Question reference: S5W-06879
- Asked by: Mark Ruskell, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Green Party
- Date lodged: 3 February 2017
-
Current status: Answered by Roseanna Cunningham on 15 February 2017
Question
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) abatement for each (a) policy and (b) proposal in its Draft Climate Change Plan.
Answer
Previous reports on proposals and policies (RPP1 and RPP2) were produced using a bottom-up approach that identified abatement for individual policies and proposals from sector specific emissions projections. This approach was unable to consider cross sectoral interactions. For the draft Climate Change Plan, the Scottish Government has taken a different approach by using the TIMES model.
The draft Climate Change Plan used the TIMES whole-system energy model to help us understand least-cost ways of achieving emissions reductions by assessing how effort is best shared across the economy. This approach allows us to develop an optimal pathway for meeting Scotland’s emission reduction targets consisting of a carbon envelope for each sector, along with suggested policy outcomes needed to live within the carbon envelope. The draft Plan sets out the package of policies and proposals that are expected to be required to deliver the policy outcomes needed for each sectoral carbon envelope.
In the draft Plan, instead of abatement numbers, 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. The impact of policies in delivering outcomes and the overall performance on emission reductions will be reviewed regularly through the Plan’s monitoring framework and the greenhouse gas statistics.