Chamber and committees

As I know that the member appreciates, net zero offers huge economic opportunities for Scotland. The changes that are needed will put money into people’s pockets, improve health and wellbeing and protect our planet for future generations. Net zero is a moral imperative and an opportunity to support future economic development.

Workers must be at the heart of a just transition. Our approach will maximise benefits of climate action and minimise impacts for workers and communities. Our next climate change plan will outline the costs and benefits of policies, supported by just transition plans, and our national adaptation plan is driving our response to climate impacts.

As we have seen in other parts of Europe, the helpful thing about many heat networks is the move that has been made from “burning stuff”, as the member put it, to other forms of power. My officials are working jointly with the UK Government to commission guidance that will look at the issue of waste heat. We are also looking at how to ensure that the heat in buildings bill incentivises renewably powered heat networks in the future.

The member is quite right that social justice and environmental justice must go hand in hand. Indeed, as the years go by, we will see that they are, to some extent, the same thing.

On the member’s first question, the Government has taken some time to come forward with the proposed heat in buildings bill because, first, our consultation received a large number of responses that we wanted to give due account to and, secondly, we want to get it right to ensure that we introduce a bill that will help decarbonise Scotland but which does not make people poorer.

The member is right to point to those issues. The Scottish Government recognises the significant impact of methane on global warming and the potential for innovations, including methane-suppressing feed products such as Boevar, to contribute to emissions reductions in the beef and dairy sectors, and we welcome the progress that is being made.

Officials are exploring the development of a pilot scheme to assess the appropriate use of methane-suppressing feed products in Scottish farms. The aim would be to support policy development and inform future decisions on the role that those products might play in reducing emissions.

We continue to monitor progress across the UK and internationally, and we are engaging with other Administrations, research institutes and industry initiatives, such as the UK dairy carbon network, to ensure that our approach remains evidence based and aligned with our net zero ambition.

I will write to the member—actually, I will not. Someone else will write to him in due course with the information that he seeks.

The member is right to point to the fact that not every policy will be popular initially. It is important that the Parliament consults meaningfully and listens to people but, ultimately, we must be clear in our message that we have to reduce our carbon emissions in the future. That particular policy might well be part of that work.

Scotland’s climate is changing. Severe weather events are becoming more frequent and we can expect future changes in the climate to be far worse than anything that we have seen in the past. Global emissions continue to rise and the locked-in impact of past emissions continues playing out in front of our eyes. We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record and the World Meteorological Organization warns that there is

“no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”

We are seeing the effects on our own doorstep. Flooding, coastal erosion, drought and storms are putting increasing pressures on our economy, society and environment. That is why tackling the climate emergency is a priority for the Government and must remain high on the agenda of the Parliament.

I am here today to update Parliament on Scotland’s latest progress in emissions reduction, as shown in the Scottish greenhouse gas emissions statistics 2023, which were published on 10 June. Those statistics are the first emissions reduction figures published since Scotland moved to a five-year carbon budget approach last year. As part of that, the Scottish Government will continue monitoring our climate progress annually, including reporting on our rate of emissions reduction, but our path towards net zero in 2045 will be expressed in new carbon budgets, which we will set out in due course.

The official statistics, which were published on Tuesday, show that Scottish emissions in 2023 were 51.3 per cent lower than in 1990, which is a further reduction of 1.9 per cent on our position in 2022. By using comparable metrics, we can see that Scotland made the largest reduction in emissions in the United Kingdom between 1990 and 2023, reducing those by 51.3 per cent. Emissions in England in the same period reduced by 50.7 per cent, followed by Wales and Northern Ireland.

The majority of sectors saw reductions in 2023. In particular, there was a very large reduction in emissions in the electricity sector of 0.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emitted. Although electricity was historically the biggest contributor to our emissions, Scotland has made significant progress in decarbonising, outpacing other UK nations with a 93.4 per cent reduction in those emissions since 1990. That reflects the continued shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Over 12 months, renewable electricity capacity increased from 15.4GW to 17.6GW by the end of 2024 and gas-fired electricity generation has fallen. Reductions were also seen in fuel supply, buildings and product uses, domestic transport, industry and waste, which all reduced emissions by 0.1 megatonnes of carbon dioxide when compared to 2022.

Agriculture emissions were essentially unchanged between 2022 and 2023, falling very slightly by 0.1 per cent, but our focus on progress here remains strong. We all agree that Scotland’s agriculture has a critical role in both supporting our climate ambitions and ensuring our future food security and economic prosperity. Indeed, our commitment to rooting our climate ambitions in just transition principles for that sector is undaunted. It underpins a considered, collaborative and clear approach to supporting agriculture’s contribution to Scotland’s economic and social vitality while addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.

Lastly, there was some increase in emissions from international aviation and shipping, which effectively returned to their pre-Covid levels, and in the category of land use, land use change and forestry, due to a reduction in the forestry sink as a result of historical planting reaching maturity.

We are taking decisive action to ensure that we continue to reduce emissions and make meaningful progress towards our goal of net zero by 2045, and we are committed to doing that in a way that is just for workers, communities and businesses across Scotland; that provides a greener, fairer future for all; that puts more money in people’s pockets; and that contributes to our overall health and wellbeing.

It has been a privilege to be an acting minister in the Scottish Government for the past year. I hope that members will permit me to look back for a moment at some of the things that have been achieved in the four years since the previous climate change plan was finalised. We have scrapped peak rail fares for good; extended free bus travel, which now benefits over 2.3 million people; and delivered 6,800 public charge points, with a further 6,000 to come by 2030.

We have brought the new-build heat standard into force; introduced a ban on the supply and manufacture of certain problematic single-use plastic items, including single-use cutlery, food containers and more; and created the landmark Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024, which establishes the legislative framework to support Scotland’s transition to a zero waste and circular economy. That is complemented by our circular economy and waste route map to 2030, which will help us to achieve our sustainable resource and climate goals.

Since 2020-21, an average of 11,000 hectares of new woodland have been created each year, including over 15,000 hectares in 2023-24, which was the highest figure for 34 years. Since 2020-21, we have also restored over 43,000 hectares of degraded peat, including 14,860 hectares in 2024-25 against the programme for government commitment of 10,000 hectares.

We have published the vision for agriculture and created the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024, which provides the powers that are required to deliver the agricultural reform programme.

We have launched a new bidding round that is worth up to £8.5 million for the just transition fund for 2025-26, which will drive forward our transition to net zero in the north-east and Moray and ensure that we continue to create jobs, support innovation and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future. More recently, we have already delivered on our commitment to ban the supply and sale of single-use vapes.

Further commitments will see the extension of our nature restoration fund, the establishment of statutory targets to improve biodiversity, and the introduction of our heat in buildings bill by the end of the current session of Parliament.

Despite the progress that we have made, however, we need others to act, too, on this shared ambition. We rely on the UK Government to act in several important areas to enable our future pathway to reduce emissions in Scotland. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage is vital for a just transition to net zero. The Climate Change Committee has advised that it

“cannot see a route to Net Zero that does not include CCS.”

The UK Government’s spending review that was published yesterday provided some welcome support for the Acorn project. However, a commitment to providing funding is not enough. We urgently need the UK Government to commit to providing a full funding package and timeline so that the project can progress towards reality, creating jobs and investing in our communities.

We will soon set out our proposed emissions trajectory to 2045 based on five-year carbon budgets through secondary legislation. Key to that has been the Climate Change Committee’s advice on Scotland’s pathway to net zero in 2045, which was published on 21 May. We are carefully considering the committee’s advice before producing regulations to set our carbon budgets. That includes consideration of the target-setting criteria under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and an assessment of whether the pace of decarbonisation is appropriate for people, sectors and businesses across Scotland.

The carbon budgets that we propose will provide an achievable pathway to net zero in 2045 and they will be followed by a new draft climate change plan that outlines our policies and proposals for reducing emissions between 2026 and 2040 for consultation.

In Scotland, our emissions have halved since 1990. The 2023 statistics, which show a reduction since 2022, demonstrate the positive action that we have already taken to reach our goal of net zero by 2045, and the actions to which we have committed show that we are resolutely focused on achieving that.

I do not think that there is any tradition in the Scottish Government of leaving notes on desks or anything like that.

The member makes important points about transport, which has proved to be a difficult sector to decarbonise. We are right to talk about how Scotland has transformed the way in which we generate electricity, but we are facing up to the fact that other parts of the charts that have been released this week are more challenging, and transport is one of them. The Scottish Government recognises that the transport sector needs to decarbonise in order for us to achieve net zero, and we are committed to doing that in a fair way.

As we have seen in recent years—not least during Covid—annual emissions targets are highly vulnerable to in-year fluctuations such as cold winters and, indeed, global pandemics. That does not mean that we will not produce annual figures; we are doing that, and I have just outlined them to Parliament.

However, multiyear carbon budgets provide a more reliable framework for sustained progress in emissions reduction by not only smoothing out volatility but allowing us to move to a carbon budget framework, as supported by the Climate Change Committee following its success in the UK and in other countries. It advised that carbon budgets are the most appropriate indicator of underlying progress in emissions reduction.

The Seafield waste water treatment works involves a PFI contract that was awarded in 1999, and contractual obligations for its delivery and operations lie with the PFI company until 2029. The contract is funded by Scottish Water.

Some £34 million has been invested in Seafield since 2011 and, in 2020, Scottish Water committed a further £10 million to provide additional sludge storage capacity to improve odour performance. Scottish Water remains committed to delivering improvements for customers and will keep community representatives updated through the Seafield stakeholder group. Scottish Water is at an early stage in developing its plans to ensure a smooth transition of operational responsibility once the PFI contract expires.

We will provide more detail on the next steps in relation to the Heat Networks (Scotland) Act 2021 alongside the introduction of the heat in buildings bill. However, I can assure Parliament that we intend to deliver the rights and powers that are detailed in part 6 of the 2021 act, and that we are working to ensure we do that in a way that avoids duplication with Great Britain-wide authorisations so as to minimise the regulatory burden on the heat network sector in Scotland.