Chamber and committees

With transport, for example, incentives are available to the UK Government to encourage take-up of EVs. I was very disappointed, not just because I am an EV driver, when the road tax incentives associated with having an electric vehicle were scrapped. That option is available to the UK Government. Obviously, there was the vehicle emissions trading scheme legislation, which is in the UK Government’s gift as well.

Energy systems and markets is probably the biggest area in which I would like to see more action from the UK Government, because that relates to an awful lot of the things that we are going to put forward in our climate change plan, particularly the just transition aspect. The electricity price has to come down. In my view, the electricity price should not be pegged to the gas price. That particular proposal was removed from the review of electricity market arrangements—REMA—consultation, which I think was a mistake. That issue needs to be revisited, as it will make the difference in terms of industrial decarbonisation, and in terms of the domestic heating action that needs to be taken.

We do not want to be in a situation where the price of electricity prevents decarbonisation because that will increase fuel poverty or will mean that there are decisions that businesses cannot take because those affect their bottom line. For example, zonal pricing has now been discounted by the UK Government, but it needs to come forward with proposals. I am not saying anything that my counterparts in the UK Government have not heard directly from me. If not zonal pricing, it needs to consider what it will do, because the price of electricity needs to come down in order for quite a lot of the actions in the climate change plans—not just the Scottish one, but the climate change plans across the four nations—to be affordable.

The UK Government has to respond to the Supreme Court judgment. By October this year, we will see what its response has been to the challenge that has been put to it by the court, which I hope will address some of the things in my letter.

You put to me that the Climate Change Committee has assumed—

I am not going to comment on a future planning decision. I cannot talk about a particular planning decision.

It is an advisory body. It provides advice. I do not have to accept the views of the Climate Change Committee.

As I said, a number of energy statements will happen over the next few months. I will not commit myself to timescales, because I need to work with my officials on when they will happen. There will be clarity on a lot of the energy sectors and the Government’s policies on them at the same time.

I think that I have set out the levers. You mentioned a lever that relates to the auction round, which is a decision for the UK Government to make. It has to make the auction rounds and the contracts for difference more favourable to Scottish projects. I have always said that. I am not quite sure whether that is in the letter that I will send to the committee, but I have certainly made that point in multiple letters to the UK energy minister.

I am not Cabinet Secretary for Transport, so I do not have the detail on the intricacies of whether electrification or hydrogen is more attractive for the changeover of vehicles. However, I know that Ms Hyslop has been working with the sector in readiness.

The heavy goods vehicle market readiness fund was launched in July, with £2 million of support to be provided to the HGV sector over the next year to reduce the complexities around the transition for fleets in Scotland in the short term and develop market readiness for accelerated future uptake of zero-emissions vehicles.

The infrastructure issues that you put to me are of course salient, and we have to look at the barriers that are in place and do what we can to address those. Notwithstanding that, however, I think that the carbon footprint associated with goods and services, and questions of how goods are delivered and how the supply chain operates, will become even more important to consumers. For large supermarkets, it will become important to have ambitions in that regard, and that is only going to ramp up over time.

You mentioned the grid infrastructure. Another issue with that, as I mentioned, is the cost of electricity. The market arrangements have to be reformed to make it attractive for firms to swap over, largely from diesel, to any type of electric fuelling.

There are a number of moving parts in all of this. Yes, it is going to be difficult, and you might disagree with the projections that the CCC sets out, but we have to work with the sector and support it as much as possible in order to be able to look at how we take down the barriers at both UK and Scottish level. That is what Ms Hyslop is trying to do.

We have the new-build heat standards, so we already have regulations in that space. With existing homes, however, I was worried that compulsions would mean that people could not afford to do the work. There is massive expense associated with it.

Yes—of course.