There has been movement in that space—largely, I think, due to prompting from voices in Scotland saying that that has to happen. There has also been influence coming from other countries that want to import hydrogen that is made not just in Scotland but in the wider UK. However, it is principally Scotland that needs the standards to be bottomed out as part of the plans to export hydrogen. I am very excited about its export, but I am particularly ambitious about its domestic use. Hydrogen is not a silver bullet—there are no silver bullets—in addressing climate change. It requires myriad solutions, and hydrogen is part of those solutions.

You say that I would have had a year to persuade the UK Government to change its view on reform of the electricity market, but I have been trying for nearly three years to get it to do that. Indeed, my predecessor was encouraging it to change the electricity market for years. I really do not think that the UK Government would have said, “Oh, well, there are triggers in place in Scotland now, so we need to step up and change the electricity market in order to lessen some of the fuel poverty implications.”

That reform needs to come now, and I have been continually pressing the UK Government to bring back some of the mechanisms that were discarded in the REMA process. For example, it has discounted zonal pricing and the decoupling of gas and electricity, which would be the major game changer for people and the lever that would make it attractive for households whose boiler has reached the end of its life to switch to electricity or get a heat pump.

We also have to remember that heat pumps will not work in quite a lot of the housing stock in Scotland. I live in such a house—and, believe me, I have had people in.

We need to do what we can to support through grants and loans people who want to make such a change. We already have a good programme of work; we might need to ramp it up, but that will be for future budget decisions.

The fundamental game changer when it comes to the decarbonisation of heat is lower electricity prices, and the market will be created—and boosted—by such an intervention at UK Government level. After all, it is not just Scotland but the whole UK that will have to decarbonise heat. We are talking about the UK’s 2050 targets, too, and its response to the Supreme Court judgment, under which the UK Government has to bring forward what it is going to do.

It is perhaps not universally popular, but I am a big believer in blending a percentage of hydrogen into the gas grid as a medium-term measure. Gas boilers are the majority solution for household heat. We could put 10 or 20 per cent hydrogen into the grid. The concept has been proven by Scottish Gas Networks, which is testing 100 per cent hydrogen. It is also proving that it can do blending.

We come back to the issue of multiple solutions. If we have an onerous solution that is a one silver-bullet-type situation, we will not have buy-in from householders and we will not meet our net zero objectives. We need to make it easy and cost effective for people. I think that reform of electricity wholesale prices is the game changer that will happen.

I leave the detail of the heat in buildings bill to Ms McAllan to take to Parliament.

The details will be in the climate change plan. I do not have the details with me—we have not published the draft plan yet; we are bottoming it out.

Scotland is already exceeding a lot of its targets for tree planting anyway: the latest figure is that Scotland produces about 70 per cent of the tree planting for the whole of the UK. We are already punching well above our weight in that respect, although we still need to do more. However, it needs to be the right planting in the right places, working with partners who see the benefit of that planting.

No. I am not going to talk about taxation in a climate change plan. We will set out the costs that are associated with the climate change plan and put them in the context of the market creation that is involved and the costs and benefits that are associated with that market creation.

It will have an estimate—

Yes.

Do you mean the emissions impact of the legislation or of the budgeting?

I am not going to go into all the substantive points. People have made their views clear. I do not think that it is lazy to suggest that there is a cost, a danger and a great deal of risk associated with doing nothing.

I align myself with the comments that the deputy convener made about the Parliament’s responsibility. I feel that we fell down in our responsibility in the previous session by not doing what we could to support even the most minor policy directions that were put to the Parliament. It is not enough to support a target. There has to be concerted action. If we do not do it in this generation, the next generation will ask, rightly, why it was put in such a precarious position.

I have moved the motion in my name, but I will leave my comments until such time as I have a full plan in front of me and I am able to answer all the detailed questions that have been asked today.

That is very much on my mind. I come back to what I was saying about the question of heating buildings: we have to make sure that it is affordable and that people feel the benefit from it.

I will come on to the nuts and bolts of how we make it affordable. Yearly budget decisions will be made, but we will set out our costings in the climate change plan, too. We will also point to the fact that it is, rightly, not going to be only a Government spend. There must be Government and private contributions to it.

I also point to the cost of not doing it. There is a cost associated with not doing it in terms of the impact that that will have on the resilience of communities. There is also another cost, which points to some of the innovation-related things that I have been talking about. If Scotland is a hothouse for innovative ideas to get us to net zero by 2045, our economy will be boosted as a result of that activity. I mentioned Copenhagen: people there had the idea that they wanted to decarbonise Copenhagen. Out of that came many industries and businesses that are now world leading. That is where I see Scotland in relation to floating offshore wind and carbon capture and storage. There will be a long-term economic benefit associated with the actions to reduce our emissions. I am absolutely confident that there is a massive economic return.

We need to make sure that the short-term costs are fair. The Government has to step in where it can. We must also recognise that the Government cannot foot the bill for the entire transformation and that there are business opportunities associated with driving down emissions in all sectors. Those need to be quantified as well, and I will be able to set them out in the climate change plan.

Today’s meeting is about the carbon budgets rather than about the detail of the plan, which will be put to the Parliament in October.

We fundamentally disagreed that we should have a policy of reducing the herd and livestock numbers more generally. I will set out not just my thinking but the Cabinet’s thinking. I obviously do not make these decisions in isolation; I liaise with the sector and with my Cabinet colleagues, particularly in the rural economy space.

My issues with the policy of having a reduction in the herd are manifold. The implications for the rural economy of not having a meat production sector in Scotland are stark. I do not want to see an end to livestock farming in Scotland; I want meat to be locally produced to high standards of welfare and to be locally sourced and produced with a lower carbon footprint. We are working with the agriculture sector to reduce the emissions that are associated with the life cycle of the beef herd. That has been worked on thoroughly, particularly in relation to reducing methane emissions.

I disagreed with the assumptions and assertions that were made about what land could be used for if not for sheep grazing. Anybody who farms in mountainous and hilly areas would say that it is not suitable for crop growing—that is just a fact. You cannot displace sheep farming with crop growing. You could not harvest crops, so the land would not be suitable.

We also have to recognise that people in Scotland still eat meat. There is a carbon footprint associated with everything that we eat, including the vegetables that we import in winter. People should not really be eating strawberries in December, because heaven knows where they have come from and how many food miles are associated with that—