For each sector?

I may have missed one thing out. Phil Raines wants to come in.

If the committee would find it helpful, we can write to you with more detail about the modelling per sector. I have some details here in front of me, but they are probably not the details that you are looking for.

Give me a moment to get some details in front of me.

That has happened particularly in agriculture. When we got the advice from the Climate Change Committee, we fundamentally disagreed with the pathways associated with livestock numbers. Livestock emit some difficult and potent greenhouse gases, particularly methane, so the Climate Change Committee set out where it wanted to see reductions in livestock emissions and suggested some policies that might make that happen.

We fundamentally disagree with anything that would have an impact on agriculture or on Scotland’s rural economy because of the significance of that sector to Scotland’s economy and to our culture more generally. You and I both know how important agriculture is to the north-east, and it is important by no means just to that area.

There were also some assumptions about Scotland’s landscape and geography that were, with the greatest of respect, not quite right. For example, there was a suggestion that we could reduce the number of sheep and could plant crops instead, but planting does not work in a mountainous and difficult terrain like that in the Highlands and Islands. The convener has a great deal of background knowledge about that landscape, which is suitable for sheep grazing but not for harvesting crops. The advice made some assumptions that were not really based on Scotland’s geography. I say that with the greatest of respect to the Climate Change Committee and I know that it does get advice from independent experts, but the fundamental thing that we came back to was the just transition element.

Mairi Gougeon and Jim Fairlie are doing a great deal of work with the sector on reducing emissions without reducing livestock numbers, and Mairi Gougeon went to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee to talk about the climate change plan. We think that the policies and proposals outlined in the draft plan present a realistic pathway to delivering the required emissions reductions and meeting our first carbon budget. Agricultural emissions have already decreased by 13 per cent since 1990. They have a long way to go, but the plan is based on things such as the use of fertiliser or the types of animal feed associated with emissions reductions in livestock and there might even be the potential to capture some emissions reductions because of technological advances.

10:30

We want to work with the industry in order to roll out the support through the whole farm plan and make sure that it is supported through knowledge sharing and indeed the farm payments in order to be able to do low-emissions activities on farm. Some of that might be in the vehicle space; we have done some work on non-road vehicles and the use of biofuels.

Mairi Gougeon has been reviewing how farm payments are worked out. It will be about more than just yield, production and area. There will be a number of factors that will mean that farms get payments. In terms of a just transition, that work is much better than any policies that deliberately reduce the amount of livestock.

I am sorry, convener, I know that I am going on at length, but another thing that is not calculated in the inventory of greenhouse gases domestically is whether there is any potential for offshoring any of the policies that we put in place.

Let us say that a Government was to put in policies that reduced the number of beef herds. The country still eats beef and, in my view, it is better that it comes from local sources, inputs into our economy and has the standards that we expect in Scotland for something that is put into the food chain. Also, the air miles associated with importing food, including beef, from other countries, such as Argentina, would be substantial. You would be reducing the emissions associated with methane in Scotland, but you would be offshoring them elsewhere. I do not think that that is a responsible thing to do.

In relation to natural gas, as long as we continue to burn natural gas, it is obvious that having a supply of it from our own resources makes the most economic and energy-security sense.

The climate change plan is very much about reducing emissions that are associated with the workings of our society rather than those arising from energy production.

We looked at the emissions that are associated with how we fuel our transport and our heating; and we considered how to prevent emissions from going into the atmosphere, how we sequester carbon and how we bring down emissions in all the sectors that we rely on in daily life.

With regard to production emissions, we have no powers at the Scotland level over licensing for oil and gas projects—either exploration or production. We have asked and advised the UK Government to take a climate compatibility approach to future licensing.

However, the Scottish Government’s climate change plan is about the reduction of emissions that are associated with all the aspects that we are looking to reduce. Only the production emissions that are associated with the recovery of oil and gas would have any impact on the figures, and they would be relatively small compared with all the other emissions that are associated with transport and heat.

Broadly, I would say yes. It is a case of what fuel we use for all the different parts of society, whether it is for heating or for transport. Is it electricity, which has relatively small amounts of emissions associated with it, or is it the burning of fossil fuels? The inventory would be the same whether that fuel came from outwith with the UK or within it. It is the usage of the fuel and the emissions that are associated with it that are in the inventory.

The inventory that is associated with how we calculate the emissions that we have to report on is set out as being the domestic emissions that occur.

You started off with the point about beef. We cannot factor in the emissions that are associated with importing beef from Argentina, but we can factor in the emissions that are associated with beef that is reared in Scotland.

The position on anything to do with oil and gas production is around the production emissions. There is a drive that many countries are taking part in, and Norway in particular is lowering its production emissions by avoiding the use of diesel and keeping platforms operating. That is why we have introduced the option of the innovation and targeted oil and gas licensing round, which would allow oil and gas production platforms to be connected with floating offshore wind—or offshore wind in general—to take power cables, so that the production emissions, which are largely diesel based and high emitting, are reduced.

There are obvious reasons for doing that, but one of the considerations that is important for oil and gas producers is that they want to decarbonise their production as far as possible, in line with all other sectors that want to decarbonise as far as possible.

The way that it is inventoried—not just in Scotland or the UK but in every country—is that each country must report on its domestic emissions.

I am not going to talk about Peterhead power station.

11:00

There are smaller-scale carbon capture and storage options. We already have carbon capture in a number of small sites throughout Scotland. The Scottish cluster was brought together in order to look at emissions from a lot of processes, not just energy from waste—from concrete production, for example—using Scotland’s existing pipeline infrastructure, some of which is not being used and could be repurposed. The Scottish Government has been working on that with the industry—with SGN in particular.

Obviously, we want a Scottish cluster to exist. We want Acorn to go ahead. There are smaller-scale opportunities as well but, at scale, we want Acorn to happen.