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Item 2 is the main business of the afternoon. We will hear evidence from a panel of academics with expertise in carbon assessment as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish Government's draft budget. I welcome Professor Jan Bebbington, director of the St Andrews sustainability institute and vice-chair for Scotland of the Sustainable Development Commission; Professor Stuart MacPherson, chair of Irons Foulner Consulting Engineers; Professor Susan Roaf, from the school of the built environment at Heriot-Watt University; and Dr Thomas Wiedmann, director of the Centre for Sustainability Accounting.
I ought to say that I am not an economist—that is how I start most conversations, just to make sure—but an accountant. With my accounting academic hat on and in my role as vice-chair for Scotland of the SDC, I am interested in how carbon assessment is used by an entity to discharge accountability to other parties and to allow it to control its own activities.
As no other witnesses want to make any opening remarks, I will move on. What, if any, involvement have any of you had in developing the carbon assessment of the draft budget that has just been published?
I have had none.
I had some marginal involvement. I should mention that, apart from working at the Centre for Sustainability Accounting, I am a research associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, where I have worked with environmental input-output analysis and carbon footprint accounting for the past seven years.
My involvement was reasonably marginal too. There was a high-level seminar in the early days to look at developing the particular tool as well as the more specific policy-orientated tool. I attended that seminar, and contributed as a person in the room.
I have had no involvement.
Already in the first couple of minutes, a couple of you have mentioned other environmental input-output models, carbon footprint models and so on. Have other Governments or national or subnational Administrations taken similar approaches to or formulated similar models for the carbon assessment of budgets?
Not at the level of detail of the carbon assessment, to my knowledge. Several other national high-level carbon footprint accounts have been put together, mostly by several research groups around the world. They calculate a nation or country's total carbon footprint by allocating emissions to final demand or consumption, part of which is Government spending. As a result, some papers and other literature have a figure for Government spending, but that figure is aggregated and is not broken down into, for example, spending lines. I am pretty sure that this level of detail is a world first—I certainly have not seen anything like it anywhere else.
Australia has very high-level accounting and uses a very detailed input-output model, but the figures are broken down by sector rather than by policy line.
That is right.
I second those comments. There are high-level top-down analyses that set out the carbon impacts of an Administration's activity, but the approach that we are discussing is unusual in that a Government is providing an account on its budget spending. If a Government is providing such an account, either it must have some control over the issue—and the carbon account will give us some clues to that—or it must feel that it might be held accountable for it. It is unusual in that the Government is saying, plausibly, that you might want to hold it accountable over whether the carbon footprint actually decreases, even though at this stage of the game we are not entirely sure how to do that. Of course, until you get the account, there is no way of knowing whether the issue is controllable and, if so, in what way. This is the first time that an Administration has self-consciously applied a carbon measurement to a budget figure, but it should be pointed out that such an approach has downsides as well as upsides.
My knowledge on this matter is not related to the econometric scale; instead, I am interested in project-level carbon accounting and in how you choose between options for specific future projects to reduce the Government's carbon or greenhouse gas emissions footprint. As a result, I am not qualified to answer the question.
There may be questions later on how the assessment integrates with other aspects of Government decision making.
The Scottish carbon accounting group, or SCAG, which I represent and which is a loosely convened group of people who are interested in this field, very much welcomed the carbon assessment and its groundbreaking strategy. Obviously, the methodology is only emerging and we need to identify improvements in it. It has been noted that one key need is to identify clearly levels of uncertainty in the method and to clarify the robustness of the different approaches used in it with regard to different data models and relationships. Although there has been clarity on some issues, we had concerns about specific data in a number of areas, as I am sure will emerge in this afternoon's discussion. Do you want me to go into details or just to give a general overview?
Could you give one or two examples?
One example relates to the quality of data. The assessment includes 2006 data on the carbon intensity of industry and 2004 quantitative relationships between industry spend and consumption. We wondered whether that feature of the method was realistic going forward. It was asked why the Government does not use bottom-up data on fuel consumption, which should be increasingly available and might provide a more precise estimate. Those are examples of some of the questions that were raised.
So there is work that needs to be built on to improve the robustness of the tool for future budgets.
Why the tool is being developed also needs to be explained. If the purpose is to help the Government to produce policy options, it is perhaps an unwieldy methodology. Fundamentally, the number 1 issue is clarification of how the Government thinks that it can use the assessment and whether, if the intention is to use it to make carbon-based decisions on policy options, it is the right tool for the job.
The assessment distinguishes between high-level carbon assessment and individual-level assessment, which is a useful and important distinction. On high-level assessment, which I understand is the stage that we are at now, the method chosen is exactly the right one. Environmental input-output analysis is particularly suited to capturing economy-wide impacts, because it is a model of the whole economy, which means that all indirect effects that are triggered by Government spending are identified. It is the right basic methodology for such assessment.
Should we expect development of the assessment tool, to enable us to break down information about salaries? For example, could we ascertain whether money is spent on different kinds of goods and services depending on whether public sector pay is increased at the low or the high end of the scale? Do we think of the public salaries bill just as money that goes into the economy, or should we think about where it goes after that?
That is an interesting question. The issue can certainly be investigated, because there are tools that enable us to distinguish between expenditure by different socioeconomic groups, for example. We know that there are different consumption patterns. Such an exercise would be valuable and could well link to policies that are aimed at reducing poverty. There is potential to go into the matter further.
Like Thomas Wiedmann, I was surprised that induced emissions were included. As I said, accounts are about accountability and controllability. The induced impacts—that is, what people who are paid by the Scottish Government do with their money—are not controllable by the Government, which cannot say, "Here's your salary and here are the things you are allowed to spend it on." The Government cannot be accountable for how people spend their money; that is the individual's business and not their employer's business.
I am not an economist, I am a bottom-up person who is interested in appraising specific projects and courses of action. When assessing my comments on this issue, you must bear in mind that I am speaking as a lay person and am much less qualified than my colleagues.
Other members will ask about the methodology behind the emissions that have been included. Do you have anything to say about the emissions that have not been included in the current assessment, such as emissions that will arise from the use of infrastructure that is built by government spending?
I will start with what is not included and the use of infrastructure, which comes in on page 14. There is a wee bit of a fudge. I think that the Government is right to quarantine some emissions out of the assessment, otherwise there would be several layers of analysis together and it would be hard to understand exactly what you were looking at.
Calling imported emissions manufactured is too narrow a description, because other emissions are included, such as upstream emissions, including from service provision and capital goods. I would stick with imported emissions.
I expect that committee members will have asked what use is the assessment if we cannot use it to inform our policy-making decisions? We asked that question as we went through it. Obvious uses can be made of the information. For example, the outputs of the assessment capture the role played by the rural affairs directorate very clearly, because of the high carbon intensity of its activity. As a result, we could say that it should be a clarion call for focusing emissions reductions opportunities in the area of land use. Some policy decisions therefore can arise from the assessment, but not the day-to-day policy decisions that the committee probably makes.
Are you suggesting that a future version of the assessment applied to next year's budget should examine the aspects of the Government's spending that give rise to emissions in the traded sector and the non-traded sector?
You should ask an expert such as Tommy Wiedmann to deal with that; it was just something that we noted.
I cannot find the paragraph but, to be fair, the assessment does note the traded and non-traded issue. That issue does create problems, because traded sector emissions occur elsewhere. I suspect that most people would be caught under the carbon reduction commitment through which spending is focused. There will be an element of traded emissions, but you cannot tell how much.
I think that many of my questions about methodology have already been covered. If the witnesses have nothing more to say about the choice of methodology, I will move on.
To pick up on a point that has been made before, I also thought that 11 megatonnes, or 13.5 per cent, was quite a small amount. However, when we break into the figures a bit more and look at the spending categories that flow out from them, such as electricity and moving people around, we see that there is some intensity in those activities but not as much as might have been thought. For the amount of spending in the economy, that is a relatively low percentage of the carbon, which is quite interesting.
One issue to bear in mind when examining the results is that they take a consumption perspective, which asks what emissions occur as a result of one's consumption or activity. In this case, we are asking what indirect emissions occur as a result of Government spending? That does not mean that the Government is directly responsible for all those emissions, because they include much more than only emissions from the Parliament building, for example. In a way, there is a shared-responsibility perspective, in that the assessment shows the emissions that an activity generates, but the actors who produce those emissions are throughout the economy—they are industry and consumers.
Professor MacPherson, you commented on the level of emissions that are attributed to one sector or another. Do you want to expand on those comments in relation to induced emissions?
No, because I am a lay person in that respect, as I said in preface to my remarks. The public sector in Scotland is a large economic entity, and I was simply surprised that only 13.5 per cent of Scotland's 85 megatonnes of greenhouse gas footprint was attributed to it. That is a surprising number to a lay person, especially if we include induced emissions, but I accept it if others have examined it thoroughly, say that it is correct and are able to back it up.
Some of the witnesses have commented that it is strange that induced emissions were included and have discussed the impact of that. The assessment is supposed to be a carbon budget for every pound of Government expenditure and, given the sheer size of the public sector in Scotland, a large proportion of that Government expenditure is made up of wages. Is it better for the induced emissions to be included, even if they are an additional complex layer, or should they be taken out because they do not sit comfortably within the assessment? What is the better approach in making a rounded budget?
Induced emissions should be in the assessment. It is interesting to see their magnitude and effect. To get a complete picture of every pound that the Government spends, it is interesting to see direct, indirect and induced emissions. Induced emissions inform policy and might even help to tailor certain policies. If we want to compare Scotland's carbon footprint with those of other nations, we might have to put induced emissions aside, simply because other national carbon footprint accounts do not include them and we have to compare like with like. We must keep that in mind, but it is good to include them.
I am slightly less cheerful about including induced emissions. I would tend to leave them out, but that does not make their inclusion right or wrong—there is a point of distinction. I would leave them out because you have some control over the other emissions. If you decided to spend your money differently or invest in infrastructure differently or whatever, your direct, indirect and imported emissions would change. However, your induced emissions would change only if you directed people to spend their money in particular ways, which I cannot see any employer doing, or if the overall shape of your economy changed, as that would change your employees' spend as well. Induced emissions are not controllable in terms of following the wage line. You could include those emissions for the sake of conducting a trend analysis, if you like, but the fact is that those emissions will reduce as you restructure your economy—that is fine, but you cannot claim direct responsibility for that. Induced emissions are in a different category of information from the other three types of emissions, which is why I tend to want them to be quarantined in some way.
We can all look into that.
Only if you have trouble sleeping.
Earlier, we discussed income averages and the possibility of analysing them in a different way so that we can pick up how people spend their income. We also have industry carbon-intensity averages. The budget therefore very much uses averages. Does anyone have any comments on that usage and its positive or negative implications?
Using industry sector averages in the input-output model has certain limitations. It is perfectly reasonable to use them for the high-level assessment, which considers aggregated spending and the total amount, because spending in one industry sector can affect a range of subsectors, and there will be some averaging out at a higher level.
I do not think that you can use this assessment as a policy-informing tool. However, it is a useful tool in showing areas in which we are not well equipped. For instance, it tells you that if you spend £1, you will create a certain amount of carbon, and if you spend less, you will create less carbon. Does that mean that the Scottish Government will say that it will spend less money because it must meet the targets? Possibly not, but the Government might consider how it could decarbonise spending, which takes us on to the question of energy and the tricky issue of how we count the energy subsectors. The tool is a fantastic stimulus to upping the game. We will have to solve such problems. However, I cannot see how it can usefully be used to make anything other than the highest-level budget decisions on policy.
Does the tool claim to do more than that? The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth says pretty much what you said in his foreword to the assessment, so perhaps we should not be surprised that it is not a policy-informing tool.
I agree. The tool does not set out to inform policy. Another tool will be developed that will try to do that.
I am sorry that I have not been here throughout the meeting—I had something else to do, which is linked with the work that we are considering.
I would not say that explicitly, because the assessment is not a spanner. However, it is still useful. It is a discharge of accountability. We are talking about the carbon impact of spending money. In that respect, we are talking about an accountability mechanism, not a tool as such. You might ask whether something is too carbon intensive or less carbon intensive and how things will change. That sparks a conversation about responsibility. However, the assessment does not say that it is a spanner. We have other things that are spanners.
I used to be an academic before I became an MSP, and I do not want to be anti-academic, but it strikes me that the assessment is an academic tool. A policy maker will want something different; they will want to know what the consequences will be if one thing is done as opposed to another thing. Aspects of the assessment might drive in that direction, but although pursuing a high-level approach is perhaps academically interesting, it does not necessarily drive us in the direction in which we want to go. Would it not be better to have quick and dirty models that say we will deliver certain reductions if we do certain things?
I disagree with that on two bases. First, carbon assessment is not the only tool. If it was the only thing that we were using, I would agree with you. If we had only one amount of effort to spend, carbon assessment would not be the first thing that I would spend it on.
A few of us from SCAG got together and discussed the matter. Obviously, trends are shown. There is concern about the level of risk in the data, but there is also the fundamental question, what is the tool for? I presume that that is for the Scottish Government to decide.
It might make sense to distinguish between high-level and individual-level assessments. I would not call a high-level assessment a tool; rather, it is an accounting method. I agree with Jan Bebbington that it is important to have that method, because it proves retrospectively that something has changed. If there are high-level assessments year after year, it is to be hoped that improvements will eventually be shown. Such accounting is important for democracy, so the issue is not just academic. Carbon assessment is not suited to being a tool with which policy makers can explore the effects of different policies, which is the forward-looking method that is being looked for. We need individual-level assessments for that and more data and adapted methodologies to estimate future emissions benefits. High-level assessments will prove and record things, and, I hope, ensure that benefits are captured in the accounts.
I want to pick up on Mr McNulty's point. Bottom-up assessments are my area. A bottom-up assessment is needed if a client asks what course of action they should follow that will result in the lowest life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Anyone who has ever tried to provide a bottom-up assessment will know that such assessments are horrendously complicated. Therefore, one issue that needs to be dealt with is the availability and reliability of data, so that a realistic bottom-up assessment can be made of different courses of action, such as whether buildings should be constructed by one method or another. However, such assessments are difficult to do, given the information that we have on the embodied greenhouse gas emissions in materials and so on.
Other members will ask about the development of an individual-level assessment later. We will return to Shirley-Anne Somerville for her next question. I remind members that supplementary questions should be supplementary to the question that was asked.
As was mentioned earlier, the carbon intensity of spend is broadly similar across portfolios, with the exception of the rural affairs and the environment portfolio. Do the witnesses have any comments on that similarity between the budgets? Further to Professor Roaf's point, what lessons can be learned from the situation with the rural affairs and the environment budget?
As was said before, the carbon assessment demonstrates that there is a need for a clarion call to decarbonise the rural affairs and the environment portfolio. Such a demonstration is another useful function of the assessment, so we should perhaps see the assessment as being part of a process rather than as a tool. It must be a systematic process that includes action planning, target setting and so on, as well as the carbon assessment. The assessment has been useful in identifying the high carbon intensity in the rural affairs and the environment portfolio. How we then develop a process that will begin to answer the questions that the carbon assessment raises is another important question.
It is not so surprising to see that there are not tremendous differences between the different spending budgets. That is probably due to the fact that the assessment still provides a relatively aggregated or high-level report. I understand that, underlying each budget line, the model attributes expenditure to 126 different sectors, so there is more detail. The differences in those lower-level data will be more significant.
I would dovetail the agricultural carbon intensity that is identified in the assessment with the NOx emissions, which I understand are related to how farming is done. That opens up that debate enormously. If we put that together with the policy and programmes work resulting from the climate change delivery plan—which I believe will be published next year—we could start to see a tie-up between the figures in the carbon assessment and where action is taken to deliver the aims of the act. At that point, we would have a cross-check, or another accountability check, of whether spending leverage was also being used to try to address the broader areas.
I can only offer my perspective against a layperson's perspective on the econometrics of the matter. With the exception of the figures for agriculture, I was struck by how similar the profiles of greenhouse gas emissions per £1 spent seem to be, but I wonder whether that is partly, or largely, a function of the fact that average data were used and applied across the different areas. Perhaps there is a fairly heavy factor that tends to pull the figures towards the mean.
Carbon sequestration is not included in the figures—we touched briefly on that earlier. Do you have any more detailed comments on how it could be included, or on whether it should be?
If there was sequestration as a direct result of Government spend, it ought to be included so that we have net figures. If someone takes responsibility for what they emit, they should also be able to take the credit for what they draw in. However, the spending lines in the draft budget do not go down to that level of detail. The Government does not spend money on planting trees, unless there are direct subsidies to particular programmes for tree planting. If there are such subsidies, we get into the secondary effects of Government policy and spending leading to certain outcomes.
If we think about carbon capture and storage as an example, figures for the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere would immediately go into the energy budget, so they would be masked by the average figures for the sector. Is that right, Tommy?
Yes, I think so. The UK national environmental accounts have a specific line for land use changes, including afforestation, and sequestration through such changes. I am not sure about the Scottish environmental accounts. As a matter of consistency, it would be good for those factors, and carbon sequestration supply technology such as carbon capture and storage, to be included. Ultimately, over time, they would show up as reduced emissions.
The assessment throws up some results that could appear to be anomalous. For example, the emissions that are associated with the motorways and trunk roads budget appear to be a great deal lower than the emissions that are associated with the Scottish Public Pensions Agency. Are such anomalous results a cause for concern? Can members of this and other committees use the carbon assessment to judge potential budget amendments that might come up during the parliamentary scrutiny process?
I would not use the document to do that. On issues such as motorways and trunk roads, I would use the "Carbon Account for Transport", as it sets out the baseline and the proposed activity and gives the carbon account of that. That is outside the boundaries that have been drawn for the carbon assessment. This is where the interpretation element becomes important: we must be clear about what the assessment is and is not, and it might be easier to be clear about what it is not, rather than what it is. There are other carbon accounts that allow members to interrogate the use of transport infrastructure. The figures exist and are available.
So, until the assessment or tool, or whatever we call it, is linked with a host of other approaches, it is hard to use it to judge the worthiness of spending in a particular area.
Yes, but it might direct you as to where to look—it is a useful directional device. For example, from our reading of the document and our conversations, we have found that there is a need for a further look at the rural portfolio and that our actions in that area are important. The delivery plan that is associated with the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 provides the same sort of story—it shows where we should look to take carbon out of the system. Transportation is another big part of that story. Once we have dealt with energy production, transportation and agriculture, we will have done some of the big jobs, but those are also the intractable issues. Another big item is the built infrastructure, including housing.
Is there a danger in having a document that the Scottish ministers have trumpeted—I am not sure that that is a fair term, but the document is presented with some pride—but which throws up apparent anomalies that could give rise to serious misinterpretation?
There might be a danger of people not seeing the fuller picture, for example, if they look only at the graphs. If people read the report, they will understand that the assessment for roads includes emissions from spending on road construction, but not emissions from the cars that will use the roads. If somebody just flicks through the results in the report quickly or sees only the pictures, they might not know that. That is a danger, which is why it would be good to include such points in the captions to make it really clear what we are looking at and to avoid misinterpretation.
It is important to make the distinction between the carbon assessment, which is a greenhouse gas emissions budget for the Scottish Government's direct and indirect expenditure, and emissions that follow on from that, or the public consequences of that expenditure, for which the Scottish Government is not directly accountable. The assessment is not a cost benefit analysis tool to consider whether we should build a road; it is simply an account of the greenhouse gas emissions consequences of the Government's expenditure of which it is directly in control. Whether someone drives a gas-guzzling car or, like Sue Roaf, a Polo Match, that is their choice and the Government is not directly in control of that.
The carbon assessment is a good first step, but it would be good for Parliament to develop it into a much fuller and more rounded process. There should be a clear route map. The carbon assessment should be done, with the functions of that particular methodology; then, other accounting procedures with different functions, such as target setting, action planning and budgeting, can be carried out. People could see that that was much more rounded and we could start to develop much more certainty about the way in which the individual-level approaches are compatible with, used with and relate to the higher-level ones. The carbon assessment is a fantastic first step, but the process must be filled out so that people have a much clearer idea of how the assessment fits into the whole ambitious strategy of the Government to carbon account for its policies.
Your answer is much fairer than my question.
Absolutely.
The one possible big advantage of the carbon assessment is that it may also help the conversation and negotiation about who is responsible for doing what. If a road is provided and I drive on it, there is a shared responsibility. Once you get a sense of the carbon impact of driving on the road and compare it with the information that you can get out of the carbon assessment about the direct impact of building the road, you know which matters more—whether the driving matters more than the construction of the road. However, the construction of the road induces the traffic. The carbon assessment gives us a much greater ability to have a conversation about shared responsibility and where responsibility lies. That kind of conversation, which develops citizens and communities that will be responsive to being responsible for their carbon, becomes important.
Given that this tool—I will call it a tool at this stage—is in the very early stages of its development, do you think that it is applicable to individual local authorities?
Local authorities would be able to work out their carbon footprint from the carbon assessment. However, my understanding of what they are doing through their own carbon footprinting projects is that they already have some of the data, but they are probably more likely to be slightly more bottom-up than top-down.
My understanding is that the authors of the carbon assessment approach have assigned local authority spending to different industry categories, but if, as you say, a great deal of bottom-up data are available in local authorities, that is perhaps an obvious area in which the assessment could be strengthened.
Yes, although those data come from common bases because the tool that local authorities use to understand their carbon footprint is based on input-output tables, which are exactly what the carbon assessment is based on. The big databases that we use to understand where the carbon is and how we assign it to activities usually run through tools that are in the public domain, but I will not say anything about those because Dr Wiedmann knows everything about them, as that is the Stockholm Environment Institute's main business. They should be compatible with one another, although if all the figures from the local authorities were combined, they might not add up to the total national figure. That is an empirical question; I do not know whether the figures would add up, because we have never had carbon accounting before, so we cannot figure that out.
Technically, it is possible to break down national Government spending to the local authority level. In the national monetary accounts of the United Kingdom—the situation is similar for Scotland, but I am more familiar with the UK accounts—Government spending is broken down into several columns, including central Government spending, local government spending and then different types of spending, such as education, health and so on. It is possible to break down the figures, and we have used those data to undertake specific carbon footprint analysis for local authorities. They have found it interesting to see not only their direct emissions from the energy that they use in houses, schools and their estate—electricity and street lighting, for example—but their indirect impacts through spending on goods and services.
The assessment document says:
I do not know. I suspect that that work went on in closed rooms that I certainly had no access to.
That is pretty much the answer that I expected.
Much has been said this afternoon but, in summary, the feeling is that we need to develop both high-level and individual-level assessments. In any case, Professor Roaf has said that the assessment will provide a fantastic stimulus to upping our game. What is the panel's view on the direction for high-level assessment, and does this year's exercise provide a robust baseline for reporting in future years?
It provides a very solid basis. It uses probably the best methodology; in fact, when I discussed the issue with a number of people, we all decided that the methodology had been well chosen and was good and robust. Of course, it will be refined throughout the process and, at some point, we will be able to draw a line in the sand and base future trends on it.
I agree. The usefulness of the exercise will emerge only if it is required to be carried out year after year. There are certain methodological quirks that can be improved and I hope that, over time, the data gathered can be more up to date and that the time lag will not be as long as it is at the moment. There might well be further developments. As the work is very much about accountability and looking retrospectively at what has changed as a result of implementing policies, I certainly recommend monitoring year after year.
Likewise, I want to see the trends. However, what I would like even more is for you to ask the cabinet secretary Mr Gordon's question about whether the calculations made any difference whatever to the decision-making process. Of course, that question will be quite hard to answer, given that this is the first year that the Government has had the figures.
I will come back to that in my next question.
I am not an expert in that area, so I will merely make an observation. As the methodology and the data that are used improve over time, we must keep an eye out for the effect that that approach produces, as opposed to a genuine effect that results from a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. If we refine our methods and get more up-to-date data, we might see an apparent downward trend in emissions. It would not be a real trend, however, but simply a function of the fact that the data were compiled in a slightly different way. We would need to be careful to separate an apparent trend that was induced by changing the way in which the data were captured and used from a real downward trend in greenhouse gas emissions.
Indeed. My next question is on individual-level assessments. I know a bit about the rural economy. Scotland's geography and its soil conditions mean that there is little room to move away from livestock-based agriculture in much of the country. We therefore have a very limited ability to alter the carbon balance that is created by livestock production.
That brings us back to the theme of sustainable development versus carbon. It becomes very important in the rural economy, as we will make choices at various stages to live with carbon because we believe that it is good to have it, despite the other things that are involved. My main concern, as a commissioner with the Sustainable Development Commission, is that carbon will take such a centre-stage position that those other things will be lost, including equities and a whole bunch of other stuff, such as different types of biodiversity.
I cannot comment on any specific Scottish policies, as I do not have knowledge of them. In general, with regard to advantages and disadvantages, the individual-level assessments are essential to explore the effect of policies. They will involve individual scenarios, and they will always be only estimates of future emissions. They involve uncertainty, but they are essential in order for us to make informed decisions. They will be helpful in the end, whatever estimates we get from them.
I beg to differ on the agriculture issue. I am particularly looking forward to 2030 when, I believe, Glasgow will be the champagne producing centre of Europe because of climate change.
The bubbles in the champagne might have an added effect on the atmosphere as well.
Yes—if they are carbon dioxide.
I am sure that we could look into that in greater depth in the future. Thank you.
I wonder which parliamentary committee will have the nerve to propose a fact-finding visit to areas that produce sparkling wine after today's discussion.
Are you making that proposal?
Not just yet. I ask Des McNulty to wind up the formal questioning.
How useful will the carbon assessment be in allowing subject committees to scrutinise the carbon impact of spending in individual subject portfolios?
At the current level of resolution, it will not be particularly helpful until we see some of the individual-level assessments, which might be more helpful. The carbon assessment gets things started but it does not necessarily go all the way.
I would like to pursue what might be seen as an inconsistency in what Stuart MacPherson said about the individual-level assessments and what is being said about the overall budget carbon assessment. Stuart MacPherson seemed to say that individual-level carbon assessments were complicated, with lots of factors to be taken into account, and that we are not sure whether we can conduct them in specific areas for specific purposes, yet there seems to be a greater degree of confidence in assessment at the aggregated level, where one would intuitively think that the degrees of uncertainty would be exponentially greater. I am interested in that apparent contradiction in your degrees of confidence.
The overall picture is just that—an overall picture—and looks back at what has happened, whereas the individual-level assessments suggest what we should do next, given an array of different options. Because the high-level assessment is high level—it is accurate in terms of its high level and the way it has built itself—it would not allow us to create individual-level assessments.
That is true up to a point, but we must question the assumption that individual-level assessments are forward looking whereas high-level assessments are inevitably backward looking. It could be argued that individual-level assessments could also be backward looking—that is an element of their being forward looking—and that, in fact, every good individual-level assessment should be backward looking as well as forward looking. It is the use to which the assessment is put, rather than the methodological aspect, that is critical.
I would certainly not want you to go away with that impression from anything that I have said. The description that Stuart MacPherson just gave is a really good one. There is a trajectory—we know that some things are better and some things are worse. An individual-level assessment without many data might give us a sense that we need to go to one place rather than another, but if we wanted to know exactly where, that would take more data. I am an "and" person: we need high-level and individual-level assessments because otherwise we have no way of moving forward. I want to be really clear that we around the table are saying "Both, please"—for different purposes.
I did not intend to create the impression that ILAs are so difficult that we should not be trying to do them, but I was emphasising that they will be difficult.
There are huge areas of uncertainty in the methodology as it stands. For example, we have to use UK data as proxy for imported emissions, and there are some questions about the extent to which it is a reasonable assumption to do so. It might therefore be sensible to request a description of the uncertainty around the data, where it exists in the current method, because I do not think that such uncertainty is exclusive to the carbon assessment.
I agree with Professor Bebbington that both high-level and individual-level assessments are needed. There is a trade-off in terms of the required effort. It is no coincidence that the high-level assessment is a top-down approach that is quicker and simpler to do, and that individual-level assessments will take a bit longer because more data have to be gathered and so on. Both types of assessment are essential, especially when informed decisions about specific policies need to be made. Individual-level assessments are needed, even if there is some uncertainty around them. I agree that such uncertainty should be documented, but having an ILA is better than having no estimate at all.
If the Government has to choose between, for example, increasing investment in cycling and dualling the A9, and it chooses to dual the A9 and reduce the money for cycling and, at the same time, produces a high-level carbon assessment to show its interest in carbon, as a politician I am interested to know how those two things can be juxtaposed. My problem is that it is hard being sucked into a debate about the technicalities when some individual-level assessments are being made that I might want to home in on.
I would argue that we need to move beyond marginal changes. The trajectory to which we have committed ourselves through the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 is a non-marginal trajectory. Given the urgency of the situation and the fact that the current science shows that we are close to a 2°C tipping point, fiddling at the edges is not a viable or sensible option. The decision almost sits outside whatever data we might put around it; it is a choice about how we look at the budget as a whole. If the situation is as serious as we believe, and given what the science tells us and the fact that Parliament has passed the 2009 act, it may be decided that it is time for non-marginal, zero carbon-based budgeting and to start again. The process will carry on, but it might be done in parallel.
In the first couple of years of the current session, there was a great deal of focus on getting the climate change legislation in place and making it as good as it can be. Now that we are moving into the implementation phase, do you get the feeling that people in Government are saying, "We've never done this before. We're going to get some things wrong; we're going to get some things right"? Humankind has never faced this challenge before, so it is understandable if people feel that way. We have the climate change delivery plan, the carbon assessment of the budget and, later, individual-level assessments and option appraisal. Do you get the feeling that we are moving in the direction of a coherent approach, or is the approach a bit fragmented at the moment?
This is probably the first Parliament in which this discussion is being heard—I think that it is a phenomenal step forward. Patrick Corbett, at Heriot-Watt University, has said that Scotland will lead the carbon enlightenment. That is great; we can do it together.
I am going to be slightly grumpy. The key is scrutinised delivery, and the difficulty in scrutinising the delivery is identifying early on when something is slipping and what needs to be done about it. My main fear is not that the approach is fragmented rather than coherent but about how we will deal with failure in the system. All the elements are in place to enable us to go towards a glorious future, but as I understand it, when we get to the end of the Kyoto protocol period, the world collectively will not have met the targets that we set ourselves. How will we deal with that political failure and get back on track? That is the big issue for the future: we will need to identify quickly when the system is failing and then get it back on track.
The crucial point is integration. I can see the carbon assessment being integrated more and more into political decision making. By accounting on a higher level year after year, a picture will emerge that will show progress in that area. I would encourage the Government to continue on that path.
The implementation of the carbon assessment will involve it becoming part of the decision-making process for all projects. The life cycle of the greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with those projects has to be a key part of the approach. Therefore, the Government must ensure that that happens, but not to the extent that the focus swings too far and we end up with dysfunctional decisions being made because social and other impacts are not taken into account.
I thank all our witnesses for their time. I know that we have overrun slightly, but this is an important policy area.
Meeting continued in private until 17:10.