Chamber and committees

First, I recognise the efforts that Ben Macpherson has made as the constituency MSP in raising the issue with the Government and others. Scottish Water remains committed to delivering the investment through its PFI partner. I understand that the delays relate to the PFI company’s difficulty in procuring a suitable supplier in the busy United Kingdom marketplace. He will know that the PFI system was the creation not of this Government but of previous ones. I understand that Scottish Water has confirmed to the Seafield stakeholder group that the procurement strategy has been revisited accordingly. I am sure that Ben Macpherson will continue to raise those issues assiduously with future ministers.

Ensuring a just transition for Scotland’s oil and gas sector is at the heart of our green industrial strategy. Those supply chains and workers will deliver net zero and unlock growth.

We are supporting businesses, including through our £500 million 10-year just transition fund. Our investment of up to £500 million over five years in offshore wind will leverage private investment and anchor Scotland’s supply chain. A just transition depends on United Kingdom Government action across reserved areas, including providing clarity on the fiscal and regulatory regimes for oil and gas, as well as support for the Acorn carbon capture and storage project.

As Jackie Dunbar rightly points out, both Governments have a role in that regard. I am pleased that, even in the minutes before I got to my feet, there was again discussion in Westminster about the Acorn project and a commitment to some part of that. However, timescales and funding for the whole project need to be allocated if we are to have confidence that it will go ahead. Clearly, both Governments have a role to play and, as I have indicated, we in the Scottish Government have not been shy to play ours.

As I indicated, we have not been waiting for a plan to take action—important as a plan undoubtedly is. I have mentioned the £500 million investment over 10 years and the many actions that the Government is taking.

Douglas Lumsden is right to point to the real anxiety that exists about ensuring that the north-east has the economic future and just transition that it deserves. The reason why I also pointed to the UK Government is that, for instance, the policy on the energy profits levy is continually raised by the industry in the north-east as something that is making life more difficult. That is why we raise it with the UK Government.

I strongly concur with the member and agree with what he says about the essential nature of reaching net zero, and not only to save our planet—as if that were a small consideration—because doing so is also essential for our businesses, as the cost of adaptation to and coping with climate change will become increasingly expensive if we do not tackle the problem as we go. I very warmly concur with what the member has just said.

As I said, some of the plans are dependent on something that is happening in another sphere—that is, on the United Kingdom Government’s interaction with the courts. We must wait for some of the information from that. However, as I indicated previously, that fact does not keep us from action. For instance, we have allocated £125 million to the economy of Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland; on top of that, we have allocated £75 million to the just transition capital fund for the north-east and Moray. As a Government, we are committed to putting in real resources and effort to ensuring that the transition is a truly just one.

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.