Chamber and committees

Peak-time fares on trains are a huge drain on household budgets. Extortionate prices prevent many from choosing rail over the private car, which damages our climate and drives down passenger numbers at a time when they need to build back up. How will the budget deliver fair fares for people while boosting the climate and our newly nationalised ScotRail?

Earlier this year, I visited, with the cabinet secretary, Touch primary school, where we saw the pioneering neurodevelopmental pathway project that is being trialled by schools in the area. However, I am still hearing from families in Fife who are desperate for that kind of multi-agency support for their children to be rolled out further.

Has the pilot concluded, what findings were gleaned from the trial and does the Scottish Government have firm plans to roll out that type of programme to other areas across Scotland?

In the previous session of the Parliament, four parliamentary committees raised serious concerns that the climate change plan was not fit for purpose, so it was good to hear the CCC finally reflect many of those concerns in its report.

Undoubtedly, the new climate change plan must do better, so will the cabinet secretary accept that we urgently need to drive down the growth in aviation mileage and that no options should be off the table to do that?

Sorry, in that case, no.

The biodiversity COP starting this week underlines how the climate and nature crises are two sides of the same coin. In Scotland, rising temperatures have threatened some of our most iconic species. The very habitats, such as peatlands, that can help us to naturally capture and store carbon from the atmosphere are now under threat, causing them to release the carbon that they hold. I look forward to the forthcoming Scottish biodiversity strategy starting to address those twin crises head on.

Much in the Scottish Government’s programme for government has put us on a faster route to net zero. There is an ambitious heat in buildings strategy; free bus travel for the under-22s, which we learned today is now benefiting more than half a million young Scots; a surge in tree planting; and a new deal for wind power. However, no Government is yet going far enough and the UKCCC and Scotland’s Climate Assembly have both highlighted areas for faster and more radical change, especially in the areas of aviation, peatland restoration and diet change. Like other members, I am sure that there will be further challenges when the UKCCC releases its Scotland update report tomorrow.

The challenging and necessary targets set by this Parliament mean that a far more ambitious climate plan must be developed early next year. The current plan is already way out of date and does not reflect the ambitions of the Bute house agreement. No options should be off the table in developing the new climate plan. The leadership shown by the French Government, which this week banned domestic flights where there is a rail alternative, signals the kind of options that must be considered if we are truly to deliver. Whether we currently have the powers is a different question, but we must spell out what is necessary.

It is clear that an outdated business-as-usual model will lead us down a road of no return. I will continue working as a member of the NZET Committee and with Greens in the Government to ensure that Scotland delivers transformative action on climate and nature.

If I have time in hand.

Will the member take an intervention?

After COP27, the odds are now, sadly, stacked against keeping the world to 1.5° of heating. The UN secretary general described the latest IPCC report as an “atlas of human suffering”. This is what we now face; it is completely inevitable.

However, the threat should galvanise us, because, even if 1.5° is now dead, we must redouble our efforts to keep hope and progress alive. It will not be enough to have short-term technical decarbonisation plans that allow business as usual to simply continue. We need a revolution in our thinking, and we must look forward to future generations with every action that we take, because the footprints that we leave today will last for generations to come.

It is time to join the dots and see the connections in what is already happening to our world. Europe is currently heating at twice the rate of the rest of the planet, while the Arctic is heating three times faster. Every fraction of a degree of Arctic temperature increase has resulted in a more erratic polar jet stream, bringing heat waves, droughts, forest fires and excess deaths across Europe.

A melting Arctic permafrost could mean game over for this planet. If the tipping point is reached, 25 to 40 per cent of global carbon budgets could be blown by permafrost emissions alone. We are one people living on one planet with a shared history and a shared future, and what happens in the Arctic writes the future of a community in Bangladesh.

That is why it was so important that COP27 finally took a critical step forward towards climate reparations for nations that are at the front line of the crisis, with a dedicated fund established for loss and damage. However, as the conference came to a close, we saw the progress that was made in Glasgow start to wither away without delivering the necessary commitments on a phase-out from all fossil fuels.

Despite Alok Sharma’s leadership at COP26 and his calls for a phasing out of all fossil fuels, the Westminster Government has largely continued with business as usual. Despite continuing calls from the International Energy Agency for there to be

“no new investments in oil, gas and coal”,

we have seen a disastrous expansion of oil and gas licences in the North Sea and may even see permission being granted this week for a new mega coal mine in the north of England. We cannot drill our way out of either the energy cost crisis or the climate emergency; the answer to both of those is a rapid transition away from oil and gas that delivers for both workers and the planet.

COP26 showed us that, when they work together, small nations can lead the world on climate justice. That is exactly the message sent by the launch of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, when a flotilla of countries joined together to plan for a fair and fast phase-out of fossil fuels. Chile, Fiji, and Washington were among the newest members to join the alliance and commit to fossil fuel phase-out dates at COP27. I expect that this Government’s programme of work to understand our energy requirements in Scotland will lead to us joining that growing network of climate leaders.

It is also crucial that the Scottish Government continues dialogue with Westminster about joining international calls for collective withdrawal from the Energy Charter treaty, which is now beyond reform. Fossil fuel companies should not be allowed to sue Governments for hundreds of millions of pounds if they introduce policies that limit the use of coal, oil and gas in line with our climate ambitions.

I thank Paul McLennan for giving us all the opportunity not only to celebrate the progress that we have made so far with renewables in Scotland but to look at what is in store for the next chapter.

The report that we are debating is a useful baseline. It captures the jobs and economic benefit delivered in Scotland to date, but, in the years to come, we will look back at today’s figures and see just how small they were in comparison to what will be achieved. I will focus my contribution on the onshore wind sector and the need to not forget about onshore wind but double down on its progress in the years ahead.

Onshore wind continues to deliver the lion’s share of the economic benefit of renewables in Scotland. It remains the lowest-cost renewable energy and, dispersed across Scotland, onshore wind farms continue to provide predictable supply at a time when electricity demand for heating and transport continues to rise.

Year on year, the carbon content of our electricity generation is falling, largely due to onshore wind. With that, in turn, the climate impact of every electric vehicle and heat pump falls. Step by step, turbine by turbine, we are decarbonising electricity, largely with onshore wind and almost without noticing.

Meanwhile, from Shetland to the Borders, wind farms continue to provide community financial benefit and, with new projects, there will be new opportunities for that benefit to spread more widely and to grow in value. Outside our national scenic areas, wind farms also provide the opportunity for investment in nature restoration, public access and economic diversification at scale in our uplands.

Public support for onshore wind remains consistently high and grows locally once communities have had the experience of hosting turbines. After nearly three decades, we now have a flourishing ecosystem of Scotland-based developers, subcontractors and specialists who are ready to support the next stage of growth in onshore wind. The real challenge will be to match that sector with an equally strong domestic supply chain for wind farm component manufacturing.

The renewed commitment to onshore wind in the Bute house agreement will help to provide certainty to manufacturers and others that there is a strong market and a supportive environment for investment in Scotland. A target of 12GW of additional onshore wind by 2030 backed up by planning reforms and a strong policy statement is the start of a sector deal that will drive investment. Let us remind ourselves that the sector is incredible. It has smashed every energy target that has been set at Holyrood since devolution. It is ready to meet the hardest challenge that it has been set to date.

That growth needs to take place at a scale that has never been seen before in Scotland. The pace of new development will need to speed up. We cannot afford to have wind farm projects languishing in the planning system for seven years, as has been the case recently. We are in a climate emergency. Good wind farm proposals in the right places need to be fast tracked through a streamlined planning process. We no longer have time to wait. The planning system must allow those machines to fight climate change.

However, it is not just new sites and new projects that are needed. Existing wind farms need to be repowered quickly with newer, more productive turbines. Repowering alone means another 600MW to 800MW every year for the next 15 to 20 years, so it is a huge mission. It will be our children who work on those wind farms, just as the hydro schemes from our grandparents’ generations are still spinning and creating employment today.

Endless renewable technologies supporting enduring jobs for generations to come: that will be the renewables story told by future reports. We just need to focus and realise that vision.

Next week, I will host an online summit with my constituents to discuss the future of bus services, and I would be happy to share the results of that with the minister. Does the minister believe that the regulator currently has enough powers to hold the bus companies to account over minimum standards of services?

I thank the minister for attending the COP in Egypt. Although there was one step forwards, to address loss and damage, there were two steps backwards on fossil fuels. There was a clear failure to commit to any phasing out of oil and gas. Arguably, COP27 has left the goal of 1.5° dead.

Right now, fossil fuel companies are using the energy charter treaty to sue Governments for hundreds of millions of pounds if they introduce policies or laws that limit the use of coal, oil and gas. However, at COP27, Germany joined the call for the collective withdrawal of countries from the treaty. Does the minister agree that the energy charter treaty is now beyond reform, and will ministers raise the issue with the United Kingdom secretary of state?