Chamber and committees

The Climate Change Committee’s report is a clear signal of the urgent need for transformation across our economy and society in order to achieve our targets. There are strong messages in the report for the Scottish Government on the pace that is required to achieve our targets. There are also comments in there on the role of the just transition and pointers towards the progress that we are making in that area. For instance, it highlights the role of skills in meeting our net zero ambitions for energy, transport, construction, manufacturing and so on. The report recognises that there has been good progress on the funds that we have brought forward, such as the green jobs fund, the just transition fund, which I mentioned in my opening remarks, and the national transition training fund, which has been in place for some time.

Your question about how we will take those strong messages into account in the formation of our just transition plans is a good one, because we will have to take those into account. We are being told that we have to go further faster, but that has an impact on the just transition debate, because it means that a radical transformation of the economy in the years ahead has to happen to achieve our targets.

Next year, we will outline our plans for construction, agriculture and land use and transport, as well as a place-based plan for Grangemouth, which alone is responsible for between 8 and 10 per cent of our national emissions. We will then carry out a massive exercise across Scotland to ensure that the detail in those plans is co-designed with the communities that will be most affected.

Next spring, we will outline our initial plans and begin that debate, which will take into account the need to be transformational.

Yes. Every part of what we are discussing will be a massive challenge for Scotland and for society, given what we are facing and what we have to do in the coming decades to 2030 and to 2045.

According to reports, Scotland has the second-best electric car charging point infrastructure in the UK outside London. Other parts of the UK are trying to catch up and, as Graham Simpson said, we have to do better. Of course I accept that, and I accept that the challenge is massive, but we are making progress on that agenda. We are trying to achieve the transformation of our economy and our society, but where we got to today took us several hundred years and we are trying to cram the equivalent transformation into the next two or three decades, so it is a big challenge.

All I can say is that some of the changes that we require to make to reduce our emissions and to decarbonise Scotland are so challenging that we need to have political consensus to support those measures.

We also need the tools.

Your question goes to the heart of what the just transition is about. When people ask me what the just transition is, I am always keen to emphasise that, as we go through the economic transformation to decarbonise Scotland in the decades ahead, we should use that as a window of opportunity to tackle inequalities and not repeat past mistakes. After all, if we are going to rebuild and redesign our economy, we want to make it better for everyone and to tackle inequality. That is at the heart of the just transition.

Co-design is a very important principle of the just transition. I know that there is a lot more to do, but I always emphasise to any community that I visit and to any organisation that I meet, whether it is in the public sector or the private sector, that any policies that are put in place and any projects that come forward should be co-designed with local communities, because we want to have buy-in.

We have the wider challenge relating to who pays for the just transition. That is why the Government, through its use of public sector funding, is ensuring that we support people on low incomes by, for example, retrofitting their homes or tackling fuel poverty. You will be aware of various funds that have been introduced to support people on low incomes, who are the hardest hit.

Overall, we want to ensure that everyone benefits from the just transition and the prosperity that is available to us. Tackling fuel poverty through deploying Scotland’s massive energy resources will be a key outcome in the next few years, especially in the light of the current energy and cost of living crises. We live in an energy-rich country, yet people are paying through the nose in energy bills. If people in a country that is producing several times what we require for energy are still paying through the nose for energy in 10 or 20 years’ time, the just transition will have failed.

I am up front about those tests. A lot of work and challenges will be involved in getting there, but we have to aim for that. We cannot live in an energy-rich country where people are fuel poor. That is the test of the just transition.

No, I am not hearing enough of that. It would be great to have political consensus on the major steps that have to be taken to transform Scotland’s economy in the years ahead, and consensus that we need the powers to do that. We are held to account for not implementing radical transformational projects, but we need the support of all parties to get the powers to do that in the first place. Other constitutional debates are taking place right now, but borrowing powers are the obvious example.

The more I think and talk about it, the more I realise how important political consensus is, because there are examples of issues that are considered to be important, but which are not necessarily the big issues that we will have to deal with. Those issues become huge storms in the Scottish Parliament and in political battles. We must have more national political consensus about what needs to be done if we want to save the planet, reach our net zero targets and save humankind and civilization, because those are the problems that we face.

Maggie Chapman mentioned keeping the temperature increase to below 1.5°C, but some people are talking about an increase of 4°C by the end of the century, which has major ramifications for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. If we are to tackle the issues that cause that increase, we will need more political consensus

The Government will publish its hydrogen policy in the next few weeks, and a lot of that information will be in there.

Various aspects of the hydrogen debate are being considered around Scotland. For instance, we have talked about CCS and the Acorn project, which has a hydrogen element to it. In Grangemouth in particular, people are looking at how to produce hydrogen.

From my conversations, I think that there is a general acceptance that we must raise awareness. If you are a business, particularly in today’s environment with rising energy costs and all the other challenges, including labour shortages, you are probably not thinking about your just transition plan or your net zero plan. How do we raise awareness and say to businesses that this is not only in their interests but represents a new economic opportunity? There are lots of opportunities for new companies to start up in certain areas. In my area, the small private business that goes around homes putting in air-source heat pumps is overwhelmed with work. I keep thinking to myself that there must be an opportunity there, either for that business to expand significantly or for new businesses, so we must capitalise on economic opportunities.

Yes, I have met all those organisations, and I will continue meet them.

That is an interesting question. I spoke earlier about the challenges that we will face in the years ahead, and that sort of question gets to the heart of it, because the just transition is about not leaving communities behind. There are different situations around Scotland, so as we make the economic transition, we must be careful to work out through what lens we are looking at the just transition. There is no easy answer to that, because the just transition will ensure that we reach our net zero targets, reduce our emissions and carbon footprint, and play a role in the global effort to save humankind. However, locally, as we do that, we must take into account what that means for each individual community and indeed for households, and we cannot leave people behind. We have got to balance all that, and it is not easy.

Yes.

When we put out the call for bids for projects under the fund, each application was considered on its merits, and Scottish Government officials liaised with local authority officials and local Scottish Enterprise offices to decide which projects would be worth supporting. We have to support emerging new technologies in some cases to find out what contribution they can make. I do not think that anything is being pre-empted; I think that there is just straightforward funding of innovative technology.

As I said before, we want, for the benefit of other parts of Scotland, to roll out the successes, discoveries and innovations that the fund has enabled in north-east Scotland. It is a great place to have a laboratory to support and trial different technologies for the just transition because of the presence of the oil and gas and fossil fuel sectors, which have to transition.