 Good morning. Welcome to the fifth meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I remind everyone present to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent for the duration of the meeting. The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed? We are indeed. The second item on our agenda this morning is to hear further evidence on the Scottish Government's draft Climate Change Plan RPP3. This meeting represents the third of our oral evidence sessions, and we will be hearing from three different panels of stakeholders to discuss the overview of the plan and climate change governance, as well as a particular focus on wastewater, the public sector and peatlands. The first panel evidence session will be joined via video conference by Matthew Bell, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change. Good morning, Mark. Can you hear us? Good morning, I can hear you very well. Thank you very much. The first question will come from Mark Roskell. Good morning, Matthew. Nice to see you in front of the committee again, albeit in 2D rather than 3D. Can you perhaps start by asking you about what your impressions are of this third climate plan, and in particular how it relates to the advice that you have given the Scottish Government around policies and programmes that you put forward in your own report last year? Thank you very much. I commend the committee on such a carbon-efficient way to give evidence, but I look forward to being there in three dimensions as well as well soon. Some overview on the plan and how it relates to our advice. First of all, at the highest level, the level of ambition in the plan, the setting up, recommitting to the 66% reduction by 2032, the coverage of the plan in terms of covering all the sectors that we have touched on and picking up some of the areas that we think are important. Generally, at that level, the plan very much follows what we have been asking for. Once we get below that high level, a few areas of detail that are worth picking out now and we can explore them in more detail maybe during the course of the session. The first is that the plan does differ from the types of scenarios that we put forward in terms of the balance of effort across different sectors. Though we're always very clear in putting forward our advice, our advice is only scenarios and the Government is free to choose alternative paths, but in terms of differences between what we said, the plan puts relatively little ambition in transport compared to the scenarios that we had in our cost-effective path and a very high level of ambition on particularly domestic buildings, buildings in general, compared to the levels that we had in our plan and also a very high level of ambition on so-called negative emissions, carbon capture and storage combined with biomass of some form. Overall, it ends up in the same place, but the weight, the balance of ambition across the sectors is quite different to the balance of effort that we had in our scenarios. The second high level point I would make is that we've clearly emphasised in our advice the importance of the governance and the monitoring framework around the plan. Again, there are some welcome high level steps in the plan, the commitment to setting up a governance body, the identification of owners for the actions that the plan sets out, but I would like to see a little bit more detail there to ensure that the governance and the monitoring is going to be as rigorous as will be needed to achieve such an ambition by 2032. OK, thanks for that. How exactly were you involved in the development of this climate change plan? Obviously, you've issued your high level advice last year, but were you involved in looking at the different pathways that could have been run through the times model? Has there been a dialogue about the size of different emissions, envelopes and pathways with the Scottish Government? There's been a, as you say, we issued our formal advice to the government and within that we set out in some detail the pathways that we thought was the least cost option for getting to 2032, including all of our analysis, and so the Scottish Government could have had all of that. There's been some dialogue between, at a high level, between us and the government and also at a working level between the teams that do the modelling, for example, in my committee and some of the teams that do the modelling in the Scottish Government. But we haven't seen or inputted into any of the detailed assumptions, analysis, pathways, thinking that has gone into the actual times modelling and stuff. So your suggested pathways haven't been put through the times model, is that correct? I don't know, but we haven't seen the detail that's gone through the times model. OK. Whether they may have put ours through, but I don't know what's been detailed and put through. And how does this relate to the previous plans, RPP1 and RPP2? I think now, which is striking, is that there isn't any kind of analysis around the carbon or financial implications of policy actions in this third iteration of the plan. So what's your view on that? I think at the Committee on Climate Change, in order for us to develop our scenarios, we find that it's helpful to use a range of different sources of evidence to try to understand both the high-level picture, which something like the times model that the Scottish Government has used, that high-level picture that the times model gives you, and to supplement that as well with other sources of evidence about, as you say, specific carbon savings that might come from particular policies, specific financial costs and benefits that might come from particular policies. And so we tend to look at a range of different, both models and sources of evidence, to have both a top-down, if you will, view and a bottom-up view. And as I think your committee is aware, the Scottish Government has shifted in this RPP3 from a very bottom-up view in the first RPPs to a very top-down, if you will, view in this one, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. We would tend to emphasise the combination of those to understand some of the nuances and some of the subtleties that are required to put forward a least cost path. Okay. When do you intend to do your next analysis of Scottish Government policies and your next progress report? Our next formal progress report is due in September, just after the summer. Recognising, of course, that time is constrained because of the 60-day restriction that we are faced with. Have you been asked by the Scottish Government to comment on the plan? Would you welcome such an opportunity? We haven't been asked formally to comment on the plan. We certainly would welcome opportunities to feed in our thoughts. It's important that we, as the independent advisers, are able to stand back and offer an independent view. It's not for us to say precisely what should be in the plan or what shouldn't be in the plan, but to feed in both to your committee and more widely during this period is very welcome. Alexander Bonner. Thank you very much. Good morning, Matthew. You talk about looking at the plan and understanding it. Can I ask about the times model? I mean, it's going to be after it's been used here. It's going to be handed over to universities and it's very much an open source and transparent methodology of assessing climate change. Can I ask what plans you might have at your committee to either use this model or investigate how the model works going forward? As you say, it's a very good modelling framework. We have used it in the past. We have used it for the advice on the carbon targets themselves from 2027 to 2032. We welcome definitely the opportunity to look in more detail at the specific analysis that the Scottish government has done, the scenarios and how they've played through the times models come up with the answers that they've come up in the plan. The process that the government is going through to, if you will, hand over the model and the assumptions to academics and to the wider community, I think is a good one. What I would emphasise about the times model, indeed about any model, is that you also have to use it, understanding both its limitations as well as its benefits. One of the things, for example, that we know about models is that they often create quite dramatic, what you might call discontinuities, quite dramatic changes in very short periods of time. You have to think about is that realistic in the real world and use a range of other evidence to inform whether it's realistic. As an example of the types of things that appear to have, I don't move enough in the lecture, the types of things that appear to have come out of the times model and obviously we don't know the detail, but you see, for example, on the building's ambition, low carbon heat, which is about 18% of heat supply to buildings from 2020 to 2025, all of a sudden ramps up to 80% from 2025 to 2032. Similarly in transport, which is about 27% of electric vehicles in 2030, all of a sudden ramps up to 40% in 2032. Those types of dramatic changes are the sorts of things that models produce because all of a sudden they spot something that they think is very inexpensive and so they put in loads and loads of it very, very quickly. Then you have to step back from that and you have to ask yourself as well what's the wider evidence that we have to understand whether such a dramatic change is achievable or whether in practice in the real world we might ramp some things up at a different rate and have a bit more of a glide path into them. The times model, as you say, is a very good, transparent and rigorous framework for considering a certain set of questions and then in coming up with a plan you need to take advantage of a wider range of evidence as well and that's the approach we try to adopt at the Committee on Climate Change. Just to round up this section, Matthew, the UKCCC has, in advance of the plan, recommended that transport and agriculture should be required to do considerably more than it has until now. The agricultural section of the plan has come in for some criticism, both in terms of its ambition and its language. Can I ask you whether, from your perspective, those criticisms are valid? The scenarios that we developed to inform that 2027 to 2032 set of targets that were ultimately adopted, the scenarios that we developed had more ambition in transport than exists in the draft plan from the Scottish Government and had, I guess, a stronger set of measures, certainly a stronger process around agricultural emissions, about how you monitor them and how you might get emissions reductions to take place over time. So we had more ambition in transport, a stronger set of policies that we were looking at in agriculture. It's clearly for the government to decide the balance of effort across the different sectors and the policies to develop, but certainly during the course of this 60-day consultation and when the final plan comes out, we look to see, look to develop more of an understanding about if transport is going to be less ambitious, how we can be sure that we're going to be able to meet that 66% ambition overall for 2032, and similarly in agriculture, if it's going to be more of a softly, softly approach and a sharing of best practice approach in agriculture, how can we be confident that it will make its contribution, the overall contribution that it needs to make, and what's the options analysis, what's the risk analysis of if it's not progressing as quickly as needed, then what will happen? Right. Thank you for that. David Stewart. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Again, thank you for joining us by video conferencing. In a personal note, I hope we take further evidence from video conferencing and make our own contribution on climate change. Can I talk first of all about assumptions in the plan? There's a number of big assumptions that are there on Europe, on transport, on carbon capture and storage. Can I start with carbon capture and storage? There's a big assumption around that. As you're well aware, the UK Government has withdrawn the billion-pound funding around carbon capture and storage. How realistic are the assumptions in the plan around that? Let me speak at a relatively high level, because I don't know what we don't have all the details, actually, from the plan. First of all, at the highest level, the Committee on Climate Change is very clear that in order to meet the ultimate 2050 target, both for the Scottish Government and for the UK Government, carbon capture and storage is part of that least-cost path. We need to, both as the UK and as Scotland, to re-engage with carbon capture and storage, given the decisions that have been made over the last 18 months or a couple of years, and find a way to move carbon capture and storage, both in a Scottish and a UK context forward. The Committee on Climate Change has published our ideas, and we've written to the Secretary of State in the UK Parliament, setting out what we think is a sensible approach. Certainly, we're looking for that as part of the equivalent, the emissions reduction plan that the UK Government has committed to producing in the next couple of months. Having said that, in our scenarios, we have carbon capture and storage starting to come into delivering emissions reductions and being a set of technologies available in Scotland and the UK in the 2030s, and thereafter, to having the so-called BEX technology, the bioenergy with carbon capture and storage that allows you to have negative emissions, starting to develop into the 2030s. That's understanding where we are today, and the decisions that have been made today, and a relatively rapid series of policy and other decisions that need to be made over the next decade or so. The Scottish plan, as far as I understand it, appears to have that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage coming in around 2027, which is both earlier than our scenarios and very quick given, as you suggested, where we are today. Part of the Scottish Government fleshing out this draft plan and coming up with its final plan needs to be how is that a realistic time period in which to get something up and running, not just the carbon capture and storage technology, but indeed the negative emissions technology over the course of the next decade, given the levers that the Scottish Government has as compared to where decisions need to be made in the UK or even at a European level? Thank you for that. Can I move on to the other area that I touched on, which was about a membership to the European Union? Clearly, we are in uncharted territory on that, but there is obviously a number of assumptions in the Scottish plan around membership of the EU in terms of policy development. What is your assessment of that? Can you say something about your assessment of the future of the emissions trading scheme, which is obviously very important in this area? It is frankly too early to say lots in detail about that. The Committee on Climate Change published a report in October of last year, and in that report on the implications of Brexit for tackling climate change, we set out the range of policies that are currently policies that the UK negotiates at an EU level and then get promulgated through the EU, and will have to be dealt with in the context of negotiating Brexit. Clearly, the EU emissions trading scheme is one of the more prominent of those. Another one that very much affects the Scottish plan is the vehicle standards, the carbon efficiency standards for new vehicles, which is currently set and being negotiated at an EU level. Depending on how those are transferred into UK law and indeed into Scottish ambitions, that could have a big impact, but right now we are in the position where we are trying to understand how those are going to evolve, how those are going to be translated, and clearly as the Committee on Climate Change we will be very clear where we think that makes it more difficult, or indeed in some areas, agriculture being potentially one of the issues of the ambitions. My final question, convener, is around transport. You have touched on some of this earlier. Clearly, transport is a vital area in such a big emitter. You have had some interesting things to say in very ambitious plans around things like urban consolidation centres, about having more emphasis on active travel, and also about more ambitious plans by 2030 for electric or low-emitting vehicles. Can you say a little bit more about that in some current developments across Europe where I noticed in Madrid, for example, that they are banning the use of diesel vehicles, albeit on a rotor basis, because of the huge effect that is having on the environment? The first thing to say about the transport scenario overall is that our scenarios have a greater penetration of electric vehicles than the ones that are suggested in the draft plan for Scotland. The draft plan for Scotland suggests about 40 per cent of penetration of electric vehicles by 2032, and our scenario for Scotland had that at about 65 per cent. There is quite a big difference in the level of ambition in transport. As we said earlier, that is because in a countervailing way in Scotland there is much more ambition in buildings than we had in our scenarios. The Scottish Government needs to judge whether that trade-off is one that it can deliver. The second thing to point out is that under the Scottish plan not only is the ambition less, but the ramp-up seems to be very, very quick. The penetration of electric vehicles is only at 27 per cent in 2030, and all of a sudden jumps to 40 per cent in 2032. You have that big increase in the space of only two years. Again, there is a question about is that an artifact of the modelling, because the model can easily switch things from one to another, and is that a realistic way in which you would approach it in the real world, or would you start earlier and have a different level of ramp-up? The third thing to say, as you point out, is that a big source of emissions in transport comes not just from passenger vehicles, but from lorries, from heavy goods vehicles, from vans. Because they are much more difficult in this immediate period to either electrify or to reduce emissions in another way, logistics and smart planning and routing of those vehicles is an important part of how we reduce emissions. I haven't seen the detail in the plan to know precisely what's planned in there, but making sure that logistics are being done efficiently, as you suggested, out-of-town consolidation centres and then being able to move things into electric vehicles to bring them into town might reduce carbon, but also, to your final point, to improve air quality. And, ultimately, lots of the solutions to air quality are one of the co-benefits of switching to electric vehicles, particularly in cities, will be to also address air quality issues and, or looked at the other way, tackling air quality, one of the co-benefits of a long-term systemic plan to tackle air quality, means that you also tackle some of the carbon issues. I think I said it finally earlier, but finally, finally. It's useful to look at this a bit like the smoking ban. It was seen as normal to smoking pubs, and now, of course, it's seen as abnormal. If you take the example of consolidation centres, which you mentioned in your report, I went to see one in the Netherlands, which are systems where HDVs deliver outwith cities, and smaller, non-polluting vehicles take the goods into the cities. Could you see a scenario in Scotland and the UK in the future? While having diesel vehicles or taxis in cities is seen as abnormal, because there's clearly worries in the UK about the level of pollution caused by diesel vehicles, particularly in our inner cities. Well, certainly, I think that the illustration of the smoking, our approach to smoking and our attitudes to smoking, particularly indoors, have changed so much in a relatively short period of time. It's a good example of how behavioural change can happen actually much more quickly than people often think at the time. Even using seatbelts in cars would be another example of that or something that not so long ago people were ever regarded as a change that was virtually impossible to make and to be widely accepted. And the speed with which smoking indoors, wearing seatbelts, the speed with which those things have changed, illustrates how quickly not just behaviours can change with the right policies, the right nudges, the right information to people, but that the behavioural change becomes completely accepted in a completely normal course of daily life. I think that it's a good example of how that can happen with the right combinations of policies. It's partly about standards, partly about regulation, but also about information and education and a range of other actions. Thank you. Kate Forbes. I'd like to know what your analysis on the policy outcomes including or making the most of opportunities to secure wider benefits, so for health, jobs, biodiversity and whether you think it's clear that these aspects have influenced the choice of policies and proposals in the plan. I haven't seen the level of detail in the plan or been involved in the process to know the extent to which the wider co-benefits of acting have influenced the decisions. The one that probably comes through clearest in the plan is the emphasis on energy efficiency because of the co-benefits around fuel poverty associated with that, and certainly we have emphasised that in other areas. But as you say, whether it's health care or indeed whether it's opportunities like new jobs from some of the new sectors and the opportunities for the low carbon economy, biodiversity, these are co-benefits that it's important to take into account. The degree to which they've been taken into account is that we haven't looked at it in enough detail to know how that's fed into the analysis. Claudia Beamish. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Matthew. It's very good that you've made the time to come before the committee and as pointed out in relation to climate change that you're able to do the video link. Could I ask you about, broadly about if you see things missing from the RPP3 or the climate change plan that you'd like to highlight and I'd like to myself highlight one issue and ask you from the perspective of your committee if you have any comment on that, and that is to do with marine issues and blue carbon because in the RPP2, as you may know, there was quite a robust marker put down about the future in the same way as in RPP1, there was a robust marker put down about peatlands, which has now moved forward into what one might say as a robust action. But now, in this plan, there's no mention of carbon, of blue carbon rather, and to be fair, the officials, Scottish Government officials did say that that was something that they would look at when they came before us recently. I wonder from your perspective if there's any comment that you could make about that emission. Well, I would certainly agree that what the plan needs to do, the analysis that feeds into the plan, it needs to look at the full spectrum of possible areas to reduce carbon emissions, and blue carbon is one of those. As you say, there's not the detail in the plan to know whether it was assessed and rejected, for example, as being too expensive compared to some of the other measures, it wasn't fully assessed, and we would certainly welcome a more detailed examination of that. In terms of other areas that you mentioned, at the high level, I'll return to one of the things I said at the beginning, which is that I would like to see more detail about both a risk analysis, so if the very high ambitions, for example, in buildings, if it looks like it's not progressing as quickly as desired, what actions will be taken, either in buildings or to increase ambition in transport or somewhere else, so a bit more of an options analysis rather than assuming that all of these programmes will deliver precisely as envisioned, because we know that unexpected things will come up, and that's tied to the issue of who owns the programmes, and so, as I said at the beginning, there's some welcome articulation of the ownership of particular policies, but it's often at a very high level, and so an owner will be Network Rail or Scottish Enterprise or local government. It's not clear either what conversations have happened with those organisations so that they know that they're the owners of them, or indeed how precisely which bits of those very large organisations and how that ownership will be held to account. A bit more detail about the ownership and the monitoring framework that will underpin it would be useful. I guess an example of both of those things put together is very much around agriculture and land use and tree planting, where it would be useful to know how we're going to monitor whether we're achieving the ambition that is set out, what measures will be taken if the ambition that's set out is not commensurate with the target set out in the plan, and so what are the options and who are the owners and how does that work as one example of bringing those things together. Thank you. Mark Ruskell. Thank you. Can I ask you about three pretty big assumptions that stand out for me in the plan when it comes down to individual policies and sectors? The first one is that vehicle mileage is going to increase by a quarter, by 2030. If you could get your views on that, that would be good. The second one is about agriculture and soil testing. I think that you made a very clear recommendation in your report last year that soil testing should be mandatory rather than voluntary, so it would be good to get your views on that. Thank you. I don't have a specific view right now on the number of vehicle miles in 2030, and certainly I can get back to the committee on what we think demand for vehicle mileage looks like. As I emphasise in response to some of the other questions, the overall transport scenario is less ambitious than our scenarios, and that includes both travel and behaviour of drivers and decisions that drivers are making, as well as penetration of electric vehicles. As a package, it's less ambitious, but on the specific 25% increase in vehicle mileage, I can certainly get back with what we think could be delivered. On agriculture and soil testing, our recommendation, as you say, which was to move towards a mandatory set of soil testing, was based on our assessment that for a number of years now we've had a voluntary approach to lots of these measures in Scotland, and that voluntary approach is appropriate for a certain amount of time, and then you have to assess whether the voluntary measures are being taken up at the rate that is required. Something like soil testing, which should have co-benefits, coming back to one of the earlier questions, co-benefits to farmers in terms of saving money and implying appropriate amounts of fertilizer, as well as reducing carbon. Something like starting to introduce standards for soil testing in a mandatory rate would seem appropriate now that there's been a series of voluntary measures of testing it out of trials of best practice developing, and that now you can move to something that's a bit more robust. That was the genesis of our recommendation. The last one was about housing, and this dramatic shift towards low-carbon heating, which I think you've already commented on. What do you think lies behind that? What is the technological change that is required? Obviously, that's a question that industry is considering as well, because industry needs confidence if it's going to change over time just in new structures, new infrastructure, training, et cetera, for the future. What do you see as being the steps that are implicit in that model that gets us apparently to 80 per cent low-carbon heating residential homes by 2030? In our scenarios, we set out three steps, all of which have to be done in parallel with the energy efficiency work. Rolling out energy efficiency, both domestically and in commercial buildings, is very important. The three steps that we have said is that first of all, we need to take electrification of heat seriously, electric heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, water source heat pumps seriously, particularly for households that are currently off the gas grid and so where it's most cost-effective in order to start to develop a supply chain, to start to develop consumer acceptance and behaviours and understanding in the same way as we spoke about smoking and other social changes to start developing that understanding and that requires a concerted effort to move forward at a UK level of which Scotland is part of rolling out that supply chain of heat pumps. Secondly, we've said we need to start rolling out district heating, heat networks in high-density urban settings and there are some very good examples that are starting to happen in Scotland and we need to continue to roll out in urban settings, those heat networks and start to have a source of heat that's a low-carbon source of heat for those heat networks. And thirdly, we've said we need to examine and properly trial hydrogen as a potential low-carbon source of gas that could use the existing gas network provided we can source hydrogen in a low-carbon way which requires carbon capture and storage when you create the hydrogen. So we've said that between now and the mid-2020s those three options need to be pushed forward in a very concerted fashion in order for us to know by the time we get to that mid-2020s which will be the least cost, root or combination of roots that will be needed so that we're not in a position when we get to 2025 of having to make a decision in the absence of knowing the relative costs the relative public acceptance the relative benefits of heat pumps versus heat networks versus hydrogen. And those are the types of actions we would expect to see between now and the mid-2020s. I don't know the details of what's happened in the times modelling but the times modelling in the Scottish plan seems to have held low-carbon heat at a constant between now and the mid-2020s and then all of a sudden ramped it up very, very quickly and that's going back to what I said earlier that's the sort of thing that's an artifact of a model a model which implicitly is doing the type of learning I was talking about between now and 2025 and then deciding this is the technology that we can really ramp up quickly but I think in the real world our understanding of the broader evidence is that we need to actually do put in place the programmes that will create that understanding as well as saving carbon between now and the mid-2020 in each of those three areas such that we can then ramp up. So do you think there's possibly some milestones missing in that journey to 2025 and then making a clear decision about what technological pathway we should be taking? Certainly from our analysis I would have expected to see a more gradual ramp up not held flat at sort of 18-20% and then all of a sudden going up a more gradual ramp up that would have included the types of milestones that I was suggesting sort of progress in each of those three areas in order to test them as well as observing the carbon savings that we get. Let's look at the monitoring evaluation and implementation. I wonder if you could outline for us how the approach to monitoring and evaluation as laid out in the plan fits with your recommendations and your expectations and specifically how measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound the policy outcomes as they are presented actually are. I think that at a high level I would quite like to see the monitoring framework almost pulled out of the plan and said, here is our monitoring framework because in the short time we've had to look at it and we'll certainly look at it in more detail and probably speak to the Scottish Government to understand in more detail. It's sometimes hard to pick out from all the detail in each of the policy areas precisely how they're going to monitor it. The type of sort of smart objectives and monitoring that you were alluding to would probably start at this is the outcome that we're seeking to achieve and that's set out reasonably clearly. The outcome is the 66% reduction by 2032 and we can have annual monitoring of the high-level targets at that level. The outputs I would describe them as that we expect to see from each different sector and so I think that there there could be a bit more detail about what precise output are we looking at for transport for example is it the 40% level what does that mean what precise output in buildings precise output in agriculture and then the detail that's perhaps most missing or at least we haven't been able to find it in the plan and the extent that we've reviewed it so far is the inputs that you would expect to see leading up to that and so what are the series of policies that are going to generate 40% electric vehicles or 80% low carbon heat in buildings. How do we know whether we're on track to doing that? Are we going to be monitoring vehicle sales are we going to be monitoring heat pump sales or hydrogen use what measures are we going to monitor and when will those trigger a new approach or a new set of thinking or a trial of a different set of policies? Looking to the future do you feel as the UKCCC that because of the use of the Scottish times model you will be able to scrutinise the performance as effectively as you might want to and beyond that what role do you see or would you hope to see for the Scottish Parliament's committees going forward would you share the view that's perhaps been expressed that it would be open to the committees of the Parliament to annually hold the Government to account across a range of the subjects covered by the plan would you feel that would be helpful? First of all with the times model the times model is a very useful device for taking that broad overview across the entire Scottish economy and saying where should the balance of effort be and what's that least cost balance of effort we would always supplement that with a range of other evidence alongside the times model and that's I think important when it comes to this question of monitoring and so hopefully in the final plan that the Scottish Government produces there's this series of indicators from outcome to output to input with clear owners and we as the Committee on Climate Change will feel comfortable using that series of indicators to provide an independent assessment if that's not there then we as the Committee on Climate Change are very able to come up with our own set of indicators and to do the to provide the evidence that yourselves, Parliament, the Scottish Government could all could use to inform broader priorities and indeed that's what we have tended to do in the past but we recognise as well that having Scottish Government using one set of indicators others using a different perhaps somebody else using a third set is a bit confusing and ideally we would all have one set of indicators that we agree are the right set and then we can have a debate about the same things but we would certainly come up with a set of indicators if we thought that the final plan didn't set out a clear enough set of indicators and certainly then for the Scottish Parliament to have an annual discussion of the extent to which those are being met I think is a very good way of providing some checks and balances in the system OK and in terms of appropriate checks and balances the suggested governance body would you believe that there should be a role there for some of our stakeholders? I think it's very much up to in that sense it's very much up to the Scottish Government in discussion with people about how they set that up and what it really comes down to what is its role what's the role of the governance body The Committee on Climate Change I would see our role in that governance process if you will as providing an independent assessment of where are we on the trajectory compared to where we need to be if the governance body is then designed and I don't know because I haven't seen enough detail but if the governance body is then designed to take up that and say OK given the UK Committee on Climate Change and said this is where we need to be relative to where this is where we are relative to where we need to be what steps need to be taken what policies can be put in place what proposals need to be put in place and clearly being able to consult quickly with a wide range of stakeholders could be very useful as part of that process whether you have them on the governance body or whether you consult with them in different ways I think that's very much for the Government for yourselves to discuss OK thank you Matthew Moving on to behaviour change Jenny Goldruth Thank you convener and good morning to you Matthew Bell Last year in evidence to the committee of which you were a part of Lord Devin spoke about the importance of behaviour change which you've spoken about previously this morning and that kind of modal shift in how you facilitate that for example from road to rail and as part of the research with regards to the draft climate change plan there were a series of climate conversations and in the report itself it talks about strong support for improvements to public transport more broadly but you also said at the start of evidence this morning that there was little ambition in the plan in terms of transport I just wonder then with regard to facilitating behaviour change and that modal shift how well you feel that behaviour change has been embedded in the plan at the present time I think we haven't had time to study in enough detail the plan to know where behavioural changes is embedded in it certainly one of the things that that we know about behaviour changes is that you need to make it relatively easy for people to change their behaviour and I was one of the things that as you say Lord Even was discussing with the committee when we were last in front of you and so you need that combination particularly when it comes to something like transport of costs coming down whether it's technology or public transport and others of convenience of information to people and that whole package has to be there so that people can make an easy choice to change their behaviour as opposed to a very difficult decision to change their behaviour and in what I've seen in the plan I haven't seen that whole package there, it may be in the detail or in the broader thinking certainly one of the things for example that we haven't seen yet is that I understand part of that part of the ambition that is articulated in the plan around transport was based on a study an independent study undertaken by an element energy consultancy and we haven't seen that study so I don't know the range of assumptions and scenarios whether behavioural or technological or others that they looked at and so understanding that in a bit more detail I think it would help inform the debate right now Thank you Thanks We took some evidence from Dr Rachel Howell from Edinburgh University at the end of January and she welcomed the use of the IASM tool but suggested that it wasn't being used very well in developing the plan she also went on to say that we needed bottom-up and top-down approaches and that regulation was probably needed more Can I ask what your view is on the balance of voluntary and mandatory measures including the plan I know you've already touched on soil testing but can you expand that further? I think the important thing is having a clear say 5-10 year strategy for how we're going to get to the ultimate 2027, 2030, 2032 targets and that can start by having a series of voluntary measures in some sectors and in some instances but the important thing is to then monitor those and understand whether it's being taken up, whether the voluntary measures are being taken up not because if they're not being taken up you need to come in with a big stick but probably because if they're not being taken up it's an indication of something that's not quite right either it's an indication of there's a degree of unfair competition it might be an indication of there's a degree of information that's lacking or an indication the costs aren't quite in the right place so if the voluntary measures aren't being taken up you have to ask yourselves well what additional action needs to be taken in order to get these things to be taken up and in some instances and the agriculture is one in some instances that might be providing a common set of standards for soil testing in other instances like was alluded to earlier with the analogy with smoking it might be that some nudges whether regulatory nudges or standards are appropriate to allow people to experience something different and then realise ah yes this is actually a very good way of doing things and so it's a question of having a systematic step by step approach to it and knowing when you put in place voluntary measures and in some instances they'll work but where they don't work that that's used as a diagnosis for okay then what's the next intervention that we have rather than allowing the voluntary measures to extend too long in time and then you reach a point where it's too late to take the action that needs to be taken Thank you Matthew are there any reflections you have on the draft plan that we haven't teased out this morning? I think we've covered an awful lot of ground so I don't think there's any big areas we haven't touched specifically we've touched a lot on agriculture we haven't touched specifically on tree planting and forestry which is clearly a very important area it's an area where there's quite a lot of ambition in the plan but again we know that we're falling short of the existing ambition and so is a need to articulate how that degree of ambition the plan is going to be met and we've touched on the very high ramp-ups between sort of 2025, 2030, 2032 and a number of sectors which I think need on picking in more detail between the draft stage we're at now and the finalisation of the plan but we've covered a wide range of areas so those are the ones I would pick out in addition OK, thank you very much for your time this morning and on behalf of the committee can I say that we look forward to continuing our engagement with the UKCCC? Well thank you very much, it's a pleasure to do this and I'm glad the video conference works so well. Yes indeed, thank you. I'm not going to suspend for five minutes till we have a changeover of witnesses. Welcome back to this meeting of the environment climate change land reform committee we continue our discussions of the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan rpp3 and have been joined by various stakeholders to discuss the plan's approach to waste water and the public sector. We're joined by Joe Greene from SEPA Ian Gulland from Zero Waste Scotland Simon Parsons from Scottish Water Jamie Pitcairn from Ricardo Bruce Rieke from Perth and King Ross Council Chris Wood G from Sustainable Scotland Network Good morning everyone. Hand over to Maurice Golden. OK, so the first theme is waste and with respect to that I'd like to refer to my declaration of interest with respect to Zero Waste Scotland and the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. What I'd like to do over this theme is really top and tail with two general questions and explore three key areas thereafter. First of all and this is open to as many members of the panel as we'd like to contribute do you think that the proposed outcomes, policies and proposals will deliver emission reductions from the waste sector and if not what would need to change? Who would like to start? OK. Thank you very much. The opportunity to come today. Yes, I think in terms of what's set out in the plan in terms of the target emissions from waste we do believe there are a number of policies now in place in Scotland to drive the change that's required to meet those emissions. Yes, they're ambitious and obviously we've come a long way in terms of where we were before increasing recycling particularly also around food waste reduction sorry, food waste collection over 80% of households now have access to food waste collection we've developed an organic treatment capacity in Scotland significantly there's a lot more businesses now engaged through the waste regulations and now with a focus on waste reduction particularly around food waste with a target of 33% by 2025 was very ambitious there's quite a lot of the work around waste prevention I do believe that the policies are now very well in play we're engaging as well not just with local authorities around waste prevention but with businesses across the number of sectors and I think that engagement is what's required to ensure that we do keep the pace. I think there's been good progress as you know and I think with waste as a clear direction of travel but it's all about the implementation so I know from a seeper perspective we came out of the waste resources framework being really clear about what our contribution would be to deliver against circular economy and some of that is actually just about compliance in the waste sector tackling serious environmental crime to make sure there's that level playing field but also looking at areas of waste efficiency as well trying to promote that as much as we can in our delivery more about the clear direction of travel challenging it's all about that practical delivery now thank you Morris a couple of general points and it was picked up by Matthew earlier in terms of the question you've just asked outcomes will they deliver will the outcomes be delivered it's actually difficult to get some fine detail on what the actual reduction will be from the emissions because it isn't detailed within the plan but looking at the overall I think the targets that we have the policy that are in place if implemented you know have a very good chance of meeting those abatement targets but there is an assumption there that those targets will be met along that journey and I think just as Joe alluded to there there are some questions in the rate of change implementing those targets even if you look at figure 20 in the plan so from 2070 and 1819-20 there's really an assumption that it will be a trajectory of change to the landfill ban of biodegradable waste going to landfill so the question I would have that you know with a good wind yes it can be achieved but what's going to happen between now 2018-2019 to make sure that the zero waste regulations are adhered to to make sure that a landfill ban delivers what it's required to do and I think it echoes the point that Matthew made earlier that it needed to understand some of the minutiae of the detail what's going to happen between each of those years and to look at the monitoring and evaluation to see if it is working but if it does if the zero waste regulations and the requirement to segregate your food waste if that is enforced properly then I think it will have a chance but I've got my reservations about that level of enforcement at the minute to drive that behavioural change and achieve that outcome I think certainly we're very much on a journey and I think there's been huge progress made by a number of sectors including the local government sector in terms of increasing recycling rates but also reducing the amount of waste that's going to landfill and very much that journey continues there are challenges coming up both in terms of the resources available to local government to continue to drive that change at very much a local level I think it's happening when you look at the frameworks that we have in place at a Scottish level it certainly gives us a framework to work within OK I think we've made very good progress on waste so far certainly locally it seems to be working but one of the key messages is getting a buy-in from the wider public in particular to achieve that which is a guess where things like the ISM model will feed in will change required either to stop smoking in public places or put seatbelts on so it does require quite a changing attitude from the public to help support that which is very much in line with what I think a lot of local authorities in particular are trying to achieve through their waste policies but like a lot of the planet it will be challenging The first area we're going to look at as many of you have highlighted is around food waste reduction as well as the landfill ban on buy the grade of old municipal waste Do you think we have the necessary policies and procedures in order to meet those two key targets Ian Gollund I think certainly I mean obviously the focus is turning most significantly towards food waste reduction so I guess there is setting a target an engaging as I said particularly on businesses so there's an acceptance that there's a degree of waste of food in the household but also within businesses, within the supply chain within the food and drink industry itself and further up and down that supply chain so it is about engagement I do think there is ambition there not just from the Government but across a number of those sectors I think everybody now is much clearer about the cost of waste to their businesses and I think that is getting people to the table to discuss how they can actually not just minimise food waste but actually reduce their costs and become more efficient in terms of their business so I think that level of engagement is very hopeful in terms of making sure that we keep the pace up in terms of reaching for that target Householders I guess we've done a lot of work on that with a number of partners in terms of engaging with householders again driven primarily around the cost to householders individually or about £700 per household in terms of the impact of them wasting so much food or food that they buy and for whatever reason they don't consume so I think again that that is one of the tougher engagements in terms of what policies are in place but engaging with people around that the procedures of engaging using partnerships I mean that's a big part of us it's not about us doing it all ourselves it's working with both local authorities and other people who have an interest or a stake in the food waste agenda whether that's retailers the food and drink companies themselves and the product producers I think it's about engagement I guess in terms of the food waste capture in terms of keeping out of landfill while the regulations are there we've seen great success in engaging with again businesses and the householders on food waste collection infrastructure that's been rolled out across Scotland as I said about 80 per cent of households now have access to a food waste collection business regulations have come in as well more and more people are now creating their food waste out for collection and the capacity for doing that is there so I don't have any again it comes down to enforcement colleagues have mentioned that as well particularly around businesses but I guess you've alluded already to behavioural change I mean that putting the collection infrastructure is all very well having people access to but we need to make people aware of it and make it easy for them to engage with it and use it which again is the work that obviously we need to be doing more of with both local authorities and businesses and other waste management companies who provide services to businesses and do you have obviously mentioned engagement around food waste prevention campaigns do you have data around how successful that has been in terms of reducing the amount of food waste presented at Carbside Collections well the numbers at the moment there has been a drop in household food waste reduction in Scotland and there's about 8 per cent so we're I guess making eating into that that's probably excuse the pun so we're certainly starting that process so the numbers are very encouraging but we've got a long way to go if you start to look at the amount of food waste that we all produce at home so we constantly I guess you'll be aware more is track that impact of that on annually we have Scottish numbers as well we're doing slightly better than the rest of the UK on that impact we obviously work with local authority individually around analysis of the waste stream both what's been collected and what's been going to residual to keep tabs on any shift any trends in terms of performance and we work with individual councils on that so we'll continue to monitor that to see what the impact is as the food waste collection infrastructure becomes more mature just to add two things to that just on in collaboration with local authorities we carried out 7,000 business inspections and this is about legal requirements on recycling and the findings of that in those 7,000 around 80 per cent we're already doing some form of recycling which is positive of the ones who weren't we also ran a bit more of a targeted campaign about 60-70 businesses who weren't recycling and just an indication of the possible use of our new fixed penalties was enough in about 80 per cent of those cases to shift some of the behaviour in that pool of businesses so it is about that implementation and enforcement around that on the second point I think your right to raise it it's really challenging to have that managed retreat from landfill and have that right mix of waste infrastructure to then support Scotland and that direction of travel around that and I certainly know that one of the things we're doing and moving much more to a sexual approach on what areas we're looking at is landfills for that reason Just in terms of particularly trade waste compliance with the regulations do you feel you're sufficiently resource and funded to be able to carry that out and just when you mentioned that 80 per cent are engaging in some form of recycling does that mean that 80 per cent are consistently providing separate collections every week or does that mean I wasn't quite clear with that So I don't have all the details exactly what those 80 per cent was and what the breakdown was but I'm happy to come back to the committee on that In terms of our resourcing at the moment yes we're trying to find smarter ways to do things in terms of how we work with the waste sector to support that So you're confident that the 300,000 SMEs in Scotland are all appropriately presenting their waste at as per the waste regulations No, but I'll come back to the committee with the detail for instance on that campaign just to give you a bit more detail on that Thank you I think Ian's right that and I think I would echo the comments of the panel here that Scotland's in a good place on the legislation already there encouraging that early on we did that through the strategies that we've had in place and that's been great because they take time to put into place so we've got the waste Scotland regulations part of that we've got the biodegradable landfill ban and getting food waste out of landfill is probably the biggest contribution that the waste sector can make to the greenhouse gas emissions but if we look I would say at the landfill ban and we look at the figures so we've got in the region of 1.35 million tonnes of food waste arising in Scotland from 2014 600,000 tonnes coming from household 740,000 tonnes roughly from the business commercial industrial sector if we then look at what's actually been collected as food waste separately there's still about a million tonnes of food waste that isn't accounted for in terms of being collected and the landfill ban is there to do it's to drive that change back up the chain if you like for producers, for the waste sector and naturally where the challenge is it's been really good from 2016 and 2014 having the 50 kilogram threshold and the 5 kilogram threshold and it definitely made an impact my fear really is that that started to tail off and that until we get the teeth of the landfill ban that continuation is just going to plateau and what we'd like to see is that some evidence as to what's going to happen between now and 2020-21 to put the actions in motion to that landfill ban will be effective and that the targets will then be met I don't know what they are but I'd like to see some discussion around how they'll be testing the waste before it goes into landfill to see if it has got food waste in it because at the minute the waste management company that perhaps isn't too concerned about adhering to the rules will pick up waste, residual waste with food waste in it and you know there's a lot of food waste in it you will take that to landfill and that will be accepted and that will carry on until the ban is in place or at least until measures are put in place to stop that so perhaps accelerating that a little bit the ban to put some measures in place to certainly make the waste management sector aware that the ban is coming market signals in place before 2021 to allow the sector to put the infrastructure in place because all of a sudden you can't wait until the 31st of January 2020 to say right we can't accept this anymore where's it going to go it's a million tonnes so you need the IVC you need the organic sector already established in taking that material and you need the waste management sector already geared up to provide those services so now is a really good time to be having a look at this it's very timely because we have got those three four years now to put it in place but the longer we drift and the longer that some of the issues are there aren't addressed and the more challenging it will be to say we're obviously welcome the use of food waste prevention and obviously the good food nation bill that's proposed later for this year I think is an excellent way forward and obviously though there are still some unavoidable food waste that will end up within the waste stream and I think it's vitally important that we continue to engage not only with householders but also in terms of businesses to try and capture as much of that as possible just touching upon the business side we were part of the project with Zero Waste Scotland and with colleagues in SEPA looking at compliance levels within that area particularly that compliance levels are good they're not 100% but again with the use of the fixed penalty notice there the engagement can be backed up with enforcement action as well and again that's very welcome from a local authority perspective again just to follow up with you from a local authority perspective obviously Perth and Kinross I don't want to embarrass you but it's one of the leading lights in terms of was part of the trials for one of the first five for food waste collections and it has engaged proactively with their householders in terms of comprehensive communication campaigns but in light of all that can you articulate to the committee how many householders are engaged in your food waste collections how that's likely to work in terms of a potential reduction in food waste and will affect other contracts and also given that your locality how you've managed to have rural collections for food waste as well certainly Morris excuse me in terms of the actual capture of food waste we run a mixed food and garden waste collection service within Perth and Kinross out of about 68,000 properties we have about 55,000 properties on that service there's about 5,500 rural properties that we currently don't service at this point in time just in terms of the resources to go out and service that as well we are currently rolling out a 140 litre general waste bin and what we're tending to find the evidence at the moment is suggesting that that is driving more food waste actually coming through our brown littered bin service so by reducing the amount of general waste capacity again we're increasing the amount of food waste capture and again we want to try and continue to drive that I think the fundamental issue and you've touched upon it is very much that of engagement when we engage with householders we see a direct link in terms of the amount of food waste that we're capturing at the back end of that are you projecting a 70% recycling rate for Perth and Kinross by 2020 which would mirror the national target at this point in time with the 140 litre rollout that we're undertaking at this point in time we think will be somewhere in the low 60s within the next couple of years in terms of getting to the 70% we suspect that there will be some form of pretreatment obviously before it's going to landfill and obviously after the landfill ban we'll be looking at different treatment options but certainly we think we'll be able to get to that 70% target by 2025 looking at another topic now the Scottish Government have said in their modelling around the plan that energy from waste is modelled to decrease throughout the plan to 2032 can you comment on whether based on what's happening in terms of infrastructure building at the moment whether you think energy from waste will increase, decrease or stay the same over the course of the next 15 years and also ideally if you can what proportion of waste you think should be burnt in a circular economy I haven't seen the information that was put into the model so we're sort of flying blind here in some respects I've got a reasonable knowledge of the plants that are either in planning or being built in terms of energy from waste these will have 2025 year contracts so you can sort of work that out yourself on how long they will be receiving materials I don't know the overall tonnage that they will have but you've got the big plant with Glasgow City Council you've got the big plant in Edinburgh Midlothian you'll have a plant in Dundee you'll have one in Dunbar that's already there Aberdeen and Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire so I don't know the figures to answer your question more precisely I do think that if we think there's a competition between the recycling rates in energy from waste then that's something that should be monitored because I think the easy option is to put a lot of this material into energy from waste certainly if you want it out of landfill so if you've got mixed waste and you can't put that mixed waste in landfill because of the biodegradable landfill ban it needs to go somewhere else and if there's capacity within it from waste then chances are that's where it will go so I think it's probably right to monitor it as I say I haven't seen the figures that were used in the modelling so I can't provide a precise answer Ian Gollund and Joe Greene Sorry Joe Absolutely I think echoing that is a big challenge I mean you talked about the circular economy obviously that clear ambition for Scotland when I work in that with government, ourselves and our partners to see the huge opportunities there are not just in terms of climate change addressing climate change but the economic and social objectives there are clear to see and absolutely if we're going to burn too much material we're going to shorten those opportunities in terms of the future so I think there is a balancing act that needs to be carefully looked at I guess another challenge obviously in terms of climate change as you know I mean once we start moving towards incineration these numbers go to the energy sort of calculation rather than the waste calculation and at the moment if you look at the rate of decarbonisation already in Scotland in terms of electricity and the carbon factor incineration is already higher than the Scottish carbon factor so it's counterintuitive to start building things which are not as good as what we've already got so that's going to be a challenge for the energy discussion I think as well there's a balancing act to be done I think we do and you said the percentage when we talk about energy from waste some people include anaerobic digestion in that discussion so we're not talking about mass burn incineration and that's a good thing anaerobic digestion is good something we're doing quite a lot of in Scotland and obviously with a biodegradable ban coming in in a few years time there'll be more anaerobic digestion there is a role for energy from waste particularly around anaerobic digestion I believe going forward If we take AD out of it is there a potential issue going forward where local authorities are contracted to both burn waste and have government targets to recycle potentially the same waste is that going to be an issue I mean I'll bring Bruce Reiki in shortly on this obviously a view of all 32 local authorities is that a potential issue going forward simple and slow yes it is an issue obviously and is to do with the timing if people are building something now as Jamie said is a 25 to 30 year contract the principle ties up a lot of material which with the trends in the circular economy the opportunity to become more apparent could be the feedstocks for other industries going forward and what do we do about it some sort of balance to be struck or some wider integrated discussion around individual contracting and looking at a more strategic approach for Scotland if we are going to have capacity how do we make the most of that capacity but at the same time don't use it don't say it's a hindrance to our future ambitions of the circular economy which are both highly attractive in terms of the economics and the social but also in terms of climate change so I mean it's clearly that's a discussion that needs to be had do you agree I mean there might be a modest role for energy from waste in Scotland but it's keeping that emphasis on that maximum value derived from the resources circulating in the economy making sure that waste is reduced the emphasis on high quality recyclers and it does come from energy from waste from our perspective it's about enforcing strict emission limits making sure it's only residual waste that is going to these plants so that the energy is recovered efficiently Bruce Rookie Just to echo Ian's point I certainly agree it's certainly an issue about timing from our perspective very much that we want to drive as much as we possibly can through the recycling or composting channels obviously if we can retain the value of that material that provides best value for the people of Perth and Cynros and for the businesses of Perth and Cynros and really we're only looking for residual waste treatment for that waste that cannot be recycled or composted so very much when we get to that sort of low six days figure that's when we're looking to go out to contract at that point in time obviously it tends to be the case that residual waste treatment gate fees are considerably higher than that of recyclable or composting gate fees so therefore there's an economic imperative to minimise that as much as possible as well I think as well that I think going forward particularly through the procurement processes we have to look at much more flexible contracts as well waste is an ever changing environment and we need flexibility built into those contracts we tend to look at contracts within a window of five to ten years rather than the longer term 25 year contracts that's good to hear the kind of last area I'd like to explore with you all is around producer responsibility particularly what work is currently going on around producer responsibility in terms of allocation of staffing resources, live tenders, contracts out with respect to that because it is potentially a solution identified by the Scottish Government in terms of achieving many of our aims and obviously out with the public sector agencies if there's any comments more generally around producer responsibility in the Scottish context that would be welcomed as well so as you know in the circle economy strategy released last year, making things last year is clear set out by the Scottish Government to look at producer responsibility to investigate the establishment of a kind of single framework for producer responsibility it does mention some materials et cetera that would be the first thing products et cetera to look at farms where there's some discussions with Government certainly we've had with SIPA as well about taking that work forward I think that's right if we are going to embark on producer responsibility exercise which will hopefully cover a lot of different materials and products but in that way let the possibility of a single framework how that could be used for all materials whether it's retailers or manufacturers or product suppliers everybody's aware of what the ambition and the journey is that we're going to be looking at here in Scotland rather than a piecemeal approach by picking things up and trying to solve that and then having an array of producer responsibility schemes some of which would cover the same sector so I think it is right that we have that discussion so that's where it's at at the moment I believe we can use producer responsibility as a tool to influence product design and waste prevention don't have the details of exactly what we are specifically doing and resources but happy to come back to the committee with detail on that that would be useful because I think in your evidence you mentioned utilising regulatory tools so I was going to ask you about waste prevention influence in product design that would be really interesting to see I do want to reinforce that I think that's another key part of this to ensure that whatever system is brought to bear does work for all of the objectives that we have in Scotland around design but more importantly the economies of Scotland some producer responsibility schemes that you see in Europe and around the world very good for the environment keeping stuff out of landfill or incineration but the knock-on effect might be that those materials are recycled or reprocessed outwith the country that's developed the scheme or there might be other social impacts which are not realised so I think part of our approach in Scotland should be to view this and say how we can maximise all of those objectives for Scotland so we have the right scheme to address all of the issues both environmentally, socially and hopefully economically as well I want to think just in an observation of the scheme that I suppose two things I think that there's a detachment from the organisations who are putting product on the market and their responsibility for making sure that that product is recycled and I think that if you've got a gap there you've got some problems because a brand owner a retailer can put product on the market that really can't be recycled in existing systems and that creates some problems either for the collector as a local authority or the processor having infrastructure and technology to be able to process that so I think that that could be looked at more from the producer responsibility area and from the research that I read at the end of last year there is some evidence suggesting that actually in the UK compliance with the producer responsibility the UK is one of the lowest countries to comply with the producer responsibility which is an interesting fact and I wasn't aware of that before so there's maybe an opportunity to look at that to see whether those organisations and the producers who are putting product on the market across the UK are paying what they should be paying to ensure that those materials are recycled I think that some members have some supplementary questions now We do indeed Household recycling rates have essentially flatlined in the last few years in 2011 it was 40.1 per cent on average in 2015 it was 44.2 per cent at a time when we were trying to ramp things up moving into RPP3 It doesn't exactly suggest there's a great momentum behind this Can I explain that to me? In terms of where a number of local authorities are they're perhaps in the midst of roll-outs as well so for example there's still food waste services being rolled out there's obviously moves of food as well whereby a number of local authorities are starting to reduce down the general waste capacities I discussed about using the 140 bin some local authorities are looking at three and four weekly collections so I think there's an ever-changing picture with local authorities at different stages as well I think in terms of the back-up infrastructure the processing capacity that goes behind those collections as well as people have touched upon a lot of that is in development as well it is a journey that we're on and I think as well you're right to highlight that there is perhaps that slowing because I think a lot of the low-hanging fruit has actually been captured some of the big roll-outs have happened there are challenges going forward but I think fundamentally again it's about investment in the infrastructure but importantly it's about engagement with members of the public the householders and the businesses to ensure that we actually maximise the amount of capture that we get from householders as well not only in terms of the engagement but also in the infrastructure as well I hear what you're saying but how much of a factor could be local authority budget issues there's an authority not a million miles from you that's been reducing the hours of its recycling centres closing some recycling centres withdrawing from some rural food collections is that happening across the country and if it is how much of a negative impact could that have there are obviously pressures on local authority budgets I can really only speak for ourselves we have tried our best to protect the services that we've actually put in place as well there's been sort of hard-won gains over the past 10, 15 years in terms of improving that recycling performance and getting diversion from landfill we don't want any retrograde steps at this point in time I think we've got a good framework within and certainly we don't want to roll back the services that we've worked hard to get in place at this point in time but yes, there are budgetary pressures across Scotland for local government and particularly the waste service part of that is not immune from those budget pressures that's throughout me that a regional model certainly a regional collaboration around collection might help where you've got rural areas on borders that it would make sense to send one vehicle out to collect either side of the border and is that something that's been explored to your knowledge? I know that there's a number of local authorities that are looking at collaborative arrangements at this point in time we ourselves are working with Dundee City and Angus Council at this point in time looking at where we can actually look at more joined up approaches obviously on the national level as well there's obviously the household waste recycling charter as well which is looking at a more consistent collection methodology across Scotland as well and I think at this point in time I think it's 23 out of the 32 local authorities have signed up to that as well and so I think there is action in there and there is that joined up approach between the local government Zero Waste Scotland and SEPA in terms of driving performance okay, thank you, you useful to get that on record thank you convener could I ask Euan and others if they want to make any comment on this in relation to the fact that there will be a circular economy bill in this session of the Parliament and that there's already making things last the Scottish Government strategy on the circular economy about multiple benefits and we had an answer from officials in a previous session about the possibility of employment benefits but I wonder whether anyone can comment any further on that absolutely, so the circular economy certainly making things last strategy sets out a number of areas of activity that the Government would like to take forward I think it's well recognised that Scotland is seen as one of the leading nations not just in Europe but globally around the circular economy not just in beginning to put policies in place but in the work that we've done previous to that in terms of evidence building so working with colleagues SEPA and Scottish Enterprise looking at not just environmental benefits but as you said wider benefits for key sectors in Scotland moving to a more circular approach and Jobs is one of those we've done some work macro-level on some of the key sectors and identified opportunities value in terms of businesses in Scotland but also in jobs and manufacturing is a good example I think it's a work layer between I think it's five and six hundred million pounds worth of increased benefit to the economy to the manufacturing sector with about five thousand jobs so these are significant the same as obviously similar opportunities in food and drink construction the built environment and also in the oil and energy industries both offshore and renewables and I think that's really been the real change in all of this that you know as well as looking at managing waste is shifting towards that kind of circular approach so instead of just you know we're very good at collection and developing infrastructure but over 70% of the stuff that we collect is exported out of Scotland into other parts of the UK Europe and beyond the circular approach is both how do we harness that for our own economic prosperity but also look at systems to really reduce the impact of waste in the first place and reuse repair, remanufacturing, repurposing great opportunity for skills development you know we could really showcase this to the world so these are big benefits but they're also significant in terms of carbon so the work that we did last year looking at the carbon impacts of the circular economy recognised that if we become more circular in Scotland by 2015 the impact on our emissions would be five times greater than just the waste emissions from 2014 so if we look at across the whole economy in terms of different industries it's even if we actually think about not just our own territorial emissions but the global emissions which obviously it's something we all need to think about that then is another five times above that as well in terms of the actual global emissions if we start to do more of the remanufacturing, reuse and repair here in Scotland so the benefits of the circular economy are fantastic you know in terms of not just environmental but economic and as we're getting into those sectors, working with those sectors with partners like Scottish Enterprise Highland Islands Enterprise we're beginning to realise the real opportunities down to individual companies that we're beginning to work with so taking that kind of macro picture and actually trying to understand how we can make it work in individual areas and local communities Mark Ruskell Thanks convener, I should probably declare an interest as a councillor in Stirling as well I wanted to ask you Bruce about the shift that we've seen local authorities towards this consistent collection methodology and we noticed that in my local authority and we're probably moving more into the sort of model that you have now as well but are there any trade-offs there in terms of what we're discussing here today which is about climate change and carbon I think the driver for this has been predominantly about savings for example local authorities moving away from curbside sorting but if we have a model that's more based around centralised facilities does that mean moving around more and more garden waste and food waste to centralised facilities around the country and potentially pushing up carbon emissions? I mean in terms of waste there's obviously transport considerations what we'll tend to find is that obviously local authorities will go through procurement exercises to actually secure treatment facilities and you know that they will try and minimise transport as much as possible what we tend to find is that in our own situation we have a situation whereby there is actually sort of backhaul and reverse logistics as well so vehicles are perhaps delivering goods into an area nearby us we can then use the reverse logistics as well so there are obviously efficiencies in terms of transportation to be used there as well but certainly in terms of infrastructure we know that there are local treatment facilities available and again we try and use them as much as possible given the procurement regulations that are there Ian Gollansfield on that as well I mean I guess I mean you could another impact of the move to a circular economy in terms of certainly reuse, repair and remanufacturing might suggest that things will last longer products and materials and things will in terms of freight the import or whatever of materials and moving brand new things around the country so there might be hopefully a positive impact on movement of materials but on the point you're making I'm not sure I think there is a tendency now in terms of technology there is a move away from obviously big treatment plans because that's where the technology was but there's more advancement now on smaller technologies they can be applied more locally and that could potentially open up a lot parts of rural Scotland for things like food waste treatment and otherwise and other materials so it is about providing a consistency of materials that's the key thing because I think that's the thing that we struggle with in Scotland the materials that we're collecting for recycling are from various locations of a different quality a different consistency a different mix of materials and that is very hard for any industry whether it's one company in the middle of Scotland trying to invest or a number of players to actually try and identify how they access that flow of materials in terms of the pipe so I actually think once we have the consistency I believe it will open up other opportunities which you could be more locally based and I think that's the shift to the circle economy is very much about entrepreneurs or people who are disruptors as they're called who are looking at this in a different way because they can access single streams of material more easily than with every spec dealing on a mass waste basis which is the more traditional waste management infrastructure so I think you are beginning to see a shift both with waste management companies and other players who are coming to the market so I think it's something that local authorities are more aware of now so the work that we did with the charter that Bruce's top 2 was very much engaging with local authorities not just on the infrastructure to collect but what happens to those materials what are those opportunities what are those real economic opportunities in their area around the shift to the circle economy so the importance of separating materials out or collecting things in a different way in a more consistent approach to drive more local economic regeneration or opportunities both for existing businesses but for also start-up businesses and I think that's the real thing that possibly the message we're not we need to get more in more across to people the waste infrastructure is basically a pipe of resources that we can tap into to make more of a local level as well as a national level and you also mentioned earlier on about the supply chain situation where every year in the UK thousands of tonnes of perfectly edible food are getting plowed into farmers' fields because of the contractual difficulties between supermarkets and farmers is there anything that we should be taking cognisance of in this plan to try and deal with some of that waste that occurs further up the supply chain obviously a lot of the focus here is on reducing waste and treating waste as it comes out residential businesses the stuff that we're just plowing into fields the work that we've done on the food waste target has obviously primarily focused on the household waste and the stuff that's visible in the supply chain at the moment but there is discussions on going with the agricultural sector on trying to obviously look at bring some numbers to try and evaluate exactly how much of that goes on in Scotland and what the issues are around that at a local level and obviously trying to address that absolutely, waste prevention is the key for this why is it happening all the inputs into that growing those vegetables or whatever for them just to be plowed in it's not very good for carbon and the agricultural sector will raise that I think more and more people are engaged in this thanks to stuff on television that we're seeing now around this agenda the public are more engaged in it they're asking questions the supply chain, the retailer much more work is being done I think there's something we do need to address what are the specific challenges or opportunities in Scotland it does lead into things like the idea of the bio refinery work that's been going on with Scottish Enterprise not so much trying to just solve the food waste problem but look at some of those some of those materials which will be byproducts of our food and drink industry how can we add value to those here in Scotland and we've got some successful things through the whisky industry through Celtic renewables and a rise in proteins which are taking byproducts from those industries and turning them to high value chemicals and proteins going forward so there's probably a lot more opportunities and it's the circle economy so I think we could really start to see some opportunities both at local and national level you put Kearnan in and I've got two very brief supplementaries to finish off this section Jamie just really to back up what Ian was saying the circle economy's been great at shining a light on opportunities and also areas where we could do better and when we look at the amount of bioresources that is flowing around the Scottish economy that isn't being valorised, that isn't being used for the rest of its ability because I think we've just got a bit lazy as a society and actually when you look at how much inefficiency there is across various elements of the sector you can say well what else could we do what we have to do is to understand that and then create the need to say that you could put it in landfill, you could throw it away you could burn it but actually give it over here and I will do something more meaningful with it and just when we're looking at the targets the greenhouse gas emissions and abatement targets for agriculture what we're looking at is one of the biggest areas we've got millions and millions of tonnes of organic materials flowing around this economy that isn't being put into useful agricultural production and it could be and the nice thing about these organic materials that's flowing around it is organic it helps the soil, it helps the composition of the soil there's big issues now around the fertility of the soil because we're not holding organic material in there and actually we've got this material that could displace in organic fertilisers and yet we're not really challenging ourselves hard enough to do it and there's reasons why we're not doing it but it's not outwith the wit of man to say well let's make this work and you do that by saying you can't put it here and you can't put it there, it's available let's do something with it and I think the sector of the economy has done a very good job as I say of shining a light on some of these inefficiencies that's useful Finlay Carson then, Emma Harper and then we move on it's probably a question to Bruce and Ian again you mentioned that there was a good framework now in place and there was more collaboration whatever I declare an interest as a councillor in Dumfries and Galloway when we've seen some quite substantial failures in the west of the region where the rural waste collection completely failed and it had to be revisited are we now in a position where it's unlikely that that will happen within council areas because there's more sharing of good practice and we're not going to see huge failures like we saw in Dumfries and Galloway obviously I can't comment directly on the Dumfries and Galloway situation I'm not fully aware of the position there I would say though that there is very good sharing of best practice across Scottish local authorities either through the waste managers network or through the auspices of Zero Waste Scotland and particularly for those that have signed up for charter compliance as well there's very good support on offer from Zero Waste Scotland as well and there's an actual roll-out of those programmes as well so hopefully those types of failures shouldn't occur in the future Thanks Bruce Zero Waste Scotland's lie on the sport absolutely and that is our role is to try and facilitate the sharing of good practice by the people who are running the services and to provide the technical support as and when required I think the charter does give us that new framework perhaps we didn't have in the past people are moving towards a more consistent service so there will be clearer learning we have a variety of systems so I think it has been possibly one of the barriers but one of the difficulties for people to share good practice when their systems are so different in the past so I think the charter does give us that opportunity and certainly that's the focus of our programme of work with people who have signed up to the charter how can we work with them individually but more importantly how can we create a community of best practice so to speak where the officers on the ground the operatives on the ground are learning from each other and I think that's certainly where the future lies so yeah hopefully that issues would be overcome Excellent thanks Emma Harper It's a quick question about anaerobic digesters the STFA's submission says that we have lots of large numbers of livestock in a small area that might mean that we use anaerobic digesters more efficiently we've also got lots of land being used to specifically provide non-food crops for anaerobic digestion so what are your thoughts about whether we should be monitoring or analysing like non-food grass fed digesters versus slurry or waste because there's obviously issues around using a lot of land for food production I think one of the anaerobic digestion infrastructure that we've been helping support is around the food waste collection an organic material from householders and from businesses not so much farming I'm well aware that it's an option that some farmers are taking forward ideally we would like to see a mix of materials in that set of circumstances in relation to generation of power rather than just using it for slurries and stuff like that so I think that there's a mix I guess in the rural parts of Scotland I think that there are opportunities as I've said anaerobic digestion technology is changing there are new things new ideas on the market in terms of the approach and the mix of materials in terms of generation so I think that they should be looked at in terms of the opportunities but I think that there is something to be said if we're going to start growing crops simply for energy and what the impact is not just at a local level but on a national level that's obviously not part of my remit but it is something we provide technical support as and when required but I think we're very clear about the infrastructure that we're helping to support in terms of the feedstocks for that coming from householders and businesses not so much from agriculture one of the challenges with that ties back to the agricultural emissions side one of our neighbours has an AD system they're putting in but they're a growing writer to provide that sort of feed stock into it but if you're using your organic fertilisers which have about 298 times worse of a footprint than straight CO2 I think there is a challenge so it's trying to get the balance I think using food waste would be fantastic if you need green organic matter in there but there is a bit of a challenge I think in getting that balance between how you grow the crops that go into our AD systems and what you get out of low-carbon fuel I guess at the end of it so it's just a comment really and finally in brief with Jamie Pitkey on really just to mention and come up on my point about the circuit economy is that there are lots of materials already within the economy and we need to get a little bit more inventive in terms of what we can do there's wastewater sewage sludge that can go into AD what other waste streams could complement that to help the AD process but also perhaps to make a higher value fertilizer at the end so could we use marine algae can you seaweed to add into some of these streams so you could have in some areas a sewage sludge or waste treatment plant that doesn't quite have enough volume to generate its own or to feed the viability of an AD plant but you add other feedstock to that you could have a mass that could make that viability and actually create a much higher value fertilizer because we have used seaweed on the land for years to fertilise it so what else could we do about being inventive with these streams I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing agricultural crops going in but it seems slightly perverse to me that we've got all these bioresources flowing around the economy so that we can have a higher value of them Thank you, a very useful point Let's move on and look at the public sector Claudia Beamish Thank you convener I'd like to drill down quite specifically into some questions on the public sector and public bodies and of course there's an enormous range of public bodies in Scotland in terms of scale and size and function so it would be helpful for those who represent the public sector today could answer as they see fit the three initial questions and I've got a couple of quick supplementaries so it would be very helpful for us to know as a committee to what extent the public bodies represented have been involved in the plan and to what extent the public bodies here today are clear on the roles they're expected to play in achieving the planned emissions reduction set out in the document and I think there's been quite a lot of comment on waste so if we could exclude that from this particular discussion but perhaps focus on public buildings where there are two quite challenging policy outcomes and any other areas that panel members want to focus on and could I possibly start not to put you too much on the spot but to bring you in Simon Good morning everybody and thanks very much for the opportunity to come along here today I think for Scottish Water our roles and responsibilities associated with climate change are fairly clear and laid out and we have a periodic review process which is where we kind of make our commitments as to what are our activities we're going to do in and around delivering Scottish Government's ambitions there and it's worth putting in context for us climate change and carbon has a huge impact on Scottish Water as a business we're hugely dependent on the weather and we're also hugely dependent on the environment a good, healthy environment is really important for us in terms of producing the high quality drinking water which we're all sat drinking today and the other side of it changing climate really drives for us things like flooding drought some of our big kind of long-term risks that we're looking to make sure we've got the right adaptation plans in place for so for us I think our roles in terms of supporting the targets are fairly clear to us as a body our role in terms of making sure that as a critical service that we have adaptation plans in place are also fairly fairly clear for us and we have a fairly rigorous regulatory process that allows us to identify, study understand and then mitigate those risks over a period of time and you mentioned a little bit about public buildings and whilst the vast majority of Scottish Water's common footprints associated with pumping water and pumping away wastewater and doing a treatment of that a small proportion of it is associated and so we are always looking for opportunities for reducing the energy demand from those buildings we are looking for opportunities for how else we can provide heating into those buildings for example and I'll just give two examples out there our kind of intelligent control centres based in a building over in steps called the bridge some of you may have had the opportunity to visit and there's a good example about where we've really focused on what can we do to reduce the energy usage in that building from how we contracted the construction of the building through to the day-to-day management of it and the other one I think it's worked with it does pick up on some of the questions we've had earlier about circular economy and actually heating buildings is some work that's been done by Scottish Water Horizons who's kind of a renewable end of our business along with Borders College so we can get using heat from sewage sewage generally is the water that comes out of your house so it's kind of warm using that heat from sewage to provide the kind of heat into Borders College first example of that in the UK and viewed as a real success with lots of opportunity going forward so just before we move on to the others just specifically on the role of Scottish Water in the climate plan what role do you see yourself going in relation to peatland restoration and the achievement of those targets because for example next year the Scottish Government's going to commit circa £10 million to this there will be direct benefits to Scottish Water in certain areas in terms of the quality of the water that you'll have to deal with and it will save you money in terms of how to acquaint some of it so what role, if any, is there for you in investing in peatland restoration peatland restoration on catchment management is a relatively new area for us we've been doing lots of work actually supported very strongly by CEPA to look at understanding and how do we best manage our existing catchments and we're hugely dependent as you said on water that comes off peatlands to provide water sources for the whole of Scotland really so we are very much at the moment in the period of understanding what can we do with what's currently there but in terms of peatlands we've done no restoration work to date in around peatlands but I don't think there's any doubt that going forward it's an area we need to get more involved with and as examples across the rest of the UK where very localised improvements on peatland will improve water quality quite directly just to get that out of the way and then we can move on to the other through the convener I'd just like to ask you Simon if Scottish Water to what extent are you involved in the plan just briefly please our involvement so far would have been to respond in terms of consultations around the plan just while others are answering if you would please I hope not bombarding you too much but Simon's already highlighted governance issues within Scottish Water and if there are governance issues that you feel help you to deliver on the climate change challenges that we're all facing when you're answering that would be really helpful thank you George the first on seepers involvement in the plan so it involved in the early stages and in the late stages in terms of sessions with us certainly on the outputs of the times model as well so that was seepers involvement in it second question that was on leadership is our role clear I think that the plan sets out a really clear direction of travel and I think within that the leadership is really important and it could possibly be emphasised more in the plan from a seeper perspective and the committee's probably aware of this we're trying to shift as an agency we have a critical role to play around compliance providing that level playing field compliance is the minimum expected of everybody that is around climate change and resource use simply achieving compliance won't get us to where we need to get to and so the big shift for us as an agency is how we secure compliance but actually we've got a huge reach in businesses and those who regulate across Scotland how can we support them to do more, how can we support innovation how can we support them to reduce emissions reduce waste, reduce use of water and so that's a big drive for us and taking a different sexual approach we're also going to trial new tools sustainable growth agreements or these voluntary agreements with businesses where not only the achieving compliance but they have aspirations to go further so getting voluntary agreements to actually set those aspirations in terms of the voluntary approaches as well and also for us it's about we're not perfect but we try to lead by example as well in terms of our own greenhouse gas emissions we've reduced our own greenhouse gas emissions by 22% since 2007 we've looked to rationalise our state share with others and one of the objectives round that is to try and have a lower carbon approach as well so that's it from a SIPA perspective thank you John McBethan, Cymruos Council perspective I believe colleagues from another section have been involved through the consultation process in terms of the policies and proposals my own reading certainly there's a clear role and remit for local authorities that are set out obviously at this point in time we undertake annual reporting through the public sector climate change duties reporting as well and that was submitted just in November of last year as well I think as Joe saying as well that the council tries to lead by example internally there's a low carbon working group and that looks at a range of activities that are undertaken by the council in terms of energy management, building management, street lighting and waste management as well and every year we look to improve that position and again we'll continue to report on an annual basis to the Scottish Government thank you we're hearing about public bodies that are perhaps switched on but from your experience what about some others that might require maybe a kick up the backside are there such beasts out there? I'm quite sure they are the SSN have been working over the last few years to develop the public bodies reporting framework this year was the first mandatory run of that and it's albeit it's early doors yet I think it's probably one of the better systems probably anywhere that's actually pulling all the public sector together and return on that was I think it was about five people who didn't respond, all the major, major players were actually up there, we've got the details in but there are opportunities within that to build particularly on the wider role type of stuff which comes to that sort of leadership that public sector has whether it's local authorities working with their communities in partnership to develop ideas but that SSN role is there to help and try and support that and take that forward certainly on the day job in Dumfries and Galloway we have worked with the communities to try and develop ideas we do recognise these massive challenges I think in terms of public buildings 50% of our footprint is linked to buildings and actually how we deal with that is going to be particularly challenging because it will be a fairly expensive built business in a time of fairly stringent financial circumstances but I think there are opportunities there to take that forward for instance one of the ideas of the sewer source heat we have been discussing with our colleagues for potential whether it may have potential for use in main council offices as an alternative to gas-fired heating so we are exploring all sorts of options but I think it will be very very challenging longer term thank you just briefly because time is moving on into well for everybody could I ask Joe Greene you have already commented to some degree on behaviour change issues but are there issues in terms of the public sector that it will be helpful for could the panel highlight anything that they need in the way of additional support or in taking those issues forward and also the somewhat knotty issue of conflict resolution which comes up quite regularly in climate change issues about how we move forward are there any comments on additional support that might be useful for that on the first point it links back to your question on leadership and so I know there has been some debate on the plans about that balance of technical solutions and innovation but it is absolutely clear the scale of the challenges that everyone in Scotland is going to have to shift every single sector is going to have to shift and play that part we absolutely firmly believe given the scale of the challenges certainly from our perspective the only sectors and businesses that will be operating in the future are those who can do sustainably and that will require leadership and behaviour change and I guess it is something for the plan in emphasising how we are going to play in leading that behaviour change I mean quite a few people here have talked and touched about that in terms of their own remits and it is something for SIPA we are really trying to think more smartly about what influences behaviour and thinking about working on supply chains even on the investment side thinking about what is influencing those behaviour so I think it is a leadership role for everyone in terms of conflict resolution well as an environment agency we will either say we are too close to business or we are preventing growth this is fairly familiar territory for us and I think it is about having that common aim and again this is leadership that government can bring about the type of Scotland they want to see the type of sustainable economic growth that they want to see in Scotland so we are arguing about the same things not different things so I think that there is an element of clarity Maurice Golden Just a thinking question for Joe Greene I mean I appreciate you say you have made efforts with regard to changing the carbon footprint with your organisation but obviously you have got a challenge in terms of your office locations that are not accessible and very easily in Perth, Stirling or indeed in the M8 corridor particularly to train stations is there I appreciate you can't do anything very quickly but are you looking in the long term to locate to make it easier for people to cycle to your offices to use public transport to access your workforce We have to we've got what we've got in terms of our current estate but that has to be the future is to support those types of things so we have an electrical vehicle charging point being installed outside our corporate office at the moment so we just have to push on Just a quick point, come back to Claudia's early question, I'm not in the public sector but you know we do sort of interact with it quite regularly and it comes to Chris's point as well about the wider opportunities that the public sector can play and I just want to emphasise the role of sustainable procurement and that the opportunity that that brings is the leadership opportunity governance opportunity you know the vast expenditure that goes through the public sector comes with responsibility and that means that you're procuring things in a way that can drive the direction that the country wants to go and it covers everything from the way in which buildings are designed, procured by the public sector the way in which services are procured challenging them to say do we actually need something or can we lease something there's been a lot of work done in that area and it's and I think when you look at some of the duties in the climate change reporting my commentaries, there isn't enough on the wider role that they can play okay, they're looking at their the carbon footprint, they're looking at the state they're looking at the transport but they're not really focusing on the other influence they can have through their procurement and I think that's a really big opportunity that actually hasn't been harnessed to date and certainly could drive some change across the Scottish economy okay, Claudia, are you happy with that? Just a brief question to Bruce Reakey we talked earlier about collaborative council border areas particularly around recycling but is there any wider collaboration going along perhaps developing a wider climate change implementation plan at a regional level? I'm not honestly too sure that it's another area within the council that deals specifically with that from my own knowledge though that I know that through the auspices of SSN there is a lot of good work going on in terms of sharing a good practice and certainly in terms of the public sector climate change reporting, I know that there was validation undertaken by SSN and other partners as well Yes, there's a lot of work that goes on it's maybe not into formal plans but as well as organisations like SSN all the energy officers in Scotland get together on a regular basis I think transport officers do so there's a lot of collaborative work and experience whenever somebody comes up and says oh we've got this wonderful idea it will save you another 50% of your carbon footprint the first thing we do is go to somebody else's already tried it so we do share experience across a whole of Scotland about what does or doesn't work to find out whether this is a good thing to chase or not and even support private sector organisations when they're coming up with good ideas and say well have you spent it so all the Scotland but there's plenty more we need to do on that Perhaps not right now given the constrained timeframes we're working to but it would be perhaps useful for the committee to see some examples of that in future Jenny, go Ruth In terms of the public sector bodies with regard to behaviour change that's a common theme that's come up today at committee and previously what is the role that you think the public sector can play in supporting that wider low carbon behaviour change and do you have any views on how it's reflected in the plan in terms of policies and proposals and the delivery routes provided Chris, I guess one of the ways we have I'm thinking of what happens in the day job we've got an estate that probably reflects what's happening for most of industry, what happens for most of households so actually getting out and trying different ways of whether it's insulating buildings changing heating systems and things and then share that information it gives some comfort to other people who are about to invest in different technologies whether it's biomass or whatever to see that it actually works because I think local authorities in particular and other public sector organisations are respected as being honest brokers and I think if we can test some of these ideas see if they work and then share that information with the wider public whether it's through energy agents or other bodies then it's one way we can provide that leadership and that comfort for people to meet what can be very very stringent targets Just to build on that one so one of the areas that we could see here in terms of behaviour change is actually about water efficiency so we generally have unmeated water supplies here in Scotland so actually people aren't necessarily that clear about how much water they use on a day-to-day basis but people are actually very aware of how much energy they're using and it's a really clear link in households and businesses between the amount of water you use and the amount of energy they use so we're working with the energy saving trust and a number of local authorities now to trial water efficiency across Scotland as a way of trying to roll that out and that will impact on about best part of 50,000 people over the next few years and that's really looking at trying to make that link between waste whether it be water and potential savings that we can make Mark Ruskell Obviously how we plan out our communities in terms of physical development effects behaviour change going forward so we have a planning review under way at the moment, do you see particular changes that are required in terms of planning and how that should feed into this climate plan You've stumped them Well for example putting climate change to the central purpose of the planning system or not, I don't know That was mentioned at the communities committee last week but I think it is planning is a crucial part of how we go forward and whether it's getting the right houses in the right places so you've got proximity to shops so you can reduce transport walkable shops I think planning is a key issue and it's something we do need to make sure it's fed into the climate change plan because whatever we do planning wise will impact on how effective we are in meeting our targets Shri Ki Just to build on that as well from a Perth and Kinross perspective planning in terms of climate change is vitally important some of the work that we've undertaken in terms of supplementary planning guidance is obviously to look at adaptation as well in terms of flood risk and flood risk assessments but also things like forest and woodland strategies zero carbon and sustainable construction and obviously zero waste guidance as well so it's developing that guidance as part of the planning system Absolutely because it influenced so many different things in terms of the way we organise communities and even behaviour so it's absolutely critical in terms of the planning system around waste resources infrastructure and other types of travel we're looking at it partly through we're starting to get involved in the city region sterling city region deal as well and trying to inject thinking around sustainability around that active travel, local food renewable energy sources a lot of this ties into how that community is organised and the infrastructure around it as well so it's absolutely critical and I think this big push around air quality which then has benefits in terms of climate change can result in much nicer communities to live and work in as well so it's all part of that, it has to be Thank you, everybody for your evidence as well and it's been most useful and I look forward to meeting up with you again I'm going to suspend now for five to ten minutes to change witnesses Welcome back to this meeting of the environment climate change and land reform committee we continue our discussions of the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan and have been joined by various stakeholders to take evidence on peatlands can I welcome Jim Denson from the RSPB and Grey from Scottish Land and Estates Maggie Keenan from Scottish Wildlife Trust Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen and Dr Emily Taylor from the Crichton Carbon Centre good morning everyone can we kick things off by seeking views on the emissions pathway for land use over the period 2017-2032 as set out in the climate plan Maggie Keenan I think well if you have a look at land use, land use change what we're looking at is reducing the emissions pathway in land use and Scottish Wildlife Trust we talk about creating carbon sequestering landscapes if possible so the ambitions for peatlands are very good in terms of acting as carbon sinks good ambitions across forestry although we'd like to see native woodland we don't think it's ambitious enough in terms of agriculture in terms of lowering emissions there's nothing in there on blue carbon and there's no mention of land use strategy which would be helpful in creating these ambitious carbon reducing landscapes come to the land use strategy in blue carbon in due course Pete Smith looking at figure 22 on page 122 it's difficult to tell the contribution that each component of the land is making to the targets so RPP2 if I remember correctly had each of the policies and proposals listed separately so it would just be for transparency I think it would be easier for anyone to understand if these were disaggregated a little the relative contribution that forestry, peatlands and other land use made to those overall targets that's useful Emily Taylor the work on peatlands is excellent it's really nice to see the commitment to a long-term peatland sustainable peatland management so very happy to see the fact that peatlands are a incredibly important carbon store being recognised by the plan it will come on automatically I don't have a lot to add to what's already being said I think that as an organisation we recognise that the land use sector is the only sector that can really result in negative emissions so we see our members and other farmers, landowners, foresters across the country as being really critical to the delivery of climate change mitigation it's really good to see and very welcome to see the policies in place for peatland restoration which can see considerable savings to the atmosphere from carbon emissions lost from those damaged peatlands so we strongly welcome that and forestry it's a bit disappointing when you look at the envelope graph it tends to go the wrong way but we know that's because of past policies and not planting enough trees and later on we understand that we will go back into land use seeing negative emissions so if we keep up the tree planting rates that are there and we'll come on to that perhaps in a bit we will get to that being a more positive impact for the climate and again on on agriculture a disappointing ambition from agriculture it was useful for the from the spice briefing to note that 0.9 million tonnes savings to 2032 which is less than 1% a year in which it's a year on year reduction so it's really not enough for that sector we need to move more quickly on that sector we will touch on agriculture and forestry principally today we're focusing on peatland because our sister committee will be focusing more on the agricultural side of things in terms of the the practicalities of delivering on these targets what are the challenges what are the benefits I'm thinking beyond just the obvious about sequestration but in terms of creating jobs in the rural economy I'll just say we have experience of the peatland action when it was about in delivering I mean the challenges getting the right processes in place to deliver you know restored peatlands and the ease of the process plus funding streams into the future so we took part in the peatland action we had six sites that needed restoring one of the challenges is knowing the sites that need restoring because land owners and managers may not necessarily know the condition of the peatland but we were lucky that we had management plans and research so we knew six lowland raised bogs needed restoring one of the challenges is having the advisers in place to help land managers you know identify what needs to be done there might be some pioneering techniques that need to be done like we did some peak bonding sphagnum reseeding these are all technical things but you can create jobs in this I think through peatland action was that the companies weren't necessarily available in Scotland and there was one from Cumbria came up to do a lot of the peatland restoration so one of the challenges is the assurity of money going forward so that if a company is going to be set up it's going to have confidence that I can still be viable in five to ten years time as all this needs to be done and we too building on that so I think from the challenges come the opportunities so the challenges to meet our targets initially will be the lack of well trained contractors that can deliver the restoration work on the ground we are very vulnerable to big peatland projects kicking off in England and that sucks up all the contractors down there and they don't come up to Scotland for the smaller jobs but if we have a long firm commitment to funding so local contractors feel they can invest in their staff and invest in their equipment then I think you know within a couple of years three years we'll have the resources to do the work ourselves and that's great it may even be the point where estates take on work themselves I know people have spoken to estate owners and they're saying well if we could get money for peatland restoration we would do it in the house and that would part fund to have a full time member of staff on the team so I think initially capacity would be not quite there to deliver the targets but with investment I think they soon could be so angry yeah really just to endorse what the other two ladies have said I think the the plan itself sets out that we need funding and that we need awareness raising and to work in partnership and I think those two things together are what we need to deliver this type of restoration the targets are challenging and you know 20,000 hectares a year is a lot of peatland to restore and I think the funding that we know we've got through the public sector at the minute would meet about half of that now I'm not suggesting for a minute that the public sector should stump up the other half but I think we need to look at where other funding might come from to make that target possible I think we need to look at sort of an idea around natural capital accounting at the minute that the private sector might want to offset emissions or look at maybe offset their impacts their business impacts on biodiversity and water quality and so on so we might actually need to to look towards the peatland co the IUCN peatland programmes peatland code has been introduced to try and address that sort of thing in that shift of money in the private sector towards restoration so I think that's something that's worth considering but certainly that continuity funding is really important because we need good quality peatland officers to deliver this and we'll only get those if we can retain them and I think we'll only get good quality contractors as Emily and Maggie have said if we retain those and it takes a while to plan so landscape scale projects as well so we need to be planning two or three years in advance for some of these things Of course before I come to Jim Dension one of the issues that we raised with the Government officials was whether the package of funding and the budget for next year is to fund restoration or whether we'll then get sucked into having to provide funding for fencing to protect to restore peatland because of the ravages of deer that's an interesting issue that rises from all those work that's coming down the track That's a completely fair point I think that this for me is where we kind of get into land use strategy territory because actually we tend to even in the plan we've got a very sectoral approach to things and actually if we could think about all the things that we want certainly the uplands, I mean the lowlands as well but sometimes there's more conflict about what the uplands should be producing so I think we need some kind of approach that allows us to balance to look at all the trade-offs that of all the things we want the uplands to deliver then recognise we can't get all those things but how do we balance and trade them off so I think that's really important that we put a bit of effort into actually delivering the regional approach that the land use strategy and we will explore the land use strategy in that context so the practicalities you know we have well there are different ways of obviously programmes to restore peatlands but we strongly promote the peatland action programme as having worked really well in the past few years what it's done is dedicated officers in various areas to co-ordinate work and with those people on the ground who know landowners who know land managers who know what issues are and the areas that need restoring they've been able to go out there raise awareness, share experiences be a hub really for activities to spread the money out and then share experiences so that's really important rather than a more hit and miss approach where different people just come and say what a bit of land that I can restore so peatland action is really important having six dedicated officers in entrusted organisations we also need monitoring so that we really know what's happened, it's been a bit hard in the past to understand how much has been restored through different measures so that's really important going on in the future peatland code's been mentioned to bring in private funding to mix with the public funding to be spread through that programme so that's another thing that really needs to start flying and get going and as you've already mentioned there is in the the proposal for payment for carbon sequestration aimed at farmers but that needs to be aimed at all land managers thinking about post Brexit thinking about future cap payments how do we reward farmers who have restored but then they've just got restored land and they don't want to put sheep back on because they've restored the land for example just an example of sheep there but we don't want to have that land damaged again and the other public benefits we heard about water quality before so those sorts of things are really important to reward for public goods OK, what about the terms of the scale of the projects that should be supported and also what type of peatland should we target as a priority the badly degraded stuff or that's repaired easiest MW Taylor I think in terms of scale of the project probably initially we still need to value the smaller projects we're still at the stage where a land manager might say well OK, I'll do some restoration on this area here it's quite small and discreet out the way I need to see what it looks like how my land responds to it how I can still farm around it or with it and then building up this is certainly how it's worked and the projects I've been involved in you then build up to think OK, we've done that restoration in that small area and we need for these smaller test sites initially as a demonstration to others and the landowners to then build up to much larger projects increasingly though we're talking about catchment scale restoration that's the huge appetite looking at peatlands not just for carbon we're looking at water quality is a big thing now for fisheries interests for water supplies issues around acidification this is really bringing a lot of different people together for instance the Fisheries Trust are now getting more and more interested in peatland restoration so I think we're all aiming for a landscape scale restoration but we do need to be practical and think well people still need to be persuaded that it's going to work for them so we still need to value these smaller projects and which type of peatland should we be prioritising? well to get the biggest carbon benefit you would go straight for your actively eroding sites so this is where you have peat literally blowing off washing off your hills off your lowland raised bogs they're going to give you your biggest carbon savings they're the most expensive to restore however so often simpler easier wind projects like your simple ditch blocking can be much quicker to get off the ground and if we have ambitious annual targets then we'll have to see a mixture of these things happening to get the area of restoration we need so we do need to do it all so at some point we've got to get all that damage to peatland 600,000 hectares says in the document so I think we need to do a bit of a mix of course what needs to be remembered is the areas that are least damaged they can return to pristine state or near pristine state as soon as possible or earlier than others and can be providing other benefits so especially biodiversity quality in a much shorter timescale and they're also less likely to perhaps give off methane and other emissions so they get to that point of actively sequestering carbon much quicker and we know that it's not just about reducing what is being or cutting what's being lost now from restoration it's also getting to that state where they're sequestering between one and two tonnes of carbon per hectare every year Maggie Keegan I know you want to come in could you possibly cover also the issue about the benefit of improving biodiversity on this I was just going to say that actually because the six sites we looked at were lowland raise box and in terms of turnaround it was £150,000 over two years to deliver the restoration work on all those sites one of the things that we've done at the same time is some of those are national important sites i.e. Tricless Is and so they've been brought back to recovering status because of the work we've done so the biodiversity benefits we've delivered those at the same time what you're really doing is restoring ecosystem health across that type of landscape the only other thing to say about obviously there's a low hanging fruit which is just putting in dams things like that, plastic dams that can be delivered through SLDP or taking or sheep off the hill but for these other things like as I say sphagnum seeding that currently isn't delivered through SLDP so that comes through the people and action neither does building buns around to hold the water back stuff like that so we really have to see what methods going forward will be usable and also some of these methods are quite sophisticated to just expect a landowner and land manager just to jump in and be able to do this without specialised help would be difficult so we go and need to build capacity when he makes some decisions about what the priorities are just to wrap this part up cos I know colleagues want to come in on a series of questions what do we need to put in place in terms of a monitoring framework so that we get the full benefit of this we actually can say with some accuracy what it is to expect this investment is delivering in terms of monitoring I think the key thing is looking at restoration success some of the techniques we're using are tried and tested ditch blocking with peak dams great initially we thought it would be around about 10% failure rate there's nothing like that certainly the sites that peatland action have worked on there are more novel techniques as well that we are using and the beauty of the peatland action project being a stand-alone fund is that we could try out new things and try things that might work and see the care and gorms that might not have worked in the penines but these things do need monitored and they need monitored in terms of well are they covering the bare peat how long does it take for the bare peat to get covered up how much water or is the water being held back I think initially that will be people going out on the ground again peatland action officers they went out and monitored some of the restoration projects in the future we're probably going to be looking at remote sensing for monitoring so area of bare peat realistically if we've got at least 600,000 hectares of degraded peat something like 4,000 hectares of bare peat way on top of the care and gorm is not very easy to access remote sensing will be key going forward I was just going to say it is essential to monitor not least because we need to demonstrate impact of the money being spent plus to improve accounting and any use of the times model in the future and if we're trying to create in the end a carbon market we need to validate what's happening and we need to know the best techniques that we're using I think this partly relates to the last question asked but also it covers what's missing so in the report there's peatland restoration and obviously our biggest bang for buck is in terms of reducing the ongoing emissions of carbon from those degraded peatlands but the subtraction is that we've got over a million hectares of peatlands which aren't degraded we shouldn't take those for granted of course there are really really large stocks of carbon so they store a huge amount of carbon they're sequestering relatively small amounts but they have large stocks and if we take those for granted and we're not monitoring those to make sure that they're not going into a degraded state then I think that we're potentially missing a big trick so overall monitoring for the future will probably require on the ground action looking at restoration projects but moving forward to some ground truth with big boots on the ground but backing up the remotely sensed all over the peatland estate not just the restored areas so that we can monitor those areas which are very important for biodiversity very large carbon stocks so that we can make sure that those are not slipping out What about the use of peat for horticultural purposes? I think it's frankly I know that it's an elephant in the room but it's that sort of activity is inconsistent with our climate targets in the same way as we're moving the UK has moved to phase out coal we ought to have a plan in place I think to phase out horticultural use of peats in my opinion I'm seeing some agreement around the table beside you Does anybody else want to come on that specific point? Let's add to that when you have big open bear peat sites being harvested and landowners and say let's do some ditch blocking it's a hard argument to push to people because of what we see going on in the lowlands of this peat harvesting so it's very important that we put a stop to it as soon as we can I was just going to say we've objected to some planning applications recently for peatland extraction from lowland raised bogs and frankly it's against any planning authority that gives consent for these actually going against their climate change duty anyway and there's no mention of horticulture within rpp3 and in terms of behavioural change it's for consumers until actually the products become cheaper i.e. peat-free compost consumers will still buy peat compost because it's cheaper How urgent is it that we address this? Well I was going to say in terms of overall emissions it's not the biggest elephant in the room but you'd think it would be something that would be simple if we could work with the actual companies that sell peat compost there's just an educational thing that's needed I would say that it has a very important educational role so throughout the whole of rpp3 there's significant behaviour change if we were not extracting peat in fact looking at the consumption side if we're consuming peat from elsewhere we're still having as consumers within Scotland we're still having a climate impact even though it's not within our territorial boundaries so there is an argument to move towards having no horticultural peat sold in Scotland not just none produced in Scotland but in all it's a sort of related question which does connect with behaviour change but also with action there's been quite a lot of mention of estates and the contribution they can make and the training that's needed within estates I've got some experience of what you mentioned Maggie about some lowland rays bog and there's been quite a lot of community involvement say at Langlands Moss in different places and I'm wondering the degree to which community involvement and even citizen science can be sort of supportive of the aims that we will have yes I think there's a growing interest in the general public getting involved in peatlands and understanding the benefits of managing them well I think it can be difficult though when we're talking uplands versus lowlands are generally where people live and the uplands people don't live up there they're quite hard to access they're very brown and very bleak and so it's hard to build that connection with people but if you come in at the angle of landscape looking at landscape for instance in Dumfries and Galloway we're looking at landscape partnership project where peatlands feature really quite heavily and we have communities fully engaged looking at to run water quality sampling campaigns and getting involved in the research that will then inform how that area is managed in terms of peatlands so the appetite is there but the sites are can be tricky you may notice I'm wearing my green heart for show of the love week which is all about saying the things that we might lose from climate change and the special places so obviously where people are close to those places and lowland raised bogs nearer to the central belt it's a lot easier perhaps to get them involved in understanding the links between how it's at loss and their own lives even other places like far flung places perhaps more like our RSPP Fawsonard Flows Reserve in Caithness and Sutherland huge areas where we're doing a lot of work and showing people it but I think the more we can communicate that sort of thing and help them to understand that the more likely it is that people are going to put two and two together and understand that using peat-free compost is really important looking after nature and looking after the carbon in the soils is really important Mark Ruskell I'm wondering how satisfied you are with some of the good practice protocols that have been established with other sectors that also use the uplands so onshore wind sector for example forestry, I mean two sectors that are hugely important in terms of reducing our emissions but potentially sectors that could conflict through poor design with the aspirations to restore peatland areas or potentially could enhance peatland restoration through financial support or good design so I'm wondering to extend the good practice within each of those sectors is satisfied you at the moment Maggie Keegan I was going to say in terms of wind farms of renewable energy if we would advocate not putting turbines on deep peat by that will mean over a meter because it's the question of the volume of peat that comes out of the ground but also if there are going to be turbines on that then we still see applications coming forward where there aren't really good restoration projects and actually the businesses that are out there could be doing a lot in terms of peatland restoration where they're plonking their wind farms forestry we wouldn't condone commercial forestry on peatlands or even replanting on peatlands when I was in environmental consultancy I was in a forestry plantation looking at serving for a substation and the peat depth there was over 5 metres and they were plonking a substation substation on this site which would have meant digging out all of that peat and there was a thought of putting it in a bore pit and thinking it would survive for however many years where it would actually be a hazard so I would say there should be opportunities actually where coniferous plantations have been on deep peat actually there should be efforts to try and restore and let those sites recover and put the commercial forestry in more appropriate places MW2 I'm just picking up on wind farms it's often not very clear what they've done to mitigate their impact on peat it certainly seems it's very difficult to get the information on what they've actually carried out you may be able to see the environmental impact statement at the beginning of what they plan to do but actually what's happened on the ground is very hard to decipher I don't think peatland is considered at the planning stage of a wind farm so you have the option perhaps to track through one intact hydrological unit of bog they don't seem to plan around it and move the track round to try and save as much bog as they can so I think there's a lot more that can be done at the planning stage of wind farms and a lot more done at the monitoring stage as well there has been some interaction between peatland action and clerks of works that have worked on wind farms doing some peatland restoration work I think that needs to be built upon because we could be sharing far more on restoring bare peat but I think there's certainly stuff that can be done on wind farms and on forestry as well I think there are local examples where peatlands have been really well integrated into forest design plans and some really excellent progress being made by Forest Enfield Scotland down in Dumfries and Galloway but they are constrained by the woodland planting targets that are set as well so there is definitely a conflict there maybe on the peatland side of drive for just looking at the yield class or trees as a determination whether or not you should replant an area that's deep peat with conifers or whatever we probably think that the yield class is way too low and we do need to be taken into account the long-term carbon stock in the peat that could be damaged by two rotations, one rotation of commercial forestry Jim Denchman and Anne Gray what we've done with the peat carbon calculator which we recognise as a useful tool but that does need to be updated as we go along and understand more about the impacts on peatlands and SNH has a peat habitat map one thing we would say about that is that it does tend to describe category 5 as deep peats but not with peatland habitats on it which almost says that if there are trees or vegetation or things on that deep peat it's not restorable we would take issue with that and say those areas are deep peat they can be restored so category 5 in that map is very important to classes 1 that is restorable and then on deep peats for forestry obviously deep peat for us and for the forest commission Scotland is anything over half a metre 50 centimetres is something that they will not plant on and that's really great but we need to understand more about the shallow peats anything less than 50 centimetres and in evidence to the Wreck Committee last week Robin Matthews was talking about new work that JHI are doing and it will be published through climate exchange about the impacts of tree planting on and disturbance on soil carbon and that's really important to keep that up to date because as has been said it isn't always going to save you carbon or at least it will but it might take a long time to get to that point of starting to save carbon maybe 10 to 15 years so the right tree in the right place is really important I agree I was just going to say I think it's doing the right thing in the right place I'm going to say the landry strategy work again but I think that's what it's about really is looking at everything in the round and working out where we get best value for the things that we want to see delivered in particular areas Pete Smith is going to wrap it up I was going to say I was being covered Let's raise the issue of the landry strategies I've done it a couple of times and rightly so there is a distinct lack of mention of the landry strategy in the climate plan the thoughts on why Pete Smith the times model works on a sectoral basis and a lot of greenhouse gas accounting is done on a sectoral basis that's why we have agriculture separate from land use and separate from some of the other aspects so what the land use strategy tries to do is the opposite of that and treat the land use as an integrated whole and in terms of greenhouse gas accounting even since 2006 the IPCC has been the revised guidelines that were published in 2006 for the land use sector was already bringing together agriculture, forestry and other land use so it seems sensible to treat the land as an integrated whole we see parts of the report on agroforestry in the agricultural sector saying that we need to plant more trees in agricultural landscapes and that's treated rather separately or independently at least there are forestry aspects in here and there could be much better linkages and you would be able to incentivise better landscape management if all of these things were considered together within the same area I'm guessing that it's to do with the way the sectoral breakdown within the times model but the times model is used to assess what the mitigation pathways are we could still reintegrate those and present those integrated way across the landscape in my opinion for the committee to explore it with the cabinet secretary in a few weeks time anyone else on that I was just going to say I did look back at RPP1 to see what it actually said about the land use strategy that was in 2011 and it said enabling land based business to succeed in low carbon economy is central to this agenda and it also says that it's a strategy which will help Scotland get more from its land including the contribution that can be made towards meeting our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets so it's extremely important in 2011 I think it's the implementation of it that is difficult but if it's seen as a tool that could be used at the catchment scale we could deliver multiple objectives I think there's huge appetite for the land use strategy but I think on the ground people just don't know how it's going to work so I think demonstration of using implementing the land use strategy is going to be absolutely vital I think it's surprising that it's not in here because if we think about where the land use strategy came from it was from our climate change act so I think it is an omission and should be but I think it's difficult that's at the heart of it we historically think very sectorally the land management sector thinks sectorally everything is set up in a very sectoral way so there's a big piece of behaviour change required across the board to think in that more rounded holistic sort of way Before we leave the land for the sea I have one slightly tangential question from Emma Harper I am aware that seetlands are the optimal way to sequester your carbon but I noticed that in the climate change plan they don't really talk about the benefits of conservation tilling so just to get that on the record I know that the rural committee are looking at that but the convener even has a constituent that's practicing conservation tilling and the benefits of and we're looking at you know that actually the paper said that if we look at an increase of 2 per cent over 10 years of conservation tilling it would be sufficient to mitigate all of the annual agricultural emissions is that please comment yes so I can comment on that so this was I think it does appear in the agriculture sector that tillage practice is one of the methods that could be used for carbon sequestration so it's just mentioned briefly there that's a vastly overblown claim with respect to how much could be done there are a number of issues so conservation tillage can help to sequester some carbon but why it's often overstated is because what it tends to do is concentrate the carbon in the surface layers so when you go and measure it you're measuring carbon in the surface layers of what that carbon would be put down so when you look at deeper depths you find that you've actually got some losses in the lower layers are compensating for the changes that you're seeing in the top layers and there's also changes in the bulk density so that's basically how fluffy the soil is which means that when you go back and measure it you're not actually sampling and you go to a given sampling depth you're not measuring a carbon concentration in the same amount of soil so there are a number of technical issues associated with those issues to do with conservation tillage conservation tillage has got many benefits and it can help with water holding capacity, soil workability so I'm not knocking it but it is one of these areas where there has been some largely overblown claims about its climate mitigation potential so we should be wary of them What extent is it being exaggerated by what sort of fact are and what are the actual figures that you're aware of Well, some of the figures have been suggested for conservation tillage that basically if we did this we could offset a large proportion of the carbon The best values that we've got for this sort of climate are around about 0.1 to 0.3 tonnes of carbon per hectare so that's less than one ton of carbon dioxide but even then there may be some issues associated with that data as to whether it was measured on an equivalent depth or not But still something worth doing Maybe something that's worth doing but when you compare it against all of the other mitigation options that we have in the agricultural sector for example reducing over fertilisation because nitrogen fertilizer produces N2O and that's nearly 300 times more potent than a molecule of CO2 there are other measures that we should be looking at in addition to conservation tillage so it's part of a portfolio of measures it's worth doing I'm not saying it's not worth doing but it's not the magic bullet that it's sometimes proposed to be Any other views on that are we content with that expert assessment Thank you Moving swiftly on to the sea Claudia Beamish Thank you, convener I think from discussions today for once I'm going to make a statement to start with rather than ask a question and then follow it up with a question that there's certainly been some progress between RPP12 and now the CCP on Peatlands and I'd like to turn our thoughts to blue carbon which those of you who've been able to make the time to follow what has been happening in our committee's scrutiny will know that the officials in the first evidence session Scottish Government officials highlighted or acknowledged that blue carbon wasn't part of the third plan and you'll be aware of course that there was at least a small box which highlighted blue carbon in the RPP2 so in view of the particularly SNH report that came out last week and I quote just one quick thing from that, the amount of carbon stored within Scotland's Insure MPA system is equivalent to four years of Scotland's total greenhouse gas emissions scientists estimate in the report there's also the ICUN report which has been done with others internationally coastal blue carbon are there comments about why panel members think that blue carbon might be missing and also in what way if it was indeed put into RPP3 or the CCP how could we see that how would that look Kim Densham Yes thank you we're at a place with blue carbon I think where we were with Peatland some time ago in anventary we're doing research to understand more about it we know that it can have benefits but we need to get to Scotland's specific figures so we can understand exactly what's happening and there is more work going on I recently met a researcher looking at seagrass meadows and the carbon storage in those and marine blue carbon habitats as well as the sequestration so in the SNH report a previous one before the MPA's report there is quite a lot of detail about the different habitats and what they can do in terms of storing and sequestering carbon which is significant and getting towards or around the areas that we see for Peatland for some of those habitats obviously the majority of it especially as highlighted in that MPA report is that a lot of sedimentation within the inshore waters we'll see that stores and as long as that is kept secure that will store that carbon seagrass and salt marsh habitats so we want to see all that understood better and brought forward so there is no reason really why and we did ask Government this as we knew RPP3 this plan was being developed what was going to happen with blue carbon without very much result and now we see that it's not in there but obviously it's good that you're pushing for that so we want to see that reinstated but not just to further research and understand more in place in the future protection for blue carbon habitats as we see in marine protected areas but also restoration so after this I'll be going to the flood risk management conference to talk about coastal management and coastal change and how we need to see more management of our coasts so we need to have a blueprint for our coasts that takes in our whole coasts especially our soft coasts to say because against sea level rise and future coastal change but also to protect us in terms of sequestering more carbon blue carbon habitats can do two really good things again we need to bring different departments of government together to understand the bigger benefits Maggie I'm just going to say funnily enough we prepared a briefing on blue carbon which is on our website in anticipation of RPP3 and it wasn't in there but anyway one thing when we did prepare the briefing is there is actually a lack of information on what we've got where we don't know where all these seagrass beds all of this different stuff so that might be one of the reasons because the authors of the RPP3 may have thought that there wasn't enough information but that's not to say it couldn't be a proposal because it was a proposal last time where they were going to investigate more and the other thing to say is that it is mentioned in the national marine plan and in marine protected areas there could be recognition just like peatlands are in terms of carbon sequestering but they've got a biodiversity potential that MPAs have a biodiversity potential but they always have a carbon sequestering potential and in terms of what can happen in these MPAs that should be a consideration particularly for something like mill beds which store a lot of carbon over a long period of time Can I just be clear though my recollection around peatlands and I think it's what Jim Denson was touching upon we went for years doing very little because we were told there was no accepted measurement recognised measurement are we in the same place right now with blue carbon and I'm not trying to make excuses for this I just want to be clear on this point for the record on the national measuring mechanism so that we could count this into our targets There's an IUCN report that's really looked at mangroves and the blue carbon potential of not specific to Scotland I've only had a brief look at it I'm a lame person but it does actually talk about tidal salt marsh and even in the title and sea grass meadows although it's international a lot of the work on peatland was international at first and then it was transferable I was going to say maybe we don't know the full potential of Scotland because a lot of it is just estimated on samples across Scotland rather than knowing particularly where it is obviously we've got a very good handle on where our peatlands are Jim Denchian, do you want to comment on that? As I've said before there are different areas and like the sea grass study there's seven Scottish sites that they've looked at and they've found that there's 57 tonnes of carbon per hectare so they are in the top 50 centimetres so they are doing standardised estimations on a site-by-site basis around Scotland and you can find out where the rest of all the habitats are, that's fantastic but like peatlands when that science gets done and understood and gets taken further towards IPCC and perhaps peatland knows more about this than I I know that for peatlands CEH are bringing out very soon in fact the figures that will be going into the inventory for for peatlands so it needs to get to a stage where it's fully accepted and then an organisation is tasked to go away and put that into the inventory and give standardised figures so we need to get to that point where everyone accepts that are good habitats for blue carbon and then understanding for the different types of habitat what are the standardised figures to go into the inventory just like we do in any other sort of habitat I think that the science is less mature than it is in other areas, I think it's simply that if we had better if we had you say that we know where the peatlands are actually the data on peatlands putting together where the peatlands are how deep they are and the condition they're in even though they're above ground is actually quite challenging so the fact that we don't know where all of the blue carbon is around our coastline is not surprising and is something that we should be putting more effort into scientifically I think the other aspect is perhaps why blue carbons receive less attention is because like peatlands it's a very large stock of carbon but it's maybe difficult to see how we how we manipulate that whereas with most of the land we can manipulate what we do on the land in terms of the vegetation and the soils to increase carbon if there's a large stock there we want to protect it but there's maybe not much that we can do to increase those stocks unless it's through restoration in a similar way to that we do for peatlands so those are possibly reasons the other one may be pragmatic is the rudimentary representation of the land let alone the coastal system so that's maybe another target as we further develop this model that we're using to set our emissions pathways our emission reduction pathways that we need to be building in those components another area we'll explore with the cabinet secretary in a few weeks thank you sorry, Mark Ruskell you wanted to just briefly it was just at your point Jim Densham about adaptation because of course we took evidence last year about coastal realignment and perhaps there's a lack of focus on that I mean in general do you think that this plan which is about climate mitigation really reads across enough into those areas of adaptation in terms of the environment and how vulnerable our peatlands are and our coasts are to climate change is there a synergy between the two here which is adequately addressed in the plan there definitely is a synergy that should be further explored and I don't know in some of the detail and the co-benefits that does mention adaptation but obviously on peatlands if we don't restore them we're not going to get the carbon benefits in terms of stopping the emissions but we're going to get into a worse state because with climate change we're going to get more drying and wetting which is not good for peatlands in general and it's the same with like I said before with coastal habitats we need to bring those things together and the climate change committee recently gave its report on adaptation and how we're doing in terms of adapting to climate change so there are things that we need to do better at and I'd say that coastal kind of falls between the land policies and the marine policies and we sort of get lost in the middle there and that's why I said before we need a real blueprint for our coastal change because people understand that if we're talking about climate impacts people get that the sea level is rising and that we're going to have coastal flooding so if we're going to make people aware of climate impacts focus on the coast, make something happen have a blueprint which helps us to store carbon sequester carbon and adapt our towns and communities in the future Pete Smith and I think most of the mitigation actions that we take in peatlands for restoration don't only deliver mitigation but they also improve resilience so it should prove future proof to some extent so there is combined mitigation adaptation co-benefits but I do think it would be useful peatlands exist where the temperature is below a certain threshold and where it's wet enough for them to exist for sphagnum to grow and such like investigating further if there are going to be any threats to the peatlands that we currently have the current distribution of peatlands as the climate warms going out 2050 out to 2100 so that our restoration can be future proofed and to improve resilience against those future threats from climate change so it's a very important point that we need to consider adaptation when we are when we're putting forward the mitigation proposals on that note thank you very much to all of the witnesses it's been the most useful session for all of the committee thank you for your attendance and again we look forward to meeting up with you again in due course as I'm sure we will at the next meeting of the committee on the 21st of February we will take evidence from the cabinet secretary for environment, climate change and land reform on the climate change plan as agreed earlier we will now move into private session and I ask that the public gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed