Chamber and committees

Thank you. I am going to move on to questions from Kevin Stewart.

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2025 of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee. We have received apologies from Michael Matheson, and both Douglas Lumsden and Kevin Stewart are joining us online.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking items 3 and 4 in private. Item 3 is consideration of the evidence that the committee will have heard on the draft Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 (Scottish Carbon Budgets) Amendment Regulations 2025—I am sure that the titles of these things get longer every time I am given them to read. Item 4 is consideration of the committee’s work programme. Does the committee agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Maybe it is because I have not quite got used to my new hearing aids. I am working on it.

If you are refuting my previous comment, I want to try to work out the cost to each household in Scotland of reaching net zero in every year between now and 2045. What is your estimated cost?

No. I was simply going to suggest that, before you go on to your next line of questioning, which I think is on agriculture, it might be appropriate to take a wee break. We have been going for an hour and 45 minutes, so I suggest that we take a 10-minute comfort break until 10.55 to allow everyone to stretch their legs before we continue.

I suspend the meeting for 10 minutes.

Welcome back. Bob Doris, I apologise for cutting you off as you were about to launch into the next bit. Over to you.

Before we move on from the issue of heat pumps, I have a question. I am thinking about a two-bedroom, two-public room house with a kitchen and a bathroom, which was built before 1950. As a surveyor, I would estimate that, by the time you have put in the heat pump, insulated the house and replaced all the equipment in it, it would cost between £30,000 and £40,000. Those are the sort of figures that I have been given by the industry. If electricity prices were to reduce the price of heating the house by £500 a year, it would take 70 years for somebody to pay back that cost.

How will you encourage somebody to buy in to replacing an oil system that is running at the moment and to spending, say, £30,000 to £35,000 on a heat pump system for their house if they do not have that money in the first place and it will take them 70 years to pay it back? I am just trying to get a price for individuals so that they understand what this will cost them. It will then be up to them to make a decision. Are the figures that I have quoted unreasonable?

I have a couple of questions. One of my concerns is that, in Scotland, herd reduction has been going on apace for many years. Numbers have been decreasing naturally, as Mark Ruskell suggested. The problem is that reducing livestock numbers will undoubtedly affect small-scale producers, who will feel that it is no longer possible for them to continue farming if the returns from their animals are reduced because they are asked to keep fewer of them. In my opinion, it will disadvantage small-scale producers.

I support the Government making some moves to reduce the calving interval, but farmers as a whole have increased maternal traits of their cows, which means that less is driven by bags. There is also earlier finishing. Most farmers can produce an animal for the table in 11 months, but they are not allowed to sell it as Scotch beef until it is 12 months old. They are forced to keep it for another month until it becomes Scotch beef, in effect, which seems bizarre to me.

Farmers have also driven with less intervention and they have followed the old principles of Turnip Townshend. Eoin, I am sure that you have looked back at those. They are about crop rotation and making sure that mixed farming is going on. That is what we should be driving towards, rather than, say, putting trees in pastures, which to my mind comes with problems regarding flies. That causes problems with all the cows and livestock that are there.

Do you not think that having a more integrated and clever farming system, with mixed farming at the core of farming in Scotland, would be a better approach than just having a blanket reduction in livestock numbers?

While you are there, Dr Devane, could you just answer a simple question for me? As a more balanced pathway to net zero, the Climate Change Committee suggested a 6 per cent shift from car use to public transport use. What does that mean per car user in the UK? How many kilometres will they have to shift? Six per cent does not mean very much to me, and I doubt that it means very much to the car user.

I will bring in Mark Ruskell before I delve into that too deeply.

I thank both witnesses for their very interesting evidence today, and I would encourage them to follow up on the issues on which they said that they would get back to the committee. They should know that the clerks will be in contact to remind them what those issues are, so that information can be circulated to members.

We will now move into private session.