Chamber and committees

I am interested in your thoughts on how the market is changing, in particular for livestock. I talk to farmers and estate owners who are actively selling on to natural capital companies, pension funds and others who have ambitions for woodland creation, commercial forestry, peatland restoration and renewables.

I am not sure whether you will want to comment on this, but the Government probably has a political difficulty in providing a target for livestock reduction. To what extent is it implicit in the way that the market is going that there will be a livestock reduction anyway because, although it is still early days for them, the market in woodland creation and natural capital is clearly going to grow over time? Is there a bit of smoke and mirrors involved in the Government saying, “We are not going to reduce livestock numbers”, while the reduction is implicit in everything else—it will happen anyway? It feels a bit like what you said about diet. Nobody wants to call it and say, “We are going to be eating less meat”, because that might sound extreme, but it is happening anyway.

I just wonder about transparency and how the role of markets and the trends relate to livestock. Are we afraid of calling something that is happening anyway?

But surely, if you have a scrappage scheme in place next year, you will be able to move faster than if you wait, say, up to 15 years for the natural life of a boiler to come to its end.

Do you think that scrappage schemes more broadly have a role to play here, within both the public sector and the private sector?

So you really see the reduction in electricity price as a trigger, whether it is for transport, for home heating or for people shifting over to electrifying technology. At the moment, we are not quite there in terms of a market signal being sent to consumers that it is obvious that they should switch to an electric vehicle and an air-source heat pump.

You set out very clearly that you are disappointed that the Scottish Government abandoned its proposals for the regulations to upgrade properties at the point of sale as part of the heat in buildings bill. Can you say what impact that decision might have on that pathway for decarbonising heat? If the Government sticks with that position after the election and does not put the measure back into the bill, what else can it do to speed things up and grow that market more quickly?

But is that not the fundamental problem with the balanced pathway? It assumes the status quo and that we have a way of working within our society. We have a structural dependence on car use; car use is much cheaper than public transport use; and there is nothing that fundamentally alters that balance. At the end of the day, the question is: what will actually convince people to leave the car keys at home and to get on a bus or a train? The policy on peak fares and all the other measures are fantastic—indeed, my party has been pushing for them in this Parliament—but where is the fundamental shift that is needed? When I look at the balanced pathway, I do not really see much hope of getting big reductions in carbon emissions from different sectors, unless that fundamental change happens. It just feels as though we are managing some carbon reductions within the status quo, instead of thinking outside the box and saying, “Well, these are the really big options for change that have to be fair, but which could ultimately benefit people.”

I am struck by just how important electrification is going to be in all areas of our lives. Beyond the important UK Government decision on electricity market reform, decoupling gas from the electricity price and allowing CFDs—especially the new CFDs that you have outlined this morning—to reduce costs over time, what can householders do? How can they be supported to reduce their electricity costs?

At the moment, the market is providing low-cost tariffs. For example, under EV tariffs, people pay 8p or 8.5p per kilowatt at night, typically, as opposed to 25p to 30p per kilowatt during the day. What supplementary measures can the Government take to support people? Battery storage in the home would enable people to shift a great proportion of their electricity consumption to the night time and, as a result, they could benefit by signing up for those far cheaper rates.

I do not know what the picture should look like for householders and consumers, but, beyond the big question of electricity market reform, which householders are not able to influence, what measures can people take in their homes? What should the Government be doing to support them on that journey?

Do you think that those variable, far cheaper electricity prices will be a fixed feature for consumers and householders? Can consumers and businesses that supply technology such as night-time battery storage be certain that it will always be possible to buy cheaper electricity at certain times and thereby save on bills?

In essence, would you see investment in net zero policies increasing the competitiveness of sectors such as ethylene or cement, which you see as having a long-term role in Scotland, or do you think that there are risks in going too fast?

Thanks, convener. I turn to buildings—both homes and other buildings. Earlier, you put it to us that there is a real need to switch to much more efficient technologies that are lower cost for consumers but also much lower carbon. I ask you to reflect on the change that we have seen in expectation. In the 2020 climate change plan update, the Scottish Government had a very ambitious programme—well, it was not a full programme as such, but it contained an ambitious target of a 63 per cent reduction in emissions from the building sector to 2030. That clearly represented an enormous ramp-up of a range of technologies, although the programme at that time did not really specify how that would be achieved. That differs quite a lot from what you are now putting forward in the balanced pathway, which sees a much greater adoption of technologies than in the third and fourth budgets.

Can you offer a bit of narrative as to what you think has changed around the expectations on building carbon reduction in recent years and what is now the realistic pathway?