Chamber and committees

Yes. The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service, a representative of which was on your earlier panel, is actively working on that. That will be what Ms McAllan was referring to. You will have heard that that service, which is based at the University of Edinburgh, has been set up as the result of a partnership between COSLA, local authorities and the Scottish Government. Right now, the SCIS is working with local authorities to provide them with the methodology that exists to look at their emissions.

The work of the SCIS is absolutely critical. Probably most critical is its work on the short and medium-term gains that can be made and the plans that local authorities will have to put forward. The advice and the expertise of the SCIS are absolutely critical. In the background, we will work with it and many others on the methodology around scope 3 emissions, but that will take a lot more time. Meanwhile, the SCIS is working in real time with local authorities.

Yes.

It was interesting to see that that particular category was developed for high-level reporting on the greenhouse gas emissions of the big franchises that we all know about—Starbucks, Costa and all the fast-food outlets that operate under franchise arrangements. I asked the same question that you ask. I do not think that any local authorities have specifically reported back on the franchises. Philip Raines might have that information.

We are currently in the middle of making an assessment of that, and are working with local authorities around it. We looked at the ESS report and then we organised two workshops with the people in local authorities who were already dealing with the various climate change plans and emissions reductions. Those workshops considered the areas that might be difficult to report on and the areas that could probably be reported on easily—exactly what you are talking about. There was a conversation around assessing how much could be done in that regard.

If we introduced any legislation around scope 3 emissions reporting, it would take effect around about 2026-27, but that would be informed by the on-going conversations that we have with local authorities about the areas in which we can see the benefits of reporting on certain scope 3 emissions and the gaps where they have not been reporting but there has been an assessment and the data probably exists and just needs to be collated.

The Scottish Government wants to keep pace with the EU generally, so we always factor that into our decision making.

It is a very small number. Philip Raines might be able to help me on that. East Renfrewshire Council was the one that came back and said, “We’ve done this exercise, but we don’t know how much it can influence what we’re doing.” Philip Raines might have more information. I do not have a list.

Thank you, convener.

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss the improvement plan that we laid on 3 September. We welcome Environmental Standards Scotland’s report on the support for local authorities in delivering their climate change duties. It is clear that local authorities play an absolutely critical role in tackling the climate emergency. The report’s recommendations were thoughtful, and we have worked constructively with ESS since it made them and, indeed, have resolved the majority of them.

One area that we have not been able to accept in full is, as the committee knows, the pathway proposed in response to the recommendation on making the reporting of scope 3 emissions mandatory for local authorities. As our plan sets out, there are technical and resource challenges with regard to reporting all categories of scope 3 emissions, which I recognise account for a significant proportion of local authorities’ emissions.

I hope that the committee agrees that the improvement plan sets out a phased and proportionate approach that will help improve the information available to support local decision making on reducing emissions. At the same time, the plan avoids placing an unreasonable additional reporting burden on local authorities, one that might not actually drive action.

I thank COSLA and local authority officers for their valuable input in developing the improvement plan. Our reporting duty has helped drive climate action and enables the tracking of progress across the public sector. The actions set out in the improvement plan seek to enhance reporting by local authorities and to help accelerate action without, as I have said, putting an undue burden on them.

Thank you, convener.

You say that that is an easy question, but the answer is actually quite complicated. There are obvious benefits to reporting any emissions, including scope 3 emissions, which account for about 70 per cent of the emissions arising from the work that services do. The benefit of putting in place a system that monitors and measures such emissions is that it could allow local authorities to make more informed decisions about, for example, what they procure. At the same time, it would have to be done in a way that ensured that they were not having to measure absolutely everything to the nth degree, as that would take away from the actions themselves and, indeed, the capacity required to deliver on them.

I was struck by what the previous panel were saying about the fact that just talking about reporting on scope 3 emissions has engendered conversations with their supply chain and people with whom they have been working with for many years about their carbon footprint and what they do. It could have a positive domino effect in that respect. After all, local authorities are among the biggest procurers in any country. If Governments and Parliaments are starting to talk about measuring scope 3 emissions, even our having that conversation at the moment is probably making suppliers think, “How do we measure our emissions? What can we report on? When we bid for a contract, what can we say about what we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint that might make us more attractive?” If local authorities are looking at their scope 3 emissions, that might make suppliers start to look at their own carbon footprints and put in that sort of information when they bid for contracts. It could have a big domino effect.

Not if it is worked through. A focus group is going to be put together that will have all the experts in the field and work with local authorities on what is required. We will then have to commission larger pieces of research to inform what happens as the methodology is put together.

At the moment, our colleagues in the—[Interruption.] I am sorry. Is it climate improvement Scotland?

The members of your previous panel were entirely accurate: we cannot tell. We come back to the fact that, until the methodology has been bottomed out, we will not know what kind of training will be required in relation to that methodology. It will be necessary to assess the systems that the local authorities already have and how much of a step change it would be to put in new systems, what those systems would cost, what training would be associated with that and what capacity the relevant departments would need to have.

We need to go through the process that we have put in train, which involves the focus group that is comprised of various academics and experts in the field, to bottom out what the methodology could look like and to do that wider piece of research. At that point, we would have to say to COSLA and local authorities, “This is what has come back from the focus group. This is what has come back from the research. How feasible is this, given your current capacity? How feasible is this, given the expertise that you have available within your organisation? Would your current systems support such reporting and the methodology for that?”

At the risk of quoting Silke Isbrand too much, she kept on saying, “How long is a piece of string?” That is the territory that we are in here. The methodology must come first, and then we will be able to work with COSLA and local authorities to answer your question.