The next item of business is a statement by Aileen McLeod on “The Scottish Greenhouse Gas Emissions Annual Target Report 2013” and “The Scottish Report on Progress Towards Meeting the Interim Target”. The minister will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
After the previous statement, I unfortunately had to drop three members who wished to ask a question, because we ran out of time. Can members bear that in mind when asking their questions?
14:52
In 2009, the Parliament acted unanimously to enshrine world-leading climate change targets in legislation. We were supported by huge numbers of people across Scotland—in business, in the public sector, in academia, in non-governmental organisations, in schools, in trade unions, in communities and in homes. Through that collective high ambition, we established world-leading targets of a 42 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 and an 80 per cent cut by 2050. The Scottish Government was also the first national Government in the world to establish a climate justice fund.
I am proud of those actions and of Scotland’s ambition. Continued ambition and action are required from all of us if we are to tackle the environmental harm and social injustices that climate change causes. Through the recent Scottish leaders climate change pledge, we have again, as political parties, shown our collective commitment to tackle the challenge. Across Scotland, many people are doing the same thing and are taking action as individuals, as families, as communities and as organisations.
The Scottish Government is committed and is leading by example. Our Cabinet sub-committee on climate change demonstrates our commitment to tackling the issue at the highest level in Government. We have pledged about £1 billion of funding over 2014-15 and 2015-16 for climate change action. We have a comprehensive package of measures in place to meet our climate change targets to 2027. By taking action on climate change, we are investing in our people, our environment and our economy and creating a fairer and more prosperous Scotland.
We are reducing the amount of energy that people use. We are already below the consumption level that is required to meet our 2020 12 per cent target—that happened seven years ahead of schedule.
We are reducing levels of fuel poverty. Since 2009, we have allocated more than £500 million to a range of fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes and we have a budget of £119 million for the current financial year. In June, I announced that the issue would be a national infrastructure priority for the Government.
We are reducing our dependence on fossil fuels by scaling up renewable energy. Scotland now generates from renewables almost half the electricity that is needed to meet demand. In 2014, the amount of heat that was generated by renewables in Scotland grew by 36 per cent.
We are focused on community and locally owned energy. Last month, five years early, we reached our 2020 target of 500MW of community renewables. Across Scotland, nearly 45,000 people are employed in the low-carbon economy and its supply chain. In taking action to reduce emissions from transport, we have increased investment in active travel by more than 80 per cent in comparison with 2013-14. We are committed to rail electrification and we are working with partners to deliver our electric vehicle road map. More electric vehicles are being sold in Scotland than ever before.
We are encouraging waste reduction, extending recycling and reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill. In 2014, 42.8 per cent of Scotland’s household waste was composted, recycled or reused. For the first time, the rate of landfilling of household waste fell below 50 per cent.
Scotland is taking action locally and being recognised globally. Christiana Figueres, the head of the United Nations climate body, has cited Scotland’s ambition on renewables and low carbon as a “shining example” to other countries. We have set the bar high with our world-leading targets.
Scottish ministers have sought to push up global ambition since 2010. For example, while in Lima last year, in my first days as a minister, I signed the compact of states and regions, which is an international reporting platform for sub-national Governments that represent 12.5 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product and more than 325 million people. This year, when attending the world summit climate and territories in Lyon, I signed the under 2 MOU, or memorandum of understanding, which is another initiative between sub-national Governments that is aimed at promoting high ambition ahead of the Paris summit.
In this milestone year, if the Paris summit is to produce a truly effective global response to climate change, the international community will have to match Scotland’s commitment. We hope that the Paris summit will be a big step forward. It is crucial that we push further to limit global warming to 2°C or less if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change falling on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
Although Scotland’s targets are challenging and there is much still to do, I emphasise that we are making good progress. This morning, I laid before Parliament “The Scottish Report on Progress Towards Meeting the Interim Target”, which shows that, in each year from 2010 to 2013, the percentage reductions that we achieved exceeded those that were set out along the trajectory to meet the 42 per cent reduction in 2020. In fact, Scotland’s emissions have fallen by 38.4 per cent from the 1990 baseline, which leaves just a further 6 per cent reduction over seven years to meet the 2020 target.
Scotland is clearly on track to meet its interim 2020 target. We should focus on that message, as it is a fantastic achievement. Of course, we know that the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 requires even greater reductions to meet the 2050 target. There is no room for complacency, and we will not fail to recognise the challenges of meeting Scotland’s annual targets.
I recognise that the other report that I laid today shows that Scotland’s 2013 annual target has been narrowly missed, by 1.7 megatonnes. Once again, that is because of revisions to the baseline since the fixed targets were set. I highlighted that in my statement to Parliament on the publication of the 2013 Scottish greenhouse gas statistics in June this year. At that time, I explained that changes to the methodology for calculating emissions have added 10.6 megatonnes to the 1990 baseline, which makes it harder to meet the annual targets.
Despite that, Scotland’s emissions have fallen by 38.4 per cent from the baseline, which is far greater than the 31.7 per cent reduction that was envisaged when the target for 2013 was set. Had it not been for successive increases to the baseline, Scotland would have met and exceeded its targets for 2013 and the three previous years, so Scotland is making significant progress towards the 2020 and 2050 targets.
However, we must continue to lift the pace of our actions against our fixed annual targets. That is why, in June, I announced further measures on energy efficiency, the environment and transport that are aimed at reducing Scotland’s emissions. As I also indicated in June, we will ensure that climate change is a top priority through a Cabinet agreement to embed it in the autumn budget process.
I remain determined that we will make up for the cumulative shortfall that has resulted from Scotland’s missed annual targets. We will do that by ensuring that the third report on proposals and policies—RPP3—addresses the matter, as well as by setting out measures that are required to reduce emissions out to 2032, which will fulfil our statutory requirements under sections 35 and 36 of the 2009 act.
However, this is not just about the Government; it will take continued commitment and action by all of us if Scotland is to achieve the required emissions reductions. That is why the production of RPP3 will be a wide and participative process that builds collective ownership and responsibility.
We will have a conversation with people across Scotland in which we listen to their views on climate change and on the actions that we must collectively take. We have started that conversation, and events are planned with community groups in the new year. Given the impact that decisions that we make now will have on future generations, we must give a voice to the next generation of Scottish leaders by involving the 2050 climate group. Engaging the Scottish Parliament will be a key element, and opportunities are being developed to get involved alongside regular parliamentary business.
Those are just a few of the plans that are being put in place to ensure that RPP3 is a truly collective endeavour. I call on the Parliament to agree that commitment and action are required from all of us if Scotland is to continue to lead by example in tackling climate change. I want us to take that message to Paris to demonstrate Scottish leadership and encourage others to step up and embrace the climate change challenge that we all face.
The minister will now take questions on issues that were raised in her statement. I intend to allow no more than 20 minutes for questions, after which we must move on.
I thank the minister for advance notice of her statement. Failure in the past four years means that 18 megatonnes of carbon are now in our atmosphere that would not have been there had the targets been met. That is equivalent to the whole Scottish energy sector’s output for one year.
Progress on renewables is nowhere near enough to compensate for failure on farming, transport, housing, buildings and infrastructure. The minister mentioned £1 billion of spending in the budget. Is that new money and will she publish details of the projects now?
Given the rise in public sector emissions and the failure on housing, surely the national infrastructure project must be brought forward to start now. Will the Scottish Government sign up to the existing homes alliance’s asks?
Section 36 of the 2009 act requires ministers to detail how we will make up for missed targets in the early years. Where is that report?
Today’s reports confirm that there has been no reduction in household emissions. The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 enables householders to get discounts on their council tax for energy efficiency measures but, last year, only two households in the whole of Scotland benefited. Is the minister proud of that? Her predecessor, who is sitting beside her, correctly stated that failure to sort out our leaky, draughty homes was
“a regular vulnerability”
that required
“efficiency and decarbonising electricity and heat generation”—[Official Report, 10 June 2014; c 31980-1.]
but we are not seeing that. Pride in renewable heat shows a staggering lack of ambition, given the low targets that are set.
I am glad that the minister is going to Paris but, without radical action, today’s statement and our 2009 act are meaningless. The statement reeks of complacency.
Our long list of achievements demonstrates the good progress that we are making. Our target was to reduce energy consumption by 12 per cent by 2020, and consumption was already at the required level in 2013—it was down by 13.3 per cent from the 2005 to 2007 baseline.
On heat, the amount of heat that is generated by renewable sources in Scotland grew by 36 per cent during 2014.
On housing, we have allocated more than £500 million since 2009 to a raft of fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes. We continue to focus on increasing the energy efficiency of homes in order to tackle fuel poverty, with a budget of £119 million for 2015-16.
On renewables, our provisional annual statistics for 2014 show that the equivalent of 49.6 per cent of Scotland’s gross electricity consumption came from renewables. That is just short of our interim target of 50 per cent by 2020.
On community and locally owned energy, we announced on 17 September that, five years early, we have reached our target of 500MW of renewables capacity by 2020.
On transport, compared with 2013-14, we have increased investment in active travel by more than 80 per cent, from £21.35 million in 2013-14 to £39.2 million in 2015-16. That is at a time when our overall capital budget has decreased by 26 per cent.
On the section 36 report, as Sarah Boyack will know, producing a credible package of proposals and policies to make up the shortfall of 17.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent from previous annual targets and to get back on track to meet future annual targets will take time. As I said, we intend to set out detailed proposals and policies to compensate for the excess emissions from previous annual targets, and we plan to lay a draft of RPP3 for scrutiny by the Parliament towards the end of 2016.
We are making significant progress. We have cut our emissions by 38.4 per cent and are more than three quarters of the way towards meeting, ahead of schedule, our target of a 42 per cent emissions reduction by 2020.
I thank the minister for the advance copy of her statement, which I say with the best will in the world seems to bear a remarkable similarity to last year’s statement. Among all the good stuff—I do not deny that there is good stuff in the statement—it is deeply disappointing that, for the fourth year in a row, the Government has yet again missed its target. The Government has never actually met its target. That begins to get much more than just deeply disappointing because, every time that a target is missed, the gap between where we began and where we want to get to increases.
The minister blames baseline revision, and the Government did so last year, as well. As the annual targets and the basis of policy are considered, why do allowances not appear to be made for the baseline revisions that we all know are coming?
The minister says that she will fulfil section 36 of the 2009 act, and she indicated in her answer to Sarah Boyack that she will do so through RPP3. However, I do not believe that RPP3 fulfils section 36. Sarah Boyack asked where the section 36 report is, and I repeat that question.
Forestry planting has a major role to play in emissions reductions. Thousands of hectares have been felled to make way for wind farms in the past few years, and they are supposed to be replaced by compensatory planting. How many hectares of compensatory planting have taken place over the past three years and what percentage does that make up of the total area of timber that has been felled for wind farm development? I quite understand that the minister might not be able to give me those figures today, but will she undertake to write to me with them?
The fixed annual targets were established on the basis of the 1990 to 2008 inventory in order to meet an emissions reduction target of 42 per cent by 2020. Since then, the baseline has risen by 10.6 megatonnes. Given the effect of cumulative upwards revisions to the inventories since the targets were established, the percentage reductions that are required to achieve the fixed targets are now out of line with the 42 per cent reduction target. As I said, if it had not been for successive increases to the baseline since the targets were established, Scotland would have met and exceeded its annual target for this year and the three previous years. We have missed our fixed annual emissions targets because of changes in how the data is calculated as a result of methodological improvements.
The progress that Scotland can make in reducing emissions also depends on the policies and actions of others—especially the United Kingdom and the European Union. The UK Government’s cuts to energy efficiency and renewables measures are creating a worrying climate of uncertainty for low-carbon policy in the UK. In his letter of 22 September to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said:
“The uncertainty created by changes to existing policies and a lack of replacement policies up to and after 2020 could well lead to stop-start investment, higher costs and a risk that targets to reduce emissions will be missed.”
I am happy to answer Alex Fergusson’s point about forestry in full. RPP2 was clear that the target of 10,000 hectares a year was an average over the period to 2022. We are reversing the historical decline in woodland planting rates and protecting that important carbon sink.
In 2013, forestry was the only sector in which there was a net emissions sink. Planting rates increased to an average of 8,000 hectares a year during the period from 2011-12 to 2014-15, which equates to about 16 million trees a year. With the launch of the new Scottish rural development programme, we aim to raise the planting rates from 2015.
I am sure that the minister will join me in welcoming the third peatland forum and conference, which starts in my constituency today. Methane levels have been increasingly marked up in the greenhouse gas inventory. In what ways have the measurement of methane emissions from deep peat, such as that in the flow country in Caithness and Sutherland, helped to meet our stretching Scottish climate change targets?
The new international reporting requirements, which came into force for the 2013 inventory, have increased the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas and made it harder to meet our fixed annual targets. Measurement of methane in deep peat is not currently required under the greenhouse gas inventory under international reporting requirements. However, work is under way to estimate emissions that are caused by the human influence of the drainage and rewetting of peatland. Those emissions are intended to be included in the greenhouse gas inventory once research has been completed. While that work continues, we have been supporting restoration through the Scottish Natural Heritage-led peatland action initiative and the new SRDP.
Before I call Claudia Beamish, I point out that Ms Beamish has hurt her foot. She has my sympathy but, more important, she has my permission to stay seated for her contributions.
In the lead-up to Paris, climate justice will be at the heart of Scottish policies. What is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that a just transition strategy is in place to support communities likely to be affected? How is the minister working with other ministers to ensure that transferable skills, leading to new local jobs, will benefit those in the fossil fuel industries who are losing their jobs now, as well as jobs in the longer term?
We strongly recognise that the poor and the vulnerable at home and abroad are the first to be affected by climate change and will suffer the worst, yet they have done little or nothing to cause the problem. The injustices in that are very clear, which is why the Scottish Government is championing climate justice.
We want to ensure that we see a just transition to a low-carbon economy, with the burdens of climate change and the benefits of that economy shared equitably. The Scottish national action plan on human rights commits Scotland to continue to champion climate justice and ensure that we develop a co-ordinated approach to climate justice at home and abroad, and to embed climate justice in the national performance framework and align it with the UN’s post-2015 sustainable development goals.
We also have our innovative £6 million climate justice fund, which is supporting 11 water adaptation projects in four sub-Saharan African countries—Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda and Tanzania. Since 2012, £3.8 million from our international development fund has gone to community energy projects in Malawi.
I have also been championing climate justice in my international engagements. I had the opportunity to do so during a plenary session at the world climate summit in Lyon.
One in every four of Dundee City Council’s cars and vans is now electric. In conjunction with Transport Scotland, it is now investing a further £1 million in EV infrastructure across the city, contributing to one in 15 of the taxis there being electric and Dundee boasting one of the largest and fastest-growing fleets of electric car club vehicles. Is that progress being mirrored across the other 31 local authority areas, or do we need greater buy-in from our councils if we are to get transport emissions down to something resembling an acceptable level?
Backed by £2.5 million of funding from Transport Scotland’s switched-on fleets initiative, Scotland’s local authorities are leading the way in the adoption of electric vehicles. In a 2014 survey of 433 councils in the UK on how many electric vehicles they had in their fleets, four of the top five were from Scotland. Dundee City Council came top, with South Lanarkshire Council, Glasgow City Council and Fife Council placed in second, third and fifth respectively.
Dundee City Council is the only Scottish local authority on the shortlist for the UK Government’s electric taxi scheme and the go ultra low city scheme. If successful, those bids will be worth more than £20 million to Dundee City Council and its partners. I am sure that we would all want to wish Dundee every success with its bids. We will obviously share learning from the Dundee work across the country to enable the city, and ultimately Scotland, to be globally recognised as a leader in innovative electric vehicle deployment.
I thank the minister for the advance copy of her statement. She told Parliament just now that the RPP will not be produced and laid before Parliament until the end of 2016, but my reading of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 is that a section 36 report should be produced
“As soon as is reasonably practicable.”
That is in the law. Is the end of 2016 as soon as is reasonably practicable?
I would say to Tavish Scott that we also have to go through a very thorough consultation process and to lay the report in time for Parliament, as well as the parliamentary committees, to give it the proper scrutiny that it deserves.
It is clear that action on climate change requires to be taken at every level and by all. What will the Government do to encourage individuals and organisations to play their part?
A wide range of action on climate change is already being taken by individuals, families, communities, businesses and other organisations right across Scotland, but we need to continue to do more. Our national ambitions to tackle climate change will be realised only by people across Scotland taking action.
The pace of the transition to a low-carbon society will be determined by how we as individuals, as well as households and communities, adapt and change our behaviours. That is why in the new year, as part of the development of other measures to tackle climate change between now and 2032, we will be asking people across Scotland for their views on climate change and on what action we can collectively take. All of us, including businesses, the public sector, communities and individuals, have a vital role to play.
There has been much talk of baseline revisions, but the Government has the power under the 2009 act to come back to the Parliament and ask to revise its targets itself. It has not done so—in my view, quite rightly—but surely we must draw from that fact that the annual targets remain reachable and that the commitment is still there to reach them.
Therefore, would today not have been a good day for the minister to come to Parliament and tell us how much money is attached to the national infrastructure priority on energy efficiency and when that work will begin? Has the minister been told by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy how much money is available?
When the Committee on Climate Change published the Scotland progress report back in March, it said that inventory changes had made our legislated targets much harder to reach. It also said:
“We will work with the Scottish Government to address the issue: Further inventory changes are pending. We recommend that the Scottish Government should continue to investigate further abatement from measures that go beyond current policies. We also propose to agree a process and timeline with the Scottish Government to advise on the implications for Scottish targets of significantly improved inventory data that is expected later in 2015 and again in 2017.”
We will continue to work with the Committee on Climate Change on that.
On the progress that we have been making on improving the energy efficiency of Scotland’s homes and non-domestic building stock, the detail of that programme is being developed, but it will be a truly national programme, providing support for all buildings across Scotland. We will work closely with stakeholders to design and develop the new programme over the next two years.
Obviously, I cannot pre-empt any discussions on spending, but the Cabinet sub-committee has agreed that we will embed climate change in the budget process.
I thank the minister for her statement.
I note that the minister congratulated herself on reducing the levels of fuel poverty. Does she accept that almost a third of Scots remain in fuel poverty and that that is completely unacceptable? Does she recognise that only 30 per cent of privately owned or rented homes achieve an energy performance certificate with a C rating and that 65 per cent achieve D and E rates? Will she commit to giving the same emphasis and investment to the private housing sector that her Government currently directs towards the social housing sector?
We have already allocated over £0.5 billion since 2009 on a raft of fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes. Nearly one in three of our households—more than 700,000—have now received energy efficiency support. Tackling fuel poverty remains a priority for the Government, and we are spending unprecedented amounts on fuel poverty and energy efficiency this year, with a record budget of £119 million for 2015-16.
I apologise to the four members I have been unable to call. We need to move on to the next item of business.
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