 Good morning. Welcome to the sixth 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 conclude its evidence sessions on the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan, RPP3. We are joined this morning by the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, Roseanna Cunningham, and by a number of Scottish Government officials leading on the development of the document, namely John Island, Colin McBean, Neil Ritchie and Morag Williamson. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary and your team. We'll move straight to questions. Cabinet Secretary, can I ask—just as a scene setter—how the Scottish Government arrived at the decisions that it has on the relative size of the emission envelopes for each sector and the scale of reductions? Perhaps you could offer us some examples of discussions that the Cabinet had on the trade-offs associated with pursuing particular sector emission envelopes. The emission reduction pathway that is set out in the draft plan has obviously been selected by us as the most beneficial to the people of Scotland. It is based on what you already are aware of, which is the times modelling and analysis. I ought to say that times is not something that is peculiar to Scotland. It is a model that is internationally known. You do have to adapt it to Scotland, but it is not something that is peculiar to this country. It provides an analysis on emerging technologies, together with all sorts of practical considerations that have to do with delivery costs and disruption. We have taken economic considerations into account. There is an important issue that we have to address, which is to ensure that we do not do things that result in what is called carbon leakage, which is effectively just offshoring carbon, which might help Scotland's figures, but it does not help globally. Secondly, we believe that economic opportunities still lie, because we do not want to ignore that side of things as well. Obviously, to ensure that the transport system provides the connectivity that is needed to support and facilitate economic growth. Those were all things that we were looking at when we were considering decisions that needed to be made in terms of the emissions envelopes for each sector. We were also looking at social justice issues and other co-benefits. We did not want to rule out some of those issues as well. For example, the decision to decarbonise heat in the residential sector is an example where we have tried to avoid unintentionally increasing fuel poverty, because those are all the sorts of balances that you have to take into consideration. We certainly did not want to do that, given the issue of fuel poverty among some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland. Improving energy efficiency is obviously really important. There is a different share of effort from what the Committee on Climate Change did originally suggest, but I do not think that that is something that you would not expect to find in some areas. We started out with a kind of least-cost pathway, and I know that the Committee has given quite a lot of detail on how the various decisions were fed through or run through—not decisions, because there were not really decisions at that point—but possible situations were run through to consider what the effect might be. There were a lot of key stages involving inputs, including stakeholder input in all of that. I mean, there is a very great deal that I could say about the times model. We will come to some of the detail around the times model process in due course today. Can I just ask specifically about the implications of one sector overperforming on emissions reductions expectations of other sectors? In the forward to the plan, your comments appear to indicate that it could be possible that, if a sector did particularly well, another sector might be—forgive the expression—let off the hook a little bit. It could have been the expression that I used. No, it's not the expression that I was used, but the interpretation could have been made. Basically, what is being presented is pretty stretching across all sectors, but we need to keep progress under review and take any action to ensure policies deliver the changes needed to hit our targets. What I said just in the earlier question is that we did have a number of things that we wanted to balance. What we are trying to continue to look at is to make sure that that balance is correct. That relates to the whole monitoring process that will go on. If we think that there is underperformance in a particular sector, it is not likely—or if there is overperformance—that we would then necessarily say that that means that somebody else is off the hook because we have looked across the board at what we are expecting. Overperformance in that sense could become a bonus rather than be used as an offset, which I guess is what you are talking about. That is what we want to get clear on. There will be times when you might discover that some areas are not performing as you had anticipated, but that is about the monitoring of that to ensure that they are brought up rather than offset. I think that that is how we would prefer to do it. Okay. What about the issue of weaker ambition reductions in some sectors? Has that put particularly ambitious or potentially unreasonable expectations upon others? I am not sure that I would use the word weaker in that context. I do not think that that is really how we would see it. We have tried to ensure that there is effort across the board. I know, for example, that agriculture's effort was made more demanding as the process went through. While it might have started looking out one way, it has actually been made more challenging. I do not really see anything as being weaker because I go back to what I said in my first answer. We are trying to work out what is an appropriate balance across a number of different things. We do have to take into account the impact of all of this and ensure that we do not have consequences that none of us would wish to see. That is why I used the issue of the decubinisation of heat as an example of how one has to take care not to trigger further fuel poverty as a result of that. Okay. Let us move on and expose this further. Emma. It is kind of similar to what convener was saying about, you know, I understand that emissions reduction has been achieved in agriculture sector in previous years, but there has been suggestions made that transport and agriculture may have got off a bit more lightly, and you have just alluded to that. Wondering in terms of planned emission reductions over the period to 2032, how can we get bigger gains if some of the sectors do not have as much percentage goals on their emission reduction and maybe also why different approaches were used to inform the agriculture and transport sector emission pathways and whether using those as a constraint in the times model has resulted in the times model offering more ambitious reductions in other sectors? Okay. I think I alluded to it at the early part that we haven't simply followed the line of the Committee on Climate Change. The way that we looked at agriculture was developed in two ways, and I did also say that it actually resulted in agriculture's emissions reduction being increased. I think you know what I mean, that they were actually over the period of time, came out with a tougher challenge than was originally being looked at. Forgive me, because this is quite technical, and I had to ask about it myself. An assessment was made on the marginal abatement cost curve, and that's about the extent to which, as you attempt to abate, the gains reduce until they're really very small. We had to try and look at that. It wasn't planned to be used as a model for calculating emissions, because it describes measures at farm level that you can't deliver through policy. I think that agriculture is a very particular area. Also, some of the measures would be undesirable for health and safety and various other aspects of farming. We're back to making sure that we've got it balanced properly and that what we're doing is proportionate. We had to revise that to be used in times. We couldn't just go with the straightforward one, because that wouldn't have resulted in what we wanted. We had to revise it to be used in times, but it was still part of the process, but it had to be revised. Analysis by agriculture officials did conclude that we could get emissions reductions of a fairly reasonable nature through policy interventions. Again, this is about policy interventions, too. We also had to analyse trends in agriculture since 1990, which projected a reduction every year in any case, which is additional to the policy efforts. All of that is being fed in as part of the process with respect to transport, and that's why it isn't just simply lifted from the Committee on Climate Change, because there was an actual process to look at some of this stuff, rather than simply lift something. I said this with times. It was a kind of international model. You can't just lift something from somewhere else without looking at the Scottish conditions transport. Element energy—I know that it's one of those things here from Transport Scotland—was what we used in order to look at it. The research was published just after publication of the draft climate change plan, so it is available for people to go and have a look at. It provided more detail than times, and because the projections for emissions reductions were broadly consistent with times output, that element energy research has been what's adopted. It's a long-winded explanation of the two areas that were not just simply lifted and dropped in in terms of the times model, but we think that in those cases it's the right way to have gone, because otherwise we'd have got distorted results. I'll be honest and say that I'm really struggling Cabinet Secretary to understand the impact of each individual policy and proposal in terms of carbon abatement. I've got no reference point here. I've got no idea if the policies that you've put forward are the most effective or the least effective, and that's partly because we don't have those figures associated with each policy and each proposal that they've brought forward. I did ask you a written question asking if you would provide those figures. In the response that you provided, it says that the verification of the projected emissions of a particular policy or proposal will be provided by the delivery of the policy outcomes. Real-life changes on the ground, such as penetration of low-emission vehicles. Does that mean that you don't know what the impact of those policies are going to be until you've actually delivered them? Most of what the plan is talking about is policy outcomes, and the times model is about outcomes. We're trying to measure outcomes. The specific things that you do as a Government, the specific things that you may choose to do as a Government, have to be directed towards those policy outcomes. When we talk about specific policies, I appreciate this as I understand it, because I wasn't heavily involved in RPP1 and RPP2. It's quite different to the way things were developed in both of those previous plans. The specific policies will have to deliver in terms of our overall policy outcome, and that's back to the monitoring process. If we discover that those policy outcomes are not being achieved by the specific policies that we're putting into place, some of the policies that we may choose to put in place may not actually be in the current climate change plan. We may do other things as we go along. The whole purpose of that is to achieve a policy outcome. We've indicated what some of the policies will be, the longer-term proposals as well, but the monitoring process will keep us on track in respect of the success of that. That again is a process that we didn't have previously with RPP1 and RPP2. I think that what you're describing is outputs. In your answer to the written question—Not outputs, outcomes, different things. Do you respect your describing increase in low-emission vehicles? What's the outcome from that in terms of carbon reduction? That is what the times modelling is about. It is about measuring the expected uptake of low-emission vehicles and being able to measure the impact of that in terms of longer-term emissions reductions. That's something that the way the model works is that that is what you're effectively—I probably get shouted at by Colin because I think of it as a bit like a sausage machine. You understand the distinction I'm making, though. No, you're using the word outputs. That are put in place and those have an outcome in terms of carbon reduction. What is the expected outcome of each of the policies and proposals in the plan? We've not done it like that. I think this is the distinction between the two different ways of doing this sort of work, that in the world in which we operated in RPP2, you could say, we need to achieve this reduction in emissions and if we do this thing, if we have this policy to encourage people to use electric vehicles, that will have this impact on emissions. Problem with that was that that didn't take account of the impact on emissions in the round. We've talked before about the fact that where does the electricity come from, which is used to power those low-emission vehicles, and that can have emissions impact as well. We moved to a different approach doing this, which is the times model. The times model very clearly says that if you have the penetration of electric vehicles along this path and if you hit that, then you will hit your emissions targets. The reason it operates in that way is because of the very complex cross-sectional nature of those emissions and the fact that the numbers in RPP2 are of very, very limited value because they don't take the broad story into account. It's a very different way of thinking. It's not that we're dodging the issue. The issue is that if you have a set of policies which produce the outcome of a certain level of penetration of electric vehicles, you will hit that will be the contribution towards emission reduction. The times model is the validating mechanism for making sure that all those things add up. That's why we've been at pains to because it is a very different way of doing this and a different way of thinking about this, that's why we've been at pains to explain the times model in so much detail, which is why we're going to use so much additional information and why the plan contains and the monitoring framework which will be developed alongside that will contain an awful lot of information of the pathways that we need of the outcomes, those policy outcomes that we will need to do to hit the targets. In essence, it's just a different way of thinking. But surely it wouldn't be hard in relation to electric vehicles to say, okay, this is dependent on decarbonisation of the electricity supply and therefore it's dependent on a number of other areas within the overall plan and you could identify that and actually put a number on it and you could say this is what we would achieve if we didn't decarbonise electricity programme and this is what we would achieve if we did. That's exactly what times is doing when you're running through a particular model. It is taking all of that into account. That's how it's working across all of those things, cross-sectoral. Can I just clarify something? A number of stakeholders have been looking for the Scottish Government to publish the data on the required annual emissions impact of each policy in the plan. Is that going to happen and if so, when? No, because that data, where times has been used, that data doesn't exist and in the supplementary models, for example transport, which contains some information along those lines, it's only partial and incomplete and it doesn't allow you to understand the impact of the policies. It's a completely new way of doing things. We're just quickly confusing a lot of people with an interest in it. Yes, I guess because everybody's looking at the standard way that you would just go there and add that to that and all the rest of it, but that's not the way this actually works. So I appreciate it's difficult because I guess what people are looking for is answers to questions that they think RPP1, RPP2 might have answered but not particularly well when those are not really the way we're modelling it anymore. I'm trying to understand where we are with things but my confusion arises from the fact that if I look at the in the main useful additional information, which we appreciate as a committee on the times model, which came on Friday, that we're still drawn back, in my view, to sectoral comments, which seem to stand alone. If I just read you out one from October 2016, and as you'll know, we got the progressions for the model and put varied assumptions in and progressing the trajectories. It says that a revised trajectory for agriculture was incorporated following extensive review by sector experts to best reflect achievable abatement within the sector, so that then leads me to thinking, well, that's very sectoral, you know, and yet I can't see how that fits with what you, John, are explaining in terms of it, it all matches together. Sorry, excuse me, that was back to what I was, you know, that technical stuff about the marginal abatement curve, that all of that is what is behind that, and it is trying to make sure that what you are, I mean, I suppose times is like everything else, what they call the geigo, the garbage in, garbage out, you've got to make sure that what goes in is accurate, so if you put stuff in which doesn't actually accord with the reality, then you're not going to get an accurate outcome in terms of the way times models, so you've got to ensure that that happens and some of that means looking at very specific stuff within some of the sectors where you were liable to get a distorted outcome if you didn't make sure that what was going in was good information in the first place. I mean, I don't know, Colin, is that a very un-technical way of trying to describe it? It's very good, I mean, I think that your sausage between an analogy earlier is actually a good one in that what you're doing with each of the sectors is, in effect, providing the model with the ingredients to the run, so at each stage and for each sector you're telling it what you think the world looks like, what the model is doing for you is it's actually blending the whole set together and then giving you the overall output, so for example on agriculture when we are telling it what we think and what the advice we're getting from those who know sector experts about agriculture is, that's then going in and the model is then taking a look at what it has to do elsewhere given what it now knows about agriculture and it's doing that at the same time simultaneously across all the sectors. Let's just pick up on the agricultural one because the UK Climate Change Committee said to us in evidence, in agriculture, if there's going to be a more softly, softly approach that involves the sharing of best practice, how can we be confident that it will make the overall contribution that it needs to make? How's that fact done? I've already indicated that actually agriculture, as the process went through, the agriculture challenge became tougher, not easier. So, you know, as we were looking at it, that initial run-through wasn't considered to be one that was giving the right or the information that was going into that wasn't helpful in terms of the outcomes. As we kind of refined it, then the agriculture challenge became greater rather than lesser. So, I'm not quite sure how that works out in terms of softly, softly. There is also an issue about the extent, as I indicated, with agriculture, the extent in which some of the changes can be mandated because of the nature of what agriculture is. So, you've got to take that into account as well. What you're saying, cabinet secretary, is that times is telling us that taking this approach will produce the result that we're looking for. Yes. From our best evidence that goes in, times will tell us that this is all achievable, and this is achievable for agriculture, for transport and for all the other sectors. Now, that doesn't remove, in our view, the importance of a continued monitoring exercise, which is part of this, to make sure that there aren't things that happen that begin to reduce that. If we see in any one sector that things are not working out, then we go back and have another look at it. That's what the whole process is actually about. I don't think that RPP1 or RPP2 had that process built in. As I said, I wasn't doing this job for RPP1 and RPP2, but my understanding is that that kind of continual assessment, continual monitoring, didn't really take place. No, quite clearly not. We've added in an extra element here, which is that as things go through, then there will be, and I might be wrong, but I think a kind of annual reporting of the effectiveness of what we've put before you. So there is a constant process now, and I appreciate that that means more work for the committee, but the thing is that it does mean that it's a more constant process than we've had before. The whole thing has changed quite considerably, so the model is completely different. The way it's described is really different, but that continual monitoring is also something that is new, and it's all of that together that we think will provide a far better way forward than we've had before. Okay, let's compare and contrast with RPP1 and RPP2, Kate Forbes. We've already touched on some of the potential challenges associated with moving away from the bottom-up approach in RPP1 and RPP2 to this more top-down approach. Are there any other potential challenges that you could outline? How would you respond to the suggestion that was made by the CCC of the benefits of seeking to combine a top-down and a bottom-up approach to be able to capture all the nuances? Okay, let's be clear who I am. We've said quite a lot about times, just to remember that times is about strategy. It's a tool to allow choices to be made on the distribution of emissions reduction, and it's a roadmap of policy outcomes. Times itself doesn't prescribe policies, so that remains a bottom-up process. Times is not about prescribing policies. That remains a decision that is something that we have to make, society has to make, and that will feed into the policy outcomes that times is modelling. The data is also, as we've already had a conversation, is also supplemented by some of the sector modelling, and research. I specifically referred to a big piece of work that was done on transport, as well as agriculture. In a sense, that's another example of both top and bottom coming together. Again, the monitoring framework will continue to allow us to assess how the top-down policy outcomes and the bottom-up policies combine to deliver the outcomes. The idea that somehow the whole thing has flipped from bottom-up to top-down is a misreading and a misunderstanding of what's actually happening here. What's being done is that we're bringing the two together in a way that they've not been brought together before. Alexander Burnett, I refer to my register of interests around renewable energy. We're obviously on the road to understanding how the times model works in terms of policy output and outcomes, but you talk about how the model is a production from the ingredients that go into it. If one of those ingredients is unrealistic, we could maybe talk about that. I'm talking specifically about the very high ramp-up targets. Two examples would be the amount of low-carbon heat being supplied to buildings. That's saying that in just eight years' time, in 2025, that's going to jump from 18 per cent to 80 per cent. Similarly in transport, there's a ramp-up overnight in 2032 from 27 per cent to 40 per cent. Given that these are the key ingredients to the model, could you maybe talk around what we've been hearing from a lot of other evidence that these ingredients are unrealistic? If so, how can you provide more detail around that in the final report? My other question would be if you are in agreement with a consensus of the evidence that we've heard that those ingredients are unrealistic. Will you be rerunning the model based on a more realistic trajectory? I've indicated that monitoring will be an on-going process, and I would hope that the committee was actively involved in that as well, so that, if anomalies begin to creep in in any particular area, we have a management tool for beginning to look at that to consider whether there's a way to redress that, what would be needed to be doing to manage that, or in the unlikely event that it was something that was driven by some more uncontrolled event, what that would mean for the rest of our plan, and that would be where the times modelling, yes, would be able to come in. On the more general issue of, I think, what you called the ramp-ups, the high targets. Sorry, not high targets, these are the very specific step changes that point at which we actually, yes, okay, I understand you, sorry, I was picking you up wrongly. Okay, I need to say something here about tipping point technology, because that is one of the key ramp-ups, I mean ramp-ups is not the way I probably have described it, I think there's a step-step change. It is just a point at which something flips over into a new one. Tipping point technology is something that I think we're all very familiar with. It can occur where the cost of technologies falls rapidly, resulting from key developments. Now you typically get, and usually we talk about it in terms of phone technology or something, because that's something that we are all involved in. Something new appears is very expensive, because the demand for it isn't necessarily there. Because it's very expensive, only a small number of people move to adopt it, and we call them early adopters, that's the general term. It then begins to spread out a bit further as more people begin to buy it, and then there's a point at which the price of it falls so markedly that the uptake of it goes up quite significantly, and that can actually happen quite quickly. It's not something that necessarily spreads out over a very long space of time. I've used phone technology simply because I guess that's the one that's most familiar to us, but it's happened with solar photovoltaics more recently, where the reduction in cost has led to a substantially greater level of uptake than was originally envisaged. That's the kind of thing that happens, and people try to work out where in the process that is likely to happen, and then thereafter what is likely to be the level of uptake that comes at that point. I would almost say the very best guess that you've got as to when that is going to take place. If you try to push the policy before we're at that point, it's not going to work because the cost of whatever it is that you're doing is going to be too high, and you're trying to work out what that tipping point is. In actual fact, we were more conservative in some of our estimates of what might happen post a tipping point, the extent of uptake that we felt was slightly overestimated by the CCC, in some cases, in terms of the penetration of electric vehicles, et cetera, but we still see that there is a point at which the uptake is quite significant. You have to consider that in any model going forward, both for the effort that you're trying to apply before that point and the expectation of the outcome after that point. I certainly agree in being so maybe conservative and say that the transport 1 and the transports are going to be spoken about later in terms of the uptake here being less, I think, than the rest of the UK and less in some of the European targets for electric vehicles. I certainly understand what you're talking about when you're talking about tipping points, and in digital technology and mobile telephone technology, that's very easy to see how that can very quickly happen. Even in solar PV, where you mentioned, that was a very quick improvement in the manufacturing process, which allowed a different panel to be made, which was much more efficient. Coming back to the low-carbon heating one, we're talking about very large infrastructure in people's houses. There's not something that is changed overnight. Would you still accept that, just in eight years' time, switching to 80 per cent is a realistic target? It is absolutely challenging. I don't, for a single minute, doubt that. You could have run models that would have been even more challenging with an expectation of that low-carbon heat beginning to happen a lot faster, but it would have been a completely unrealistic way to do it because of lots of different reasons, not least being whether you had the capacity in the economy to do it just physically. Do you have enough plumbers? Do you have enough etc? We have drawn on advice from the Committee on Climate Change on that one. I need to say that we've also got to take into account some of the continuing uncertainties because we've got some outstanding issues around the electricity and gas networks, which are not for us to resolve. A lot of work has to be done with partners in respect of that. What we've done here is take advice from the Committee on Climate Change on heat policy, but also take into account some of those uncertainties to try and work out what will be achievable. We're back to the continual monitoring of that to assess as we go through whether or not that will be as achievable as the Committee on Climate Change thinks, for example, as well as us. At the moment, what we're doing is—I'm tempted to say best guess, but I'll probably get shot down in flames for that—as to what is achievable on what timescale. On one model, you could have done a much more challenging one much earlier, but that would have been an unrealistic expectation and would have been rightly challenged for that. What we've got now, we're hoping that the decision about the networks in 2021—I can't remember when it is—will give us the way forward. If anybody is wondering about the gas network, if you're going to move away from gas, for example, which is what everybody expects you to want to do, what you don't want to do is have a whole load of people moving away from gas and then discovering that the gas network is going to get used to pump hydrogen instead of gas and the folk that have spent money moving away from gas taking out the infrastructure are then stranded effectively in a way that they didn't have to be. There's a bit of this making assumptions about what might happen in 2021 in terms of the gas, the various networks, and then working through how effective that becomes then in helping us make the switch over on the timescale that we indicated. The further out you go, the more of the arguable uncertainties creep in. I think that that's a fair point to be making, but it's not one that we can fix because the further out you go, the less certain that we are about a lot of things. The solar photovoltaics is interesting because that came out of a left field almost, but nobody saw that coming. It wasn't factored into anything and it opened up a whole area that hadn't hitherto been seen as being one that was likely to lead to the kind of take-up that we now see. You've always got to have some possibilities there that technology and innovation will deliver in some areas faster than you would have thought. On the subject of assumptions and uncertainties, David Stewart. Thank you, convener. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. Can I ask you a few questions around assumptions in the plan? I think that you yourself said earlier about you can have the problem with garbage in and garbage out, but clearly in the general sense, any plan is as good and as strong as the assumptions behind the plan. Can I ask you about one very specific area? That's the EU emissions trading scheme. Has there been any discussions with UK or European commission officials around a scenario where Scotland or indeed the UK is not part of the emission trading scheme? As one might expect, there are on-going discussions in respect of the future that Brexit might bring. It's perhaps a little difficult at this stage to ascertain how things will work. I think that I indicated in the statement that the plan is drafted on the basis that we're in the scheme. I wanted to defend that position because it's a position where we are now. I have absolutely no idea what the net result of the negotiations is. I would hope and expect that we would continue within that scheme, but, as you'll appreciate, I don't have control over it. We've worked on the basis that we are in the scheme. However, I have written to the Minister of State, Nick Hurd. I did that before an environment council, which was to take place in December and was going to vote on ETS phase 4 reform. At that point, we were supporting the UK Government's position in that, although that vote then got put aside and it will take place next Tuesday at environment council. I've asked that my officials be involved in Brexit scenario planning on this whole process because, as we all know, the plan is predicated on the fact that we're in the trading scheme. I can't do anything else at the moment than do that, but the desire of my officials to be involved in that is so that we can monitor and know quite quickly if that looks like it's not going to be the case going forward, because then we will have to reconsider some aspects of it. There are monthly telephone conferences between various officials, mostly on the phase 4 negotiations but certainly on high-level discussions on Brexit scenarios. At the moment, it's not an ideal scenario, I have to say. However, we are continuing to press to try and get some clarity on it and any clearer indications of where we might be may lead us then to go back and have a look at the plan in order to consider how it would have to change in order to take account of whatever new scenario we're in. At this stage, I can't guess what that might be. The period between now and the close of the scrutiny of the publication of the final plan gives us a little bit of time to be more detailed from elsewhere about what the intention is with the trading scheme, but I'm not privy to any thinking that might currently be taking place in respect of the future of it. Can you also confirm whether it would be competent for the times model to run a scenario where Scotland and the UK are not part of the emissions trading scheme? Is that something that's competent to run on the times model? Maybe in Mr Ireland, I must not be in compliance with that. I mean, certainly it's something that can be done. It's not a trivial task to do it. The runs are quite time consuming on a standard model run and we need to think about how we best represented those changes within the modelling framework in principle as possible, but I wouldn't like to give you the impression that it's something that we could do quickly. I totally understand the cabinet secretary's difficulty in this area, because there is a huge confusion around the future on this. Take, for example, Grangemouth, a very large industrial plant. Currently, that's subject to emissions trading. If we weren't part of the scheme, what would happen to these emissions? There are a lot of question marks. Can I move to another area of assumptions? That's around carbon capture and storage. You'll have read the evidence from previous sessions when the dependency on CCS was described by other witnesses as incredible and unlikely. The cabinet secretary is to be aware that the UK Government has withdrawn £1 billion funding for CCS. Could you say something around that area? I'll give you two seconds. As members here will know, this Government has been very supportive of CCS. We consider it to be a credible policy. It is one that the Committee on Climate Change also proposes as an advanced way of reducing emissions. It is still a developing technology, so some of the issues that I talked about in earlier answers apply to carbon capture and storage as well. We are seeing evidence of some commitment at the UK Government level in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. There may be some movement there. Obviously, we would be happy to work with the UK Government on any such movement. We would very much encourage that. We have provided money along with the UK Government joint funding to allow the summit power group to undertake substantial industrial research and feasibility studies, so there is work being done. There is a total of £4.2 million going into that. That is for their proposed CCS clean energy project in Grangemouth. There is joint Scottish Government and UK Government money going into specific work on a specific project in Ironically Grangemouth, which you raised earlier. That work is due to conclude in August 2017. We are not talking about CCS on the back of absolutely nothing. We are continuing to push forward on it. We know that it is critical for cost-effective decarbonisation. If we can do it, we could have strategically located CCS decarbonisation systems across the country. We know that it will be needed by the industrial sector in the 2030s, which is why it is embedded into our manufacturing action plan, as well as the climate change plan. As I indicated, there is already joint working going on between the UK Government specifically on this issue. I am confident that having CCS in the draft plan is actually the right thing to do. We are intending to put all our efforts into achieving the outcomes that we want to see. It is not that we are in a position where nothing is happening. I know that the decision not to go ahead, when was it a year, 18 months ago or whenever it was, was a huge blow. Having said that, there are indications that there is now work being done both at UK Government level and at Scottish Government level. We think that that ball is rolling again, and therefore we want to keep it in the plan. I welcome the initiatives that the Government has looked at for a range of miles. Clearly, the loss of £1 billion funding must make some thoughts about the assumptions in the plan that you want to keep and draft for consideration. We do not want to be drafting a plan that does not take into account carbon capture storage, because we think that it is going to be needed by industry by the 2030s. If it is going to be, it will be driven by, I suspect, that need more than anything else. I will add a little bit on the assumptions in the plan, if that would be helpful. One of the things that we have mentioned previously is that one of the things that we have mentioned previously around CCS was that we looked at moral runs without it. It is exactly what the cabinet secretary has highlighted. You can achieve the climate change targets without CCS, but it becomes significantly more expensive. Taking CCS availability away from the power sector, for example, was raising our system costs by around £6.5 billion. For that reason, we have kept that in the mix. It is part of our low-cost solution. We also carried out, at the same time, a validation exercise on the costs and assumptions that were used around CCS. Those numbers are in line with the most recent thinking on the issue. I believe that it was a house of lords report that that drew from. The actual title is here, the lowest cost of carbonisation for the UK critical role of CCS, the parliamentary advisory group on CCS. That is what we have drawn from on that. Thank you. My final question and my final issue around assumptions is around road traffic growth. You will again have noticed the evidence from Richard Dixon, who is very concerned by the fact that the assumption from Transport Scotland was that a naeo quarter, 23 per cent increase in road traffic by 2035, is his argument and I paraphrase that we need to be braver and get people to think very dramatically about their transport choices in the future. That is a big assumption, cabinet secretary. I appreciate that it comes from another portfolio. Nevertheless, the fact that we have nearly a quarter growth in road traffic, which is a huge emitter, is a real concern. What is your assessment of that? Yes, you are correct. I am not the transport minister, so you will forgive me if I am not across every detail of that. As I understand it, transport demand is pretty much shaped by the operation of the economy, which is about commerce rather than commuting. One of the problems is that, mostly when we think about transport and management of demand, we think about commuters, folk jumping in their cars or not jumping in their cars, but by far the biggest part of transport demand is driven by the economy, not commuters. What we have tried to do is take a realistic view on transport growth, which reflects population and GDP. Those things are coming into the decisions about projections in terms of demand, but we are not simply predicting and providing for expected demand growth, because we know that travel demand has a role to play in reducing emissions, and that is reflected in the plan as well. We have identified what we think are key actions, such as the establishment of low-emission zones that would signal both to individuals and to businesses that behaviour change is needed. On top of that, we are actively supporting other measures, for example the greening of the bus fleet, et cetera, to reduce environmental impact. There is a 27 per cent growth forecast for car kilometres between 2015 and 2035. That comes from the detail of that Transport Scotland element energy. Am I holding up the right one? I do not know if people have seen that. They would probably be useful for folk to have a look at that. We have cross-checked it with the transport model that went into times, and we think that it is robust. On low-emission zones, is there a new reason why you cannot bring them in quicker than you are currently planning? You will know that Glasgow has breached the EU environmental regulations, and there is strong association with Dementia. I am very much aware of that. Low-emission zones are something that local authorities at the moment would be where the decision to do so would come from. We would need to have local authorities looking at those specifically. If you were to talk about bringing them in, you would be talking then about us imposing on others where they might be. That is a whole set of different discussions. I am conscious that, in some parts of the country, a discussion about low-emission zones has already begun. Glasgow is one of those places precisely because of the statistics that came out just before Christmas. I would expect that there will be applications from local authorities to proceed with low-emission zones, and we would be grateful to have those discussions with any local authority. At the moment, no local authority has come forward with anything approaching a proposal. I hope that that changes because our expectation and hope is that we will have the very first one in place before the end of 2018. That is dependent on local authorities as well, so I cannot speak for every one of the 32 local authorities. I am to brief supplementaries from Claudia Beamish and then Mark Ruskell on this theme. I ask a quick supplementary on both the CCS firstly. Just take us back to Colin McBean's remark about the £6.5 billion would be the cost in the energy sector without CCS. Has there been a costing done of how much it would be with it? In terms of the assumptions, there was a lot of comment by both Andy Kerr, the Crichton group and the Edinburgh Carbon Innovation Centre, and the UK Committee on Climate Change itself about it being unlikely that the CCS could proceed. That is the first supplementary. I am not quite sure what your question is. I am not quite sure what your question is. My understanding was that you said, Colin, that the cost to energy would be, unless I misunderstood it, £6.6 billion, if we don't. What would CCS be costing? I think that it was probably me. The £6.5 billion figure does not refer to energy. It refers to the cost that is imposed on the overall system by taking that option for carbon capture and storage in energy off the table. What we have done in the plan is to allow CCS to come forward, and that is where you get the figure of the net present cost being around 2 per cent of GDP over the period from. It has a system-wide impact, so it has a ripple effect to the system model. In a sense, that is also what is driving what will be an industry demand by the time you get to 2030, because the cost is going to be colossal if we do not get there. It is a technology in a sense that has to happen, otherwise the cost is going to be enormous. On transport, in your opening remarks or your answer to the first question, you said that it would be what was most beneficial to the people of Scotland. I am just wondering in terms of transport whether there was any assumption run for, for instance, the cost of infrastructure for more safe cycling and walking rather than assuming domestically that the answer was for electric vehicles. I understand what you were saying about that a lot of the demand would be for industry and for delivery of not only domestic demand. The point that it was making was that increase in transport demand is driven by the economy, not by commuters. That balance is perhaps much more in the direction of commercial transport than it is the personal transport that people automatically think about in terms of managing transport demand. We are all guilty of that. That is the first thing that I think about as well. You tend not to think about the commercial drivers there. In terms of running a model that would put more into what you are calling active travel, on the basis of that, and I might be wrong, it may not result in as much as you would assume if the big balance in terms of transport demand is commercial rather than commuter. It is not to say that it is not a good thing to do because there are all sorts of other co-benefits that apply to that. In terms of the emissions reductions, it might not be giving you the biggest hit that you imagine. Again, our assumptions are always that transport demand management is about commuter demand when an actual fact is mostly driven by commercial and economic drivers. Exactly what the cabinet secretary is saying there about the impact of active travel is one of the things that is evaluated by the LNG work, so there has been that research. Just to pick up on your point about emissions from vehicles being driven primarily by the economy rather than commuters, the UKCC says that effectively you have overestimated the increase in passenger vehicle emissions and there is perhaps not enough emphasis placed on fans and those commercial deliveries. That seems to be the opposite of what you are saying, cabinet secretary. The UKCC is saying that you have overestimated the increase, the predicted increase, in passenger vehicle numbers. We have done as much work as we think is reasonable to look at what the actual future holds. Transport and agriculture were the two where we were not simply taking what the CCC said because we needed to look at something that was a little bit more focused on what we thought the reality was. I see that. That is just what I have said, basically. The growth forecast is a baseline forecast, assuming no further changes to policy. It will therefore adjust as policies to reduce emissions are implemented over the period of the plan. Again, we are back to the process, the way that this plan will work, in terms of how we monitor it working through as we go along. It is just a baseline assumption. What you are suggesting, cabinet secretary, is similar to what the UKCC has suggested in its modelling. That does not seem to be reflected in the baseline that has been chosen to feed into the times model. We are using the work that has been done by Element Energy to ensure that what goes into the model for Scotland is the best possible information. It would be useful if we could get clarification on why the modelling that you have put forward for the times model through the Element Energy report differs to that, which is produced by the UKCC. It seems that you are on the same page in terms of not wanting to overestimate passenger vehicle numbers. On the face of it, you have overestimated passenger numbers, unless there is a very good reason for that in the modelling that you have transferred to the committee. There is a lot of work done on that. Some aspects of it will not necessarily be terribly different, but other aspects will. We were looking at the whole transport envelope in respect of that, but I guess that it is because we have been conscious of the fact that, if you looked at 20 or 30 years ago, most households would only have had one car, and most households have got two or three cars. We are trying to make sure that we build into the assumptions realistic numbers that go forward. On the extent to which, as well, that car ownership will shift to electric vehicles as and when it is appropriate. I guess that there are two things going on. There is a change in the technology that we would expect to see coming forward, but there is also the desire to get people to switch away from using cars. One could argue that that might be switch away from using cars, any cars, even electric vehicles. Is that where we want to be? Those are two things that are that both in the shorter and the medium term will help to reduce transport emissions, but in the longer term, will we realistically get people not to have even electric vehicles? I do not know whether that is something that you can look at and think is realistic. Will you not want to feed several options into the times model and present those publicly? We could have presented a climate change plan with all the different models run through, but you still needed to know which one we were going to be opting for. What is in front of you is how we have decided to take it forward. Yes, absolutely, we can put carbon capture storage through and do a run that removes that completely from the equation, or we could do a run that does another thing elsewhere, or we could do a run that does two or three of those things at the same time. I am not sure that that would really be getting us very much further forward, other than to present the committee with an even bigger headache, which would be trying to work out which of those was most realistic. In a sense, we have done that. This is the most realistic one going forward. We can try to pick individual things in it, which is understandable, but if we are to keep rerunning times and reproducing a hypothetical scenario for almost everything here, we will paralyse our attempt to tackle climate change, because we will be spending so much time doing that that we will not be getting on with it. There may be some key areas where there are options and choices that are available to Government, and where thinking needs to be scrutinised across the Parliament. From your perspective, putting forward different options on the table would make that clear and perhaps challenge assumptions in other areas. I am not suggesting 500 different times runs, but maybe five different times runs that looked at key assumptions around carbon capture and storage, around modal shift. The key area is that the committee has been discussing over the past few weeks. We do not have a plan then, if we do that. We have a whole series of hypothetical scenarios, none of which is an actual plan. This is very processy. Let us move on to look at the monitoring and evaluation process, which is going to be key to all of that. What we have heard all morning is that this is essentially a moving feast, which is perfectly understandable. However, a number of stakeholders have raised concerns in terms of how we can monitor progress and how consistent the details presented are in each sector and in terms of how specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound policy outcomes are. How do we get sufficient detail provided to allow for the creation of an appropriate and robust monitoring framework? Monitoring is key to that. Monitoring, as I understand it, will still include times. Some of the things that you are talking about may have to be done if it looks like there is any sector that is underperforming. What we hope is that that whole monitoring framework will enable clear tracking of the plan. It is a tool that will allow us and you to understand the effectiveness of the policies. We are committed to further development of the framework to ensure that it is embedded into the plan and allows Parliament to scrutinise the delivery of the plan. Some of the things that we have talked about that you would expect would be to continuing the work within Government to create a suite of indicators for the entire plan. Obviously, the work that we do with the Committee for Climate Change and this committee to see how we can make the framework as robust, transparent and useful as possible. I am happy to meet with you, convener, if you want to be part of that process of developing that robustness. We are also committed to publishing an annual monitoring summary from 2018 onwards. Again, I am happy to talk to you, convener, about that. There will be a governance body for the monitoring. We are trying to make the monitoring as robust as we possibly can. If the committee has some views on how that can be made even more robust, we would be very happy to hear them. We will, but what I am getting at in the first instance is what we will be monitoring, what detail will be in front of people stakeholders, the committee of this monitoring group or whatever to allow them to be confident that they are determining that targets are being hit, they are not being hit, where we are slipping up, where we are doing well, that kind of thing. It is that level of detail that people are looking for, that confidence that they will have something in front of them that they will be able to scrutinise to some purpose. The expectation is that we are going to be looking at the policies that are supposed to be bringing changes on the ground. For example, we would be particularly looking at whether the peatland grant scheme is realising the level of restoration that we have built into the plan. Is our support for electric vehicles actually leading to sufficient purchases to be on track for what is in the plan? That is what the monitoring is going to be looking at, those particular policies to ensure that they are doing what they were supposedly designed to do. You would see that in the report. You would actually see our assessment of whether or not things were on track or not on track. If we discover things that are not on track, we have to look, as a Government, as to how we can either get them back on track or deal with the consequences of them not being on track. You will see that. That is part of it. In all sectors? All sectors have to be looked at. I suppose that more of the focus will go on those that are not doing as well as one might have started out expecting, but in order to discover that, you have to look across the board. Would you envisage a situation—as Cwil, it is for Parliament to decide how it scrutinises this—that perhaps multiple committees might be looking at the particular sectors in the way that multiple committees are scrutinising this plan? In terms of assisting you in your role as the environmental secretary? Yes. I suppose that that makes sense, because it puts a lot on this committee alone if it has to effectively be making assessments across all policy areas, but that is not obviously in my decision making. I will ask for your views in your role. What about the proposed governance body? What are your thoughts around the make-up of that, what format would take? Well, what we are doing is trying to draw on the experience of the climate change delivery board and the internal government directors group that supported development of the draft plan all the way through. We need to think through how that body engages with external stakeholders. I am also pretty confident that we will get input from the Committee on Climate Change, and I expect from this committee that we can develop a monitoring framework fit for purpose. So, at the moment, the governance body that we are looking at is built on a kind of group that already exists and it will morph into being something that does not just come into being for the development of the plan but is actually working all the way through. Could you envisage a situation where some stakeholders were involved in that group? I am not sure that we have thought about that. There would certainly be a lot of engagement with stakeholders. We have boards that involve external stakeholders, so it is not automatically precluded. The danger is that the expectation that there would be somebody from just about every sector and that does not become particularly helpful. Governance is more about ensuring that the process is working properly, so there would need to be some questions asked about how effective it would be if you tried to do that. How would you see us interacting with the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Climate Change? Would you have two specific roles? They are quite different. I do not think that the government's body is working to ministers. It is not in and of itself a body that would interact directly with the Cabinet Sub-Committee. One final question on that theme. It has been suggested that the indicators that are used to track implementation progress that you have are somewhat different to the UK CCCs. Is that a cause for concern or is it unnecessary difficulty that it creates? As you know, we have regular engagement with the Committee on Climate Change. We have had recent discussions with them as to how we can ensure that the plans monitoring framework has read across with the committee's own monitoring approach. That is a conversation that we are currently having to try to even out some of that. The Committee on Climate Change is open to new ways of doing it. If our monitoring framework works really well, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it will then use that as an example for others to follow. However, we are talking to them about how we can ensure that that read across works. It would not be helpful for us if it did not put it that way. Absolutely. We have covered a lot of ground. We still have a lot of ground to cover. I am going to suspend for five minutes for a comfort break. Welcome back to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. We move on to explore the issue of behavioural change, Kate Forbes. Previously, the officials have stated that behaviour change has been very important in thinking through the plan. I wonder if you could sketch out how you have used the ISM tool and how it has been used to inform the selection of different policies, proposals and delivery routes in each sector that are described in the plan? The ISM tool allows us to basically break down the factors that influence people's behaviours. We are using it across a whole range of policy areas. That includes housing and energy, which are two of the key ones. Obviously, influencing behaviour is key to achieving a lot of the policies in the plan. We have supported a lot of workshops over the past year in this particular area. Those include demand for energy efficiency measures by landlords, uptake of energy-efficient loans, domestic heat supply, uptake of tree planting and travel choices for the school run—quite specific sorts of things that we have looked at. ISM workshops were led by individual policy areas by the public sector and by other organisations. They have also taken place to support policies on influencing behaviour. That is how we have been using the tool. We have been going out, effectively speaking to people directly and trying to get the kind of information that is needed in respect of different policy areas. I do not know whether you want me to start going through some of the policy areas or whether there are policy areas that you are particularly interested in. If I could perhaps touch on transport, there has been some suggestions that, for example, in transport, there is not enough use of behaviour change ideas and too much of a focus on technological solutions. Across the different sectors, there has been too much of a focus on individuals making deliberate choices rather than on how social and material factors shape and produce behaviour over time. On transport, the whole question of—again, this is on the backdrop of what I said before—that most of the transport emissions are driven by commercial and economic drivers. We are, over a longer term, trying to encourage a shift to sustainable transport. That is supported by the smarter choices, smarter places programme. As part of that, we have carried out a range of personal travel planning campaigns, public awareness events and mapping of active and public transport options. We have also supported over 6,000 drivers completing fuel-efficient driver training, and that encourages fuel efficiency and encouraging safe driving. We are doing things down at that level across the board in terms of what we are looking at. Obviously, technological change is going to deliver quite a significant step change if we consider that to be a robust part of the plan, which we do at the moment. As long as nothing about that changes, technology will make an enormous difference. I see a little point in pretending that it will when it actually will. Reducing emissions from transport is a long-term project, and it has to be underpinned by both innovation and changing behaviours. It is important that behaviour change is. The truth is that it is not going to offer anywhere near the same amount of abatement as advances in vehicle technology. That is just a fact. In our view, the emphasis on technology is correct. It does not mean to say that we are not looking at behaviour change in terms of what is effective at commuter travel, but it is back to where the big demand comes from and where the big changes can be made. Between finalising the plan, will there be any further consideration given to behaviour change, particularly in terms of supporting the implementation of the plan? We will be looking at potential for behaviour change all the way through the process, both in this part of the process and continuing all the way through the process. If we can map behaviour change in some areas, it has been possible to do that. There has been quite big behaviour change over energy use. It is possible to see that, but if it is shown that behaviour change is not taking place in the way that we would want, then we would have to go back and look at that. I keep coming back to the fact that the transport emissions and the whole issue of that part of the plan is driven by commercial and economic things far more than commuters. While we want commuters to make different choices about how they travel, to have loaded it all on to the shoulders of individual commuters would not have been an appropriate or effective thing to do. It is on the very same subject. We have had evidence to suggest that key low-carbon behaviours identified in the plan are not reflected or are poorly reflected in the policies. Going back to transport, you mentioned how to get the balance between behavioural change and technological solutions. My question is, surely technological solutions are going to be the same across the UK and across Europe. Why is it then that we are looking at a 40 per cent increase in sales of electric cars when the UK Climate Change Committee recommended that we should be looking at 65? There are other countries in Europe that are aiming much higher and we are also assuming the 30 per cent growth in road traffic. Is that because there is too much emphasis placed on technological solutions and perhaps a lack of confidence in the ability of their policies to drive the behavioural changes that we can see elsewhere? The thrust of your question is that we are not being as ambitious in respect of the technology change that the Committee on Climate Change would have anticipated. The absolute reverse. I would assume that technological solutions will be the same whether it is Scotland or the UK or the rest of Europe, but we are looking at the uptake in electric cars being 40 per cent as opposed to 65 per cent as recommended by the UK Committee, which is also less than in other European countries. Is that because we are not going to get the behavioural change right so we are not actually going to get people adopting these new technologies? Yes, people have to be able to adopt them, they have to make decisions about when they replace cars, they need to be able to afford to replace cars etc. We have been a little bit more conservative in our estimate as to how fast that will happen in Scotland. If we are wrong, it is much greater than that than I don't find. But if we are right, then some of the other countries have perhaps gotten it wrong. Only time will tell. Our feeling was just that the 65 per cent was a bit too—the expectation was a bit too great for the speed at which people will normally run cars and the point at which they will then decide to change and all the things that go into that decision to change. Obviously, the cost of the car may affect that, but we have made our best estimate. Yes, it departs from what the Committee on Climate Change has said, but I would rather that and we overshoot the 40 per cent than run a whole plan on the basis of 65 per cent when it does not turn out to be the case. In a sense, we will find out. Would you suggest that the evidence that we have got that outcomes are not ambitious enough and are weak or that the low-carbon behaviours identified are not reflected well in the policies? That is the evidence that we have. I would say that they are realistic for what we know about that particular market in Scotland. At the end of the day, we have to think about what people will do here in Scotland over what time period and what is realistic for that. If we are wrong, we are wrong because we have underestimated the speed at which it will happen. It is not really about a level of ambition. That is a projection about uptake that is a best-guess scenario, whether you are talking 40 per cent or 65 per cent. If we are wrong and the 40 per cent is not as high as it turns out to be, then that is great. That is all to the good. If we are right, then some other plans elsewhere are going to be in difficulty. We have made an assumption about what realistically can be expected in Scotland. Let us move us along and look at the public sector, Claudia Beamish. If I could ask your cabinet secretary firstly about procurement and your Scottish Government expectations on the public sector maximising opportunities to reduce climate change missions as part of your procurement approach. I note that Jamie Pitcairn of Riccardo energy and environment in evidence to our committee said that this is a big opportunity that has not been harnessed to date and that could drive change across the Scottish economy. Will you comment on opportunities in procurement? I would certainly agree that public procurement both can and is already making a contribution towards the transition to a low carbon economy. All public bodies are subject to a sustainable procurement duty. Basically, they are required to act in a way that will improve social and environmental wellbeing. Through that reporting duty, we have seen 150 named major players report on their compliance with their climate change duties, including a section on procurement policies and activity. For example, our electricity contract is used by public sector sites all over Scotland and allows public bodies to access energy that is 100 per cent attributable to renewable sources. There are some considerable advances already being made. I am not quite sure in terms of the particular evidence that you got from the individual. I suppose people will always want to do more, particularly when that is the sector of interest for them. However, what we want to try and ensure is that we get public sector bodies to be doing ultimately the right thing and, of course, that is the economic thing in most cases, because achieving value for money is important. However, it is for public sector organisations to decide on the best approach for them. They have to make those decisions when it comes to their own projects. Cabinet Secretary, there is a wide range and scale of public sector bodies, as we all know. Some public sector bodies have raised significant concerns about the achievability of particularly securing a 96 per cent emissions reduction from the service sector in the period of 2032 and how that 15-year plan relates to the current reality in the public sector. Are you confident that that is a realistic aspiration or target, as one might define it as? What are the implications specifically for the concerns that were raised about those that are currently installing gas boilers and with an expected lifespan well into the 2030s? There are a lot of uncertainties on heat decarbonisation, and we talked about some of them earlier, not least of which is the decision that has to be made about the networks in 2021. I hope that that is the right date. We are prioritising action on energy efficiency during the first half of the plan up until 2025, as well as continuing to support the deployment of the kinds of changes that won't be the wrong decisions that are made now. I referred to one earlier. If you remove all your gas central heating and put an entirely new system in, and then in three or four years' time, the gas network is used to pump hydrogen rather than gas, you have spent an awful lot of money doing something that you did not need to spend that money doing. That is the kind of thing that we are juggling with at the moment. Everybody is not just the public sector, because that is an issue, but it has to be thought about in terms of the existing and future programmes. It is a massive challenge, particularly given the delay between now and 2020-21. We are waiting for those decisions on the potential for repurposing the grid. That is a big potential delivery change, but that delay is important. The overall targets are achievable, but that is making some assumptions about what happens in terms of the three or four years' time networks. We are trying to balance people not spending a huge amount of money now, which turns out not to have been money well spent because of decisions that are made in three or four years' time, with the potential that comes from what we expect those decisions to be in three or four years' time. That is why we have done it the way that we have done it. Low, slow and then a big change. We have seen excellent investment decisions in the public sector to date, not least from Scottish Water, who have successfully introduced wind turbines in the number of water treatment facilities and other examples. The committee is aware of our refurbishment and retrofitting of public buildings. Does the Scottish Government provide guidance over what length of time the potential efficiency savings associated with such investments is regarded as reasonable? We have a non-domestic energy efficiency procurement framework and support unit, which makes sure that there is advice and that it is there to support the scale and the ambition required to achieve energy efficiency. Again, it is about achieving value for money and it is about integrating energy efficiency into the heart of refurbishment projects. Scottish Water is a very good example of how that works. Scottish Water, as a producer of renewable energy, is probably not particularly well known, but it is producing an enormous amount of renewable energy that it uses in its own processes. That is the kind of thing that is a potential, but not for all public sector bodies. There are other public sector bodies for whom that would not be something that would be open to them. That is why I said that it is for public sector organisations to decide on the best way to move forward for themselves. Scottish Water has been able to be incredibly ambitious about it because it has the capacity to do that. Other public sector bodies would be perhaps more difficult to see how that would work. Public sector bodies are effectively people sitting in rooms having meetings around tables like this. It is a more challenging ask in these circumstances. We have also got something called Resource Efficient Scotland, which is an advice and support programme. That works across all sectors, not just the public sector, but the public sector can access that as well. That gives precisely what it says. Indeed, it is one-to-one support, so whether that is a private sector or a public sector organisation can have one-to-one support in respect of how it can change its carbon footprint. It works quite well. It has been doing that since April 2013. There are effectively two things. There is a public sector energy efficiency support available through the procurement framework, but there is also Resource Efficient Scotland, which provides advice and support across the board, including two public sector organisations. Some public sector organisations are relatively small, some are absolutely massive, so there is not a one-size-fits-all or an easy read-across from one to the other. They have all got to make their own decisions and come to their own, make their own plans up in their own way. Of course, it would be helpful if local authorities were, if it was made easier for local authorities to invest in wind turbines, for example, we had the crazy situation a few years ago, when a Dutch local authority was investing in wind turbines in the east of Scotland, whereas local authorities here did not have that opportunity at the time. Keeping the same with the public sector, you will be aware of the Sustainable Scotland Network's views on the need for investment and prioritisation of climate change leadership in the public sector. In their evidence to the committee, SSN states that they would welcome action by the Scottish Government directly to ensure that the climate change plan is made an effective driver of public sector leadership, addressing the individual, social and material barriers that hamper leadership currently. Do you agree that those barriers must be addressed and what is the best way to address them? I think that the plan requires strong leadership from across the public sector. That will be a priority as we move into the delivery phase. I am afraid that I am not able to comment about the specific local authority example that you gave. I do not know what the story might have been there, so I cannot really say what that barrier might have been, and whether it was specific to one particular area or might have been a barrier for all local authorities. I am afraid that I cannot do that. We do already have connections with the 150 major players through the public bodies reporting, and we expect to see those bodies lead by example in reducing emissions. The monitoring framework will be able to see where more effort is needed on delivering our policies. We will be working with key leaders across the sector to support and enable low-carbon transition. I myself have had a couple of meetings with COSLA on that issue. The benefits for local authorities as public sector organisations are immense, as they are with many other places, but they have to be led. I am hoping that the publication of the climate change plan itself will help on that and the continued engagement with, for example, COSLA, and the relevant COSLA-spokespeople to ensure that local authorities are across that as well. We will look at the waste sector. Maurice Golden. I refer members to my register of interests with respect to Zero Waste Scotland and the Chartered Institute of Waste Management. Cabinet Secretary and Scottish Government officials, I would like to cover food waste recycling more generally and then finally looking at regulatory tools. First of all, how confident is the cabinet secretary of meeting the target to reduce food waste by 33 per cent by 2025? We would not have moved to put that target in place if we were not confident of achieving it. I am right in saying that this is the only country in Europe that has set such a target. I remind committee members that the target is about preventing food waste. It is not about recycling, so it does not take into account what happens once the waste is being created. It is about the reduction of food waste. I am certainly confident that we can do it. We have chosen a target that we believe to be achievable. I would not have announced it otherwise if I thought that it was not achievable. We will see how things move forward. That is an area where behaviour change is important to us. I hope that, by appealing to people's economic wellbeing at an individual level, the reduction in food waste can be brought about. It is a great deal cheaper in your weekly food bill if you are not buying stuff to throw away, which most of us are probably guilty of at some point or another. There is some work that will need to be done in respect of that, but there are already things that we do. The member referred to his previous history with Zero Waste Scotland. He will know that there are consumer programmes out there, which help a lot, such as the Love Food Hate Waste, etc. I am always of the view that perhaps one of the biggest switch-on keys is the saving money side of things. There is no doubt about it. Reducing food waste at the outset involves saving money. I thank you for that response, cabinet secretary. Just looking at some of the numbers around this, obviously, on the baseline of 2013, there are 1.35 million tonnes of post-farm gate food and drink waste in Scotland. Of that, £600,000 comes from households, £740,000 comes from commercial industrial. We learned on February 7 that there has been an 8 per cent reduction in that household waste, which is something to be welcomed in front of the committee. In terms of looking at the timeline to 2025, between 2013 and this year, that is a third of the time, and we have perhaps made 4 per cent of the reductions. You might expect that to be slightly higher. I recognise work that is on-going, but on that trajectory I cannot see how the 33 per cent reduction is going to be achieved. If the Scottish Government is looking at additional measures or change beyond behaviour change at a household level or, indeed, any technological changes as has been highlighted in other sectors in order to achieve that 33 per cent reduction? On food waste prevention at the moment, we are trying to take a stakeholder-led approach to identify actions to deliver the target. We have set the target and it is a stretching target. We have set that from the outset, but we are currently already working with stakeholders, across-sectoral, to try and deal with the issue across the supply chain. The member is right, that is not always just about household. That is also about the food all the way along the supply chain. Prevention of food waste is not just about what people might throw out into their bins. We have got to look at various sectors of industry, too, to be thinking about that. We have got some of those cross-sectoral workshops on-going. Once we have concluded those, the next step will be a formal consultation on that. That will be later this year and that will be a consultation on a set of actions to meet the target. We are working on that, which could include legislative measures for inclusion in the Good Food Nation Bill. There may be legislative actions coming there. We are also committed to consulting on whether the target should be aspirational or statutory. That is a discussion to have. It is fair to say that this is the year in which some of the things that you would be looking for will be getting developed. Because we are in the early process of that, I cannot say what some of those regular reactions might be. I just need to remind people that what we have done at the moment is to exclude the issue behind the farm gate, because we do not have a proper baseline for that. We have excluded that from the figure. The minute the food leaves the farm gate, all the way through to what the householder does with it, or indeed not just the householder, but the organisation. Food waste is an issue for the Scottish Parliament as much as it is for us as individuals. You have whet my appetite as to what might be coming up, cabinet secretary. I have just given a wee prod to your inner geek, Mr Golden. Is the cabinet secretary confident that the work under way to prepare for a landfill ban in 2021 will avoid a sudden switch of biodegradable waste from landfill to energy from waste? Yes. We have already got SIPA working on it, and I know that you know that because of the evidence that it has given to the committee. We are making sure through SIPA and Zero Waste Scotland that businesses are advised and supported as to how they can comply with the regulations. Our priority—it is an absolute priority—is to keep biodegradable waste out of landfill so that it does not produce harmful methane ambitions. The separate collection, which the waste regulations now stipulate in terms of councils, mean that they cannot incinerate food waste that has been collected separately. It is obviously for councils and businesses to ensure that they do abide by their statutory duties. However, yes, I believe that we are on track to ensuring that there is not that sudden switch that we would all be concerned about if that was what would happen. We were informed last week that only 62 per cent of businesses inspected by SIPA were fully compliant with the waste Scotland regulations with respect to food waste. What work is under way to maximise business compliance in this area? That is very much a job for SIPA now. If they have identified businesses that are not compliant, I would expect SIPA to be drawing up a plan of action that would ensure that those businesses are made compliant. Those are regulations that they have to abide by. They are not optional, so it really is just a question now of enforcement. I suppose that, to a certain extent, some of it is about businesses being aware and conscious that those regulations are in force. I would guess that it may very well be that there are some particularly small businesses who do not realise that their practices are not compliant. That is SIPA's job. I would confidently expect SIPA to do the job for which it is created, which is to continue to monitor and regulate where necessary. If they have identified that number of businesses, SIPA will be going back to that. I would expect them to be having conversations with Zero Waste Scotland about how best to tackle that. Given the current rural exemption for separate food waste collections under review by the Scottish Government, what solutions is the Scottish Government looking at in those areas? How will rural and island local authorities be ready for the January 1, 2021, landfill ban? Well, that is really a matter for the local authorities in question. Re-looking at the exemptions that we did grant in the first place is simply because those exemptions were capturing quite large urban areas that happened to be within the wider area. Local authorities will need to think about what is a reasonable solution for the area in which they operate. I am not sure that it would be the right thing for us to start mandating solutions. Perhaps the member might think that that is what we should be doing, but, as the member knows perfectly well, there is a healthy discussion about the difference between the powers that the Government has and the powers that local authorities have. At the moment, what we would be anticipating is that local authorities would come back and show us that there are solutions that they can achieve. As the household charter works as well, that will be part and parcel of what they have to do to transition into the new regime, which brings them into a kind of compliance across the whole of Scotland, which again is currently voluntary. So far, the take-up has been good, but I am conscious that there are, in specific areas, specific problems that will need very specific solutions, and it will be for the local authorities to develop those solutions. I am thinking more generally, given the plateauing of household recycling rates, how confident is the cabinet secretary that these will rise in line with the 70 per cent goal by 2025? Well, I guess the first thing that needs to be said is that 70 per cent goal is for all waste, not just household waste. That brings in commercial and industrial waste as well. That 70 per cent goal is for waste right across all sectors. On household waste, I have already referenced the household recycling charter and the single collecting system for Scotland, which I think will set us on a good path to improve further. It will make it a lot simpler and straightforward for households. It will also cut out the confusion when people move from one area to another, and there is a completely different system in place that will gradually ease itself out of the process. In the past, we have had to work with 32 different systems. This now opens up the opportunity to streamline that and make it much easier for people to actually do the recycling. On commercial waste, we have identified construction as a priority because construction accounts for 50 per cent of all waste in Scotland. There is a lot of scope for greater recycling there. I know that Zero Waste Scotland is working with the construction sector to identify what opportunities there may be arising out of that waste. I suppose that there is a little bit of that transport. We are all guilty of thinking about the household when it comes to things such as waste and not realising the extent of the cross-sectoral much bigger picture, which presents a massive problem. Of course, construction is done very well as a sector having ways to landfill. I am specifically looking at local authorities and their recycling rates. I wonder if any analysis has been done. Obviously, there are 24 of the 32 who have signed the household waste recycling charter. Is there any analysis done on when compliance with that charter will be met among those 24? I also appreciate perhaps not a direct answer that will be forthcoming at the moment, but is there restrictions from those local authorities who have not signed in terms of them signing it, EG? Are they likely to sign at any point soon? At the moment, our intention is to allow it to proceed on this voluntary basis. The member is right to identify that there is a transition phase necessary so that, at the moment, local authorities who signed up first will probably be a bit further down the line of transition. That was never going to be a wave of magic wand and achieve it all overnight. In terms of an analysis of where they all are, I do not have one to handle. I will make sure that, if we have one on going, the problem is that, at any point, if there are new local authorities signing up, the situation is changing. There is a point at which we would want to stop and take stock. At the moment, we are not left out as an entirely voluntary thing. There may come a point where we begin to focus support more on those who have signed, as opposed to those who have not signed, as a bit of an incentive to those who have not signed. I am not conscious of there being any specific issues that are causing any particular local authorities not to sign. It may just be that it takes a while in a local authority to make these decisions and work them through. We are still very much in the voluntary phase just now. As part of that analysis, it would be very useful to look at where local authorities have made or are about to make contractual obligations that might either put at risk recycling targets in the future, for example contractual targets to energy from waste facilities that are sometimes signed by some local authorities for 10, 20 or more years, which is a major issue for the whole of Scotland going forward. We are having those discussions with councils because you are right to identify that as a hazard. Are there any particular key materials that the cabinet secretary will be seeking to switch from landfill to recycling as part of this process? I am not conscious of us looking at it in that particular way. Obviously, we have talked about food waste, which is a big development. Most things are not really moving or not going to landfill. A lot of the things that we now automatically think of in terms of recycling are already not going to landfill, but I can double check and come back if there is something that I have missed in terms of that specific breakdown, but I am not conscious of it at the moment. Mainly around absorbent hygiene products, for example. My final question is that, on 2 February, the Scottish Government stated that work was on going on producer responsibility systems. The Government agencies told us on February 7 that there had been discussions around this area. I was wondering what actions are under way in Scotland to explore how enhanced producer responsibility schemes can be implemented, as referred to in the circular economy strategy. We committed in making things last to do two things on producer responsibility. First, to explore the scope for reform of the existing producer responsibility scheme, and second, to develop new schemes for, specifically, tyres, mattresses and furniture. I think that the member will be aware that producer responsibility is quite complex. It is devolved, but we have worked with the UK Government to produce a system that operates across the whole of the UK. The existing schemes are on packaging batteries, end-of-life vehicles and waste electricals, so all that is done for convenience on a UK-wide basis. What we want to do in exploring the scope for a reform system that supports a more circular economy, and I think that members will be aware that at some point in the lifetime of this Parliament there will be a circular economy bill, which is where we need to start directing some of our interests and attention. We want to try and drive consumer choice towards products that are already suitable for reuse, for remanufacture and more generally built to last so that we move away from what has generally been seen as a throwaway culture that we have gotten used to. We want the funds that circulate around the system to be directed towards better outcomes on the ground. We are taking forward a collaborative stakeholder-led approach, and we are working very closely with the Community Resources Network Scotland to identify social outcomes that a reformed producer responsibility system could support, for example the reuse of equipment by social enterprises supporting vulnerable communities. We are also asking the UK Government to work with us on this particular project, and we have already agreed to work with Wales and Northern Ireland on that. There is going to be a first stakeholder workshop on producer responsibility in the last week of March. Again, that is a very current discussion and a very current set of changes that we are hoping to bring in. Let's look at land use in peatlands at Mark Ruskell. Thank you. If I could start with the question of compulsory soil testing. The committee cabinet secretary had a letter from the cabinet secretary for rural economy and connectivity in which he states that we cannot significantly reduce emissions from agriculture without the goodwill of the custodians of the land. He then goes on to say that there is a significant risk that moving immediately to regulatory approach achieves the opposite intended effect of alienating farmers. Does that mean that the compulsory approach to soil testing is off the table for the time being? No, that's not how I would see it. What we're trying to do is to work out how as effectively as possible we can achieve this. I think that the letter that you've got had indications of what percentages of farmers were already doing this. What we're setting out is a kind of milestone towards all improved land being tested, and obviously the best way for that to be achieved would be the farmers doing it voluntarily. There's a large proportion of improved land routinely tested, but at the moment our data isn't good enough to know exactly how much. There is a little bit of work that needs to be done in terms of data analysis so that we are building on a good foundation. The view that we're taking at the moment is that it would be premature to go through the difficulty of legislating for and enforcing soil testing before we actually know whether we can get all farmers on the land to test voluntarily. What we're doing is working over the next few years to try to achieve that ambition. In a sense, it's a little bit like some of the conversations that we've had about some of the other things here already. The letter that you've got from Fergus—I think that I've got a copy here somewhere—effectively sets out how that is to take place. In terms of the effectiveness of the voluntary approach, you answered a written parliamentary question at a lodge in October last year, where you indicated that only four per cent of farmers had actually uptaken advice as part of the climate programme. Did that fact feed into the times model in which you're looking at the effectiveness of uptake of voluntary approaches? The trajectory that we have for agriculture comes from the modelling that's been done by the agricultural team and has fed in. If we go back to the discussion that we had earlier around times, that reflects the understanding of the rate of uptake that they think they can deliver. If that delivery doesn't happen, that will obviously flag as part of the monitoring framework. In terms of—we were talking earlier on—about outputs and outcomes, at the moment, the output there is less than one out of every 20 farmers engaging within the climate programme. That would be about more than just soil testing, though. I don't think it's fair to just load that purely on to soil testing, because I think the letter from Fergus Ewing indicated that soil testing was being carried out on considerably more than four per cent of land. I'll just be careful that we're not talking about slightly different things here. Sorry, I'm trying to find a copy of the letter, because I can't— Can I just move on to the issue of the land use strategy then? I'll be clear on something here, just so that we get that on the record. Let's talk here of a timetable towards the potential introduction of regulations. What we're saying here is that we're going to give farmers the time on the voluntary approach up to 2023, and then, if it's necessary, introduce regulation. Or, will there be monitoring of that done over the next two, three years, and a determination made in advance of 2023? You would need to ask Fergus Ewing how he intends to proceed on that. He's flagging up the potential for introducing regulations. He's saying that the timetable will guide the decisions, but the detail of that, I think, you would need to explore with him. Okay, we'll do that. My apologies, Mr Oroz. That was a useful clarification. I want to move on to the land use strategy. Obviously, how we use our land is critical. There are the potential for conflicts but also synergies between different types of land use. I would point out onshore wind, forestry, peatland restoration—all can work together to deliver positive benefits, but there could also be conflicts. Given that, why does the land use strategy not feature more prominently within the climate plan? The draft plan already includes higher ambition for forestry and peatland, so we've looked at specific policy sectors, rather than the land use issue as a whole across the board. Obviously, as we go through the next phase of delivering the climate change plan, we'll be working to ensure that the ambitions for forestry and peatland are delivered on the ground. That's the way that we've looked at it. The land use change and forestry sector defined for the purpose of the climate change plan is divided into six land use types. Some of the land use issues are in agriculture, forestry and peatland. I'm not quite sure how you would have tried to run the land use strategy as a whole through the times modelling that we have. We've effectively lifted from it a certain number of the specific policy sectors and done it that way. Obviously, with forestry and peatland, there's an increased scale of ambition. The plan also includes policies and proposals for the agriculture sector. There are issues in respect of the planning system, so I think that we just took a view that, in those circumstances, the land use strategy as a policy document wasn't really capable of being fed into the way that we've been doing it. I'm not sure if Colin had looked at trying to do it, or rather than what is almost like a disaggregation, which is what we've done. There were some constraints on our ability to do modelling. That's exactly what you said. There was a limit based on the existing frameworks and how we were able to adapt those in the time available. In terms of the carbon abatement from individual targets that are in here, the ambition for peatlands, which I think is welcome and the ambition for forestry, do you have figures for what that will actually deliver? Presumably, that's not so dependent on decarbonisation of electricity supply as we talked about earlier in relation to electric vehicles, so perhaps that's an area where you can actually pluck a figure out and say, it's going to deliver this. Using the peatland example, we have information available from work that's just being peer reviewed at the moment which James Hutton Institute has undertaken, which gave us estimates for variety of type of peatlands as to what the carbon benefits of peatland restoration were, and that was used to feed into the Tynes model. A similar approach, but I'm not an expert on that side of the house, was taken with the forestry figures provided by Forestry Commission and Forestry Research. We have got some figures then, but not for everything. Is that what you're saying? We could try and do it, although it would be complex. We couldn't do it for absolutely everything. We might be able to do it for forestry and peat, so we'll see if that can be achieved before the end of the scrutiny period, so that it's perhaps reflected in the final plan rather than not. Can we keep you advised of that? We took evidence on the impact of the use of peat in horticulture and the numerous concerns about that from a carbon perspective, but also from a biodiversity perspective. I'm just wondering if the Government would consider making an explicit commitment in this plan to eliminating the use of peat in horticulture. Obviously, the plan is focusing on restoration activity rather than protection and management as well, although obviously they're really important. We have already highlighted our support to eliminating the use of peat for horticultural purposes. Planning policy is already clear on the importance of protecting our peatlands, so we will consider that particular point as the plan is finalised. There are one or two technical issues that leave aside the issues of the fact that those products are created on a UK-wide basis and sold on a UK-wide basis. There's also a number of historical horticultural extraction consents already in existence, and while getting new consents would probably be quite difficult now, the fact is that those consents already exist would probably have to be bought out if you were going to move to the approach that you're talking about. We can look at some of the practicalities around it and see if it's something that we could do. I'm just a little wary given that this is a UK market that we're talking about and people are able to buy from wherever, whatever, so it's not quite so easy to clamp down on, although it's a very lively debate. Angus MacDonald's got a point on this. Just following up on that, there have been suggestions from NGOs in the past that there's an opportunity to tax or levy the retail sale of horticultural peat. I was just wondering if that was something that the Scottish Government would be prepared to consider, either in the climate change bill or earlier. I don't think that we have the power to do that. Just two brief questions in this section. One is about whether you see there's any extent to which Scottish water can take a proactive role in supporting peatland restoration in water catchments. That's the first question. Going back to the area of woodland planting and those goals, whether the issue of concern that has come up a lot with the committee of deer management has been factored into the climate change issues because of the concerns about the effect that they have on woodland. In respect of Scottish water, they are already— Sorry, and peatland restoration, as my convener has reminded me. Sorry, what? I was just going to go first to the question of Scottish water, their already active partners in the national peatland group. They've been involved in a number of restoration projects where opportunities are identified that are compatible with the Scottish water regulatory framework. I'm certain that there will be willingness to engage in further activity, and I would certainly support that if that's what they chose to do. Deer management and peatland, I'm not sure—I'm just trying to think what— So you were asking about whether or not the impact of what is effectively deer on peatland. Yes, on peatland, and I was actually asking about woodland as well. Yes, okay. In relation specifically to climate change issues. Right, okay. I need to get back to the member on that. I don't think I've got an easy ready answer at the moment on that. Well, it sounds like one of my officials might have an easy and ready answer. I don't know that easy, but I think it would be very difficult to model the impact of deer on restoration, because we're very specific to sites and things such as that. But as we deliver the peatland action scheme, we would be putting in place advice and requirements on actually how that was done to make sure that restoration was delivered and where things such as deer could impact on the quality of the restoration delivered to actually minimise that. The question here is that, if you take next year those £10 million of public money earmarked for peatland restoration, but we could face a double whammy of having spent that money to restore the peatland, then we have to fence in to restore peatland to protect it from the ravages of deer. I think that that's the thrust of where we're coming from here. That's only an issue that I'll take forward with SNH about the delivery of the scheme. I think that we're in the home straight now, Claudia Beamish. If I could ask your cabinet secretary about blue carbon, there's been quite a lot of comment through our evidence sessions about the stark fact that blue carbon was in RPP2 as an aspirational way to cut emissions and rather in the same way that peatlands was in RPP1 and then has moved forward. We've had some assurances on this, but I wonder if you could make any comment on whether you would see this appearing in the final climate change plan. I appreciate that it is disappointing that the draft plan doesn't contain hard policies and proposals on blue carbon, but we've run into a difficulty, which is a difficulty of trying to ensure that we have the right science here. Both the Government and SNH have been working to assess the extent and potential of blue carbon in Scotland, and that includes the publication of a report just after I made my statement to Parliament, so that there is work that is currently on-going. We do recognise that a lot of marine habitats are natural carbon sinks, and it is obviously incredibly important to ensure that they are adequately protected. Further research is required to provide credible estimates of the sequestrations provided by blue carbon, which is why we haven't at this point got any detailed policies and proposals in the plan. That recently published SNH report came through too late for any consideration for the draft plan. We are now considering the latest report and what further research and survey opportunities can be pursued, and we will include an update of the work in the final climate change plan. It is really just a reflection on the fact that there is a lot of work on-going here and it was a little too late for any inclusion in the draft plan, but we hope to be able to include references in the final plan. In the view of a number of people who have given evidence and also I have taken a keen interest in this with the minister, Paul Wheelhouse, in the previous session. I do really reinforce not the fact, but my view that if it is not clarified that there is a need for research into this in the future within the plan, and if that is not highlighted, we will not get to where we got to with Peatlands, which is very laudable. I think that it has just been a timing issue in terms of what work has been getting done quite proactively. I am quite sure that if I had come and said that I would quite like to delay the draft plan by another fortnight so that we can do this. There would have been an uproar about that, so the timing was just unfortunate. You are not concerned about the draft, are you? You have reassured that it will be in the plan. We will have references to blue carbon in the plan. I will wind that up by looking at the process from here until the conclusion of the plan. What work goes on over the next period to finalise the draft plan? How will that involve engagement of it all with stakeholders' key interest groups and the Committee on Climate Change? As you are already aware, there is a considerable amount of climate change activity planned over the remainder of the whole year. That includes a consultation on the new climate change bill, as well as more routine business arising from our obligations under the 2009 act. That will include the 2015 greenhouse gas stats in June. The publication date is my annual report on progress to Parliament, as well as updating the carbon accounting regulation. I need to think very carefully about the best time to finalise the climate change plan, to ensure that we take on board the views from the whole of the parliamentary scrutiny process, which involves a number of committees, obviously. Further and deeper engagement with key stakeholders. I have referred to that happening in a number of different areas this morning, particularly as we move into the delivery phase of the plan. It is my intention to come back to Parliament with an update on the timing of the final version of the plan before the summer recess. I recognise that the scrutiny period of the draft plan has been very tight and that there are questions around that and that particular bit of the process. That is an issue that we need to perhaps park for the climate change bill itself, because we have made to look whether or not this kind of timetabling of the scrutiny process has actually been as effective as it might have been. That is what I intend to do. There is a lot of work that is on-going—I have indicated that—that will feed into the final plan. What I will do is come back to Parliament and to the committee in respect of a timescale. I am also conscious that, sitting alongside that, there is all the consultation and the draft energy strategy and all the rest of it, so we are trying to get it so that it looks sensible in terms of where we are in terms of timing. Obviously, the committee will take an interest in the final plan, and I suspect that other committees might want to do that. One final supplementary from Claudia Beamish. It was just in relation to what you have already highlighted, but just to seek clarification in relation to the climate change bill. If and when, optimistically, that becomes an act, will there be the opportunity to revisit the climate change plan if there are different targets or different issues that come from that act? I think that that would be absolutely mandated. The climate change plan comes out of the 2009 act, so the new legislation will drive its own set of forward plans. I have said not formally, so I do not want to be tied to that, but I have anticipated that, probably by 2019, if my officials have not all resigned by that point, probably by 2019 we would be beginning to look at another plan. The new legislation will potentially have to trigger its own plans. The new targets that are set down in the new legislation will be new drivers for us in terms of how we make our decisions going forward. It is why I said the issues around the scrutiny and the way that we have had to do this plan, because this is what was laid down in the 2009 act. There might be some reflections for the new legislation as to whether or not that process is the best way to do it. The committee may feel that there might be better timescales and better ways of managing it. I am conscious that there has not been time to talk about alignment with the budget, which has all of its own issues in terms of timescales and all the rest of it. How constrained do we want the scrutiny process or do we try to open it out and make it a longer, wider, more open scrutiny? All those things are reasonable and legitimate questions to be looked at in terms of the new climate change legislation, because that will move us away from the constraints that we are in with the 2009 legislation. Is there an opportunity to revise the climate change plan if the implications of the climate change act demand that, or would one have to wait for the next plan, is what I am trying to tease out? I am trying to work out a timescale for the new climate change legislation. The new climate change legislation is effectively resetting 2020 targets, so we would have to go back and look at this plan as well as work out what a new plan would start to look like. There is a danger of overloading everybody. We need to try and manage this whole process. Cabinet Secretary, thank you for your time today and indeed the time of your officials. Can I just say that we appreciate, as a committee, the responsiveness of your officials to some of the requests for further information? The daily requests for further information? That is the role of parliamentary committees, especially in a constrained 60-day period, but your officials have been incredibly co-operative in keeping with the spirit of getting appropriate scrutiny within those constrained timeframes. I just wanted to place that on the record. We move swiftly on to the second item on our agenda, which is consideration of the Legislative Consent Memorandum for the Farrer's Registration Bill UK Parliament legislation. I refer members to the papers and I invite no comments, so we are content. Can I ask if the members are happy to delegate the signing off of the report to the convener? You indicated yes, so that is fine, thank you very much. At this next meeting on 28 February, the committee will consider its draft report on the Scottish Government's draft climate change plan, RPP3. This meeting will be in private. As agreed at a previous meeting, we will now move into private session and I ask that the gallery be cleared as the public part of the meeting is now closed.