets themselves and to what extent does the 90% by 2050 target in the bill provide a clear long-term marker for driving investment innovation and change would increasing this to net zero increase the drive for investment innovation and change is it easier to communicate and achieve buy-in for a target of net zero what's your view on that should we be going for net zero are you happy with the 90% target or what's easier to sell Tom Thackeray I basically repeat the same answer basically we're after achievability and affordability there's a lot of talk around net zero at the moment businesses want to be in that dialogue and if the climate science says that we need to be going for a net zero target then let's have a conversation of what policies we need to put in place to to reach that but wouldn't we rather set things that we're going to achieve rather than things which seem at this stage we don't have the scientific backing for from a committee on climate change point of view looking at it now so let's wait until we get the evidence back from that would be the first point of call and then let's acknowledge the fact that as I said in my opening remarks there are significant policy gaps in achieving current targets we're going to need to fill those gaps to meet 90% and we're going to need to go even further than that to meet net zero so there needs to be some realism along with the ambition thank you and others want to comment on that Paul Goyne thank you I think there's an important first of all I agree wholeheartedly with the point which is let's go where the evidence points us but there's also an important point about our ability to be influential internationally we spoke about other countries that had different regulatory frameworks and maybe that could be disadvantageous to us in terms of some of our commercial activities well it will be hugely important that we wish to be influential we will need to be pursuing targets that are demonstrably world leading now whether that's 90% or net zero I don't have the scientific knowledge to opine but what I do believe is that the more we can do that can be exemplified publicly and by that I don't just mean the public sector but the private sector as well the more influential we will be elsewhere in the world when we're talking about the terms of trade that we might want so there is clearly to me if you like a diplomatic advantage in thinking carefully about what stance we want to take here and what position we want to represent Stuart Stevenson thank you clearly if we started today and aimed for 2050 and just had a straight line reduction that would be one approach and it's kind of what we're doing alternatively if we did nothing whatsoever until one day before the target in 2050 we'd still meet the target but we'd actually have omitted twice the amount of greenhouse gas in that period of time because the two triangles so therefore the intermediate targets are designed to take us on a line rather than postpone but there is a huge advantage to the agenda in early action that reduces the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases emitted and in carbon in particular which endures the atmosphere for hundreds of years the less you put out there the better what are we doing that helps that agenda or is that too difficult Chris was nodding I don't know whether it's necessarily I think it is very very difficult it's going to be hugely challenging I think actually the new targets that's coming out the climate change bill when the first iteration when we're for public sector we were looking at 96% decarbonisation it was ambitious and challenging and probably impossible where we are now at 53% is still ambitious and challenging but it gives us something to work towards and working from life figures as well rather than baselines which whilst useful so I think we will probably come back to this a little bit more I'm asking a very narrow question that we can make progress just whether there is scope for your organisations to do better than the line that is currently being thought because of the potentially I think there's still depends on how far you are as an organisation a lot of organisations have hit all what's term the low hanging fruit others have got further to go on that so there are good opportunities still to take but we need to take those opportunities and work on it Rattle along, see if others say the same thing Tom? Can I just say that although the private sector is concerned about the cost of going towards 90% by 2050 what is important is to understand the financial modelling that we're doing is looking at purely maybe the cost of it and not putting a value to the benefits of it that's important in a financial model it's sometimes the health benefits for instance how do you quantify that and how do you project that to 2050 how do you take that health implication and what are the savings you can achieve in terms of health services for instance so I think it's unfair to just say that whether it's financially viable today to do it but we need to include in that financial modelling is what else other sectors that can benefit for them particularly health and the cost of technology today may be prohibitive for whatever reason and that inhibits maybe innovation but this is where I think government again has a role to play in terms of maybe for the early adopters they've had the LC-ITP programme and everything else like that but we need to have more of these programmes that encourage innovation and for industry then to be excited to be part of it in terms of innovation schemes out there that may be limited again to maybe public sector to get funding to I think it limits that so if you increase more how do you say encouragement maybe in the early adopters to try and push and accelerate innovation then in the next 10 years the technology that we thought would be too expensive today may actually be viable and that's very key I think today I think we're just ready to encourage that innovation and then obviously we can get the benefits of that in 2040, 2050 the other key point here is digitalisation and I think a lot more work can be done there in terms of how we deliver services that way and I think there's huge opportunities there that will help towards achieving our targets it's how we deliver services differently and I think that step change I said earlier it's key to do that to make sure it's transformational change and to think differently of how we do things and I think we can achieve it by doing these things Mark Ruskell Can I move to public sector financing models I mean we've obviously had tranches of PFI PPP in the past we've got new models that have come on since then such as Hubco do these models actually incentivise reduction of carbon energy efficiency the best technology the best solutions are there issues in the way that we procure these kind of assets and contracts and deliver buildings and other services in a way which perhaps doesn't deliver the best carbon value if you like for society Paul Gray Good question and I don't know the whole answer to you Mr Ruskell but what I will say is this that certainly the way that we as I mentioned our capital investment group earlier the way that we run that there are standards that need to be met before a business case or an investment appraisal would be signed off and I've not so far had anything put to me in the things I've been asked to sign off that say the non-profit distributing model or the hubco model is somehow inimical to meeting these targets now so that's one half of the answer to your question what I don't have a sufficient answer to but will be happy to get it for the committee is the extent to which these models are actually driving innovation so in other words what I am saying to you today is they're not getting in the way of it but you're asking are they driving it and I would need to check in order to give a factual answer to the committee that I'd like to do that the councils across Scotland have looked at the NDEE which is the non-domestic energy efficiency framework which is a way of procuring energy efficiency works in retrofits as well as potentially new builds and what we find is because it has an element of monitoring and verification put on to the contractors we find this actually almost a good learning curve because previously in either PPP or PFI contracts there's been never put place in terms of a responsibility or accountability to the contractor at the end of year after the completion of build basically the build, the designing build and they walk away and then depends on how it could be a DBFM or just a DB contract but having the monitoring and verification process as part of the NDEE is very important because they have to prove that in 12 months, 24 months the calculations in terms of carbon saving, energy efficiency measures that have been installed, whether it's innovation or technology led has delivered and I think that has a huge improvement for us anyway in local authorities that give us a bit more if you like a method and governance route that we can contractually say to them Mr contractor you haven't delivered and these you need to prove if you have delivered and that is very important and I think going forward a lot of contracts need to have that verification monitoring process as part of the contract and not an add-on if you like at the end of the contract and I think that's very important Tom Thackeray Just sort of reiterating a point I made earlier I think the broad perception from industry when it comes to engaging in the PPP is that they're more often not competing based on cost, rub and value we did a survey over the summer which I'm happy to circulate to the committee which bears that out so it's 60% and 65% feel like that that's the case some of that speaking to public authorities there's a lot of blame shifted towards European public procurement regulations as a sort of that I think in reality contracting authorities have much more flexibility than they realise but perhaps with Brexit there is an opportunity to look at that in greater depth and start to tackle some of those challenges which businesses see Okay, we'll move on John Scott Thank you very much one surprisingly I want to deal with the cost of all of this and the financial memorandum outlines that additional cost to meet a 90% target of around 13 billion pounds will be faced between 2030 and 2050 it does not outline to whom these costs will fall or by whom they should be met all the timescales for these costs to be incurred so what economic modelling of the costs and benefits of mitigating and adapting to climate change have been carried out by the organisations represented on the panel and how much investment by the private sector could be expected to accompany these costs or not what do you think about your share of the 13 billion pounds of cove I think one of the challenges I guess we've all faced is that energy inflation tends to be significantly higher than RPI the advice we're getting from Scottish Government in terms of say gas prices next year is going to be 80% over these two years they'll be up by 18% we're on about 3% RPI so even though we might get the savings from doing things we're not necessarily getting the cash savings we'll get the carbon, we'll go down but the cash might not so when we're talking about investing massive amounts of money it is very very challenging and the question has been raised right the way through the whole climate change processes how do we get the money together to do this certainly from the local authority sector and I'm sure it will be the same with the health board we are financially very very challenged on that and the issue is always going to be is where do you invest that money is it for education, is it for social care is it for carbon I don't know what the answer is to that but it is very very difficult to get there's a climate change high enough of the agenda although it makes sense to do it and we all understand the health benefits of a better climate loss heat problems etc etc but it is I think it is probably one of the biggest questions about this whole agenda is how we actually deliver that financially views of all those we know it's going to be difficult it's interesting that that energy cost dynamic that Chris has described is should be an incentive for private sector companies to invest more in the kind of things but there is market failure there so you can say that they should be investing look at the energy prices but I think before before that apart from some industries before that situation becomes critical then needs to be a nudge practice campaigns or showing our works there needs to be a nudge with the private sector in that direction sort of to on the more negative side I suppose I'm not sure if that £13 billion figure takes into account the changing tax base that comes with these changes as well so for example we're moving to electric vehicles and less money coming through from fuel duty for example how does that play out in the public finances so you need a much broader conversation about how the economy is financed within 12 years time so it needs to get into that discussion very quickly we're unclear as to where that figure has come from at least I'm unclear maybe all those are away but how that figure has been arrived at but nonetheless assuming that the scale even if the figure itself might be open to variation if the scale is somewhere between 10 billion pounds of cost to be incurred how are we to afford it Paul I expect you to have the answer well so today 2018 we're as far away from 1986 as we are from 2050 and if you'd asked in 1986 what the technologies of today would be some people would have got it right and many would have got it wrong so one of the issues of course is we're trying to imagine what the world will be like in 2050 in order to make these estimates I think that the significance of the 13 billion is simply this it's not easy it could be 10 billion it could be 15 billion but it's not half a million pounds to be this is significant and it requires thought what I can tell you for example is that if the national electricity and gas grids were fully decarbonised then that would save us the cost of retrofitting our energy infrastructure to be net zero carbon to the tune of 300 million pounds but of course we still have two assumptions one is will these grids be decarbonised and secondly will all our infrastructure that would have to be retrofitted still be here in five years time and clearly some of it won't but again it's possible to make calculations about what it would cost the risk of the calculations is if they're based on the world in 2050 simply being what it is now the way we deliver services the way in which people travel the way in which they think about themselves and their health and their lives will all be very different in 2050 from now there are some important imperatives though for example if temperatures rise over time to the extent that they could there will be an increase in the prevalence called vector born disease associated with species migration in English species will come to this country that aren't here just now and they'll carry disease with them and that'll have an impact on the population therefore it's not just about the 13 billion euro plus or minus it's about what it would cost you not to do it now clearly even if Scotland was the absolutely world leading exemplar others would have to be following those vector born diseases we wouldn't stop at Carlyle so I think there's something again going back to this point about being nationally and internationally influential in the way that we approach this so there are calculations that can be done they clearly have a massive degree of they have a very big confidence interval but what I think we're saying to ourselves is if we're serious about this we're going to have to plan for it and a plan to afford it and if we're not willing to do that there are implications and impacts which are much more profound than whether you can afford to run a health service or not they affect the whole of the population so that's a partial answer okay we're going to have to move on um thank you thank you convener um actually this uh last weekend I was in Aberdeen and and saw for myself to be honest for the first time the the scale not that I haven't ever been to Aberdeen before my gran was from there and I know it quite well but I looked very specifically at the scale of the oil industry supply ships and all that side of things and also um from the perspective of low carbon hearteningly at wind turbines which were going out ready to go out to the offshore industry in the bay itself um in in the submission from Aberdeen City Council in relation to the um the targets in the bill as they stand at the moment um the comment was made in your written submission um how compatible are these targets with um those of our present economy still a heavy emphasis on fossil fuel sectors and um you may well know that there has been a recent report modelling the potential of Scotland's offshore industry to 2050 by Aberdeen University which is estimated there could be 17 million barrels of oil equivalent still to be extracted this industry has an educated and well paid workforce which of course goes without saying how does maximising economic recovery for this industry fit with reducing carbon emissions if indeed it does and whatever just transition for workers if it doesn't. I don't know who would like to I think Tom Thack is an obvious person to possibly Aberdeen as well so is it some um I think specifically there's you know huge expertise and supply chain capability um in Scotland for um oil and gas industry that needs to be celebrated sort of a managed transition as we sort of um as we get the most out of the resources that we have in this part of the country I think we shouldn't um and that's a sort of real honest conversation that needs to happen with Scottish Government and Westminster Government and industry um I think there's massive opportunities in new forms of energy generation though and particularly relevant to Scotland you know we know the that we've got in terms of wind power in the companies that exist here and the supply chain opportunities that are there as well so I don't think I think um there has to be a transition and I think the industry accepts that. I think um you we're not exploiting the new generation capability that we have through renewables just yet particularly because we don't have that with those router markets through things like the CFD and I think if you sent those signals early enough that enables parts of industry to invest which could pick up some of the slack in terms of the overall economy um and its contribution um but you need to have those signals set early so that um that that change to the CFD isn't an absolutely critical one for the UK generally but for the Scotland specifically. Could ask if that's a conversation that within the CBI um is is happening in a robust way perhaps if you don't mind me asking? Yes indeed it's happening in a robust way we're making representations to all parts of government to make sure that that's the case and from the point of view of Aberdeen I think we're running out of time so through the convener briefly. Okay I'll try to be quick to respond to your um it is it's a very large question in terms of oil and gas in Aberdeen as you can see from the supply ships and all that industry is still there but obviously it's a bit of a downturn at the present and although there's discovery of oil fields and all that we must take to cognisance that there is a cost to take that gas or whatever it is out of there supply it over the refining you know it's all that cost and then there's carbon and then all that other cost associated with it so in terms of then the people that are already doing that there is as you know in in in Aberdeen we're trying to diversify the same skillset then to look at offshore wind in terms of how these skills are transferable across as you can see the offshore winds are already there with the development of new harbour we're looking at also expanding other industries within Aberdeen in trying to move not say move away but to use the skills that is existing, the history that we've got in developing to other economies hydrogen is a huge step for us and we're still trying to be the forefront in terms of being an energy city in Scotland and we are developing heavily on and we're putting a lot of infrastructure in terms of hydrogen we secured a lot of European funding on that front and this is where it's almost like a parallel economy that we're running at the moment so that we are ready for that change in a transition that happens because we don't want to be a cliff edge where a lot of people suddenly have you know skills but they got no jobs to go into so we're ready for that and very quickly I touched on the LHEs which is the local heat energy efficiency strategy that we're pulling together within that is looking at how we've identified maybe an implementation plan so we're looking at improving insulation installing district heating we're looking at external wall installations for our buildings we're looking at insulation of heat pumps removing air conditioning units that alone creates a market that I think private sector or industry can look at so once we package that and that is the idea of the LHEs is once we've identified plans or projects suddenly you come to a value obviously the cost to deliver these but equally doesn't market opportunity there in particular in the north east where we do not have companies that are based in the north east to deliver a lot of these let's say readily available up in the north east we're finding when we tender out procurement wise it's still central Scotland that holds a lot of this energy efficiency skills so there again is an opportunity in Aberdeen to have a training industry there to encourage energy efficiency so that is the transition I can see in terms of yes all in gas is there but we need to understand that there are other markets that have transferable skills in particular energy efficiency and renewables it's massive opportunities there in hydrogen as well so it's about expanding what we do best but equally I think because we have that workforce it's still set and I think it's very attractive then for investors because we have that there and it's established so I think we feel that that is the way forward Okay we're going to have to move on Mark Ruskell Thanks one of the private sectors that has perhaps struggled to reduce emissions is the services sector I think there's only been a 6% reduction since 2009 and I'm just sort of wondering how that sector is innovating you've obviously got a lot of disruptive businesses in that area and perhaps where you see some of the reductions coming from and I noticed earlier on Tom you said that business doesn't like regulation I think I would have fallen off my seat if you'd said that business did like regulation but do you not see a kind of a way for private sector to innovate if business is regulated and is there not a danger perhaps that those countries that are going down a stronger regulatory route or setting a higher ambition perhaps take the lead in terms of innovation particularly with their disruptors and innovative businesses and that we're kind of left left behind a bit It certainly wasn't my intention to sort of say blanket business doesn't like regulation I think you know there's good regulation and there's bad regulation and some of the examples that I I wanted to talk about is drone technology being a great example of a disruptive technology which is transforming many disruptive businesses has potential to transform multiple sectors including energy generation but that we don't have a regulatory approach in place which can enable businesses the rules of the game aren't there so businesses can innovate around it same with artificial intelligence so huge opportunities particularly across the services sector but things to do with the ethics of artificial intelligence really complex regulatory questions which need both the private sector and the public sector's expertise to answer the quicker we can make progress with that the better and there's some great progress already taking place for example Climate regulation then you're talking about regulatory frameworks that govern more innovative technologies and freeing those up to compete you're not talking about climate regulation or climate targets being a restrictor I think actually having those targets in place is a useful thing and I think those being more clear cut by sector and milestones along the way to the long term targets is something that businesses would welcome but I think there's huge opportunities particularly in this disruptive model if there is more of a focus on the facilitation around the innovation that comes with it which I think was part of your question as well so what more should we be doing around facilitating innovation then so I think a lot of it comes to technology we don't know about yet this is stuff that the UK Climate Change Committee can't put into a an advice letter to the Scottish Government at the moment and actually if you look in the power sector if you look at the cost of renewables that's an example where innovation in that sector around the cost far more than was actually anticipated so just by and that's without overly regulatory approach from central government is with partnership from industry and particularly through establishing things like the carbon price and CFD in electricity market reform so there's great examples there of the things that we have achieved in terms of the mission reductions which could be expanded out to the broader economy I think that that could be seen as the low hanging fruit though so that sector in particular perhaps is more engaged with discussions around emissions reductions and climate change than the wider economy is actually how do we make this more of a number one on the boardroom agenda rather than number three or four or five so what are the sectors that need to catch up cos we heard from the Swedish evidence last week they've got 15 action plans quite a strong focus with their sector about how they position themselves globally the cement sector is looking all sorts of interesting technologies where do you see the resistance within the private sector or perhaps areas where you're showing there are particular sectors that have huge leadership around innovation I think we've got a gap in terms of investment in energy efficiency in the private sector particularly amongst small and medium size enterprises I think we haven't had going back to the earlier conversation on the consistent policy framework in that area for a long time and businesses aren't sure of the payoff and when you're you know it's been very much easier to make a case for an investment in a new IT system or in higher wages for their staff and it has been on energy efficiency frankly because the business case just hasn't been there or at least in the eyes of those who are sort of perceiving it whether it is or not so that's one area I think obviously transport is an area where there's going to be huge amount of demand and disruption for services over the coming years and where there's a huge need to decarbonise and if you look at the transition to electric vehicles that's something that could be a huge opportunity for the UK economy given the manufacturing strength that we already have there but the supply chains for that sector get decisions around the supply chain get set years and years in advance so you need to have the policy signals straight very early on and by those policy signals I mean you need to create a market for the product if you look at the country with the highest take up of electric vehicles Norway they also have the best consumer incentives for taking up those vehicles so when those incentives were cut pay presto the ownership of electric the pace of transition also dropped so I don't think we've had that clear and consistent policy incentives for the transition for electric vehicles for example but there's a cross industry electric vehicles, buildings there's examples like that where partnership between government and the private sector could yield quite rapid results and one final question from Stuart Stevenson I just wanted to go back to the financial memorandum and at paragraphs 45, 46 and 47 it provides five scenarios each for the Scottish Government, local authorities and then other bodies individuals of businesses but all that actually does is it takes the 13 billion which we've talked about whose origins are a mystery to me and each scenario for each of them says it's zero percent 25 percent, 50 percent 75 percent or 100 percent in other words it's just an arithmetic distribution of the figures around these three sectors I don't think it tells us anything is that a useful thing to have there should we have something that actually properly informs us what the view is or if, as this suggests to me there isn't a view should it not be deleted from the financial memorandum and of course on the other side shouldn't we have the economic opportunities I mean there's an 126,000 people employed in renewables earning three billion a year which kind of gives a context and maybe the 13 billion is a tribly small number Would anyone like to pick that up Paul Gray Thank you Well Mr Stevenson as you will know a civil servant is not going to comment on the detail of something produced by the Government however I will offer you a view which is that scenarios are helpful they may be wrong but they are helpful because they allow you to test assumptions against what might or might not be and even if you say well that scenario is not going to happen at least having tested it you might come up with one that does as I mentioned before and certainly provide the committee with some of the scenarios we have been thinking about which we have costed with all the caveats I have mentioned and proposed which are to do with today's technology is not tomorrow's technology but I think it is important that as I think I said in response to Mr Scott we at least have some sense of the scale of what it is we're looking at we've discussed whether we ought to be able for 90% or 100% in effect well in a sense what this is telling us is whichever one we're to aim for it comes with an associated cost you're right to say there may will be as yet undefined associated opportunities I think it also prompts us to think very hard about the way we work together with the range of certainly the private sector but also think about how we work with the third sector and academia to understand as well as we possibly can not just what the threats are but what the opportunities are so from my perspective the fact that there is a financial memorandum and there is a set of scenarios if it at least promotes a conversation that in itself is a worthwhile exercise clearly if the committee wishes to ask for more that's entirely at the hand of the committee thank you very much I want to thank the panel for giving us evidence we've kept you probably a good 10-15 minutes over the time allotted so thank you very much for indulging us and answering all our questions so comprehensively at the next meeting on the 13th of November the committee will continue its consideration of the climate change target Scotland bill 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 very much