Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Official Report 519KB pdf

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Committee on Climate Change Annual Progress Report

Agenda item 3 is an evidence-taking session with the Committee on Climate Change on its “Reducing emissions in Scotland: 2016 Progress Report”. I welcome to the committee Lord Deben, who is the chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, and Matthew Bell, who is its chief executive. I know that both of you gave evidence to our predecessor committee—the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee—so it is great to have you back.

We have a series of questions for you, but I want to start with a general one. What is your overall view of Scotland’s progress in cutting emissions since 1990?

Thank you very much for welcoming us. We are very pleased to be here.

First, Scotland is doing better than any other part of the United Kingdom, and I am unashamedly using it as a means of chasing other people to do better, so please keep on with that. It is very valuable from our point of view. That ought to be said strongly.

I am slightly annoyed that some press reports emphasised the downside rather than starting off as we did by saying that of course although it is true that the weather in 2014 was helpful, for example, if we take that out, it is still true that the Scottish Government’s policies and programmes have made a significant difference—you are meeting a target, and the target is tough. It seems to me that, unless one starts there, it is much more difficult to go on to say that other things have to be done. A bit of congratulation and thanks come first.

It gets progressively more difficult, of course, because you have been very successful in facing up to the questions from the power sector. There is less opportunity there because of the success, so transport and agriculture very clearly become the next areas to make demands of, and both are difficult. It is not about picking the low-hanging fruit; it is just that certain things are more difficult. Agriculture has, of course, a higher proportion of emissions in Scotland than it does in other parts of the United Kingdom, so Scotland has a specific problem the animal husbandry part of agriculture is a bigger proportion of agriculture as a whole and is a more difficult area to deal with.

We are very pleased with the amount that the Scottish Government has done and the amount of advice that it has taken. Much of the advice that we gave last year has been implemented, but we must say that some things that we listed really need urgent attention.

We will explore those in detail in due course.

The committee notes that domestic policies are responsible for only a share of the emissions reductions that have been achieved to date. Can you identify any specific UK policies that have contributed to reducing emissions?

Many policies have contributed to reducing emissions, but the UK as a whole is not doing as well as Scotland in specifics. We were able to disassociate the accidental reasons for improvement—weather and such like—from the real reasons for it, which is not always easy for a large base where we are drawing from four different nations. There is no doubt that some policies to improve insulation and to reduce energy loss from poor housing have been effective in Wales, for example, and to some extent in England, but Scotland has addressed specifics, and that is worth saying.

That is true in every sector; we could go through the series of policies in every sector. On the power-generation side, there are renewables obligations and how the levy control framework and the auctions work. They are all set at United Kingdom level, so they impact on Scotland. Equally, local policies and planning issues and local support from the Government here have an impact on the success of renewables, as do Europe-level policies. The EU emissions trading scheme also has a big impact.

Similarly, we could go through transport policies at Europe level, including those on fuel efficiency and car efficiency ambitions; policies at UK level, including those on fuel duty and taxation; and policies at Scotland level, including those on approaches to parking and to modal shift. In every sector, there is a triad of policies—some are from Europe, some are at UK level and some are at Scotland level. We break that down in detail in our report, and we are clear about where progress can be made in areas that are under the Scottish Government’s control and where progress requires discussions at Europe or UK level.

I welcome the witnesses. I will ask about back-loading. It was significant to the 2014 figures that a number of allowances were withheld. What will be the impact of that, particularly in the light of Brexit, which means that the UK might no longer participate in the EU ETS?

The Brexit situation is very difficult—it is a dreadful thing that will have serious implications. However, we must face the fact that anybody who pretends to know what Brexit means is lying. They do not know—not even those who wanted Brexit know what it means. We do not know what the effect will be, because all that is open for negotiations. I notice that the UK Brexit minister has said that Brexit might involve the most complicated negotiations ever. I do not seem to remember that having been said during the referendum campaign, but there we are. It does not help to postulate what might happen in the situation that we face.

The central issue is that the public must know the truth. In other words, we must not allow the system to cover up whether we have done better or worse. On every issue—whether it is back-loading, banking or any of the other things that can be done—the Committee on Climate Change is determined to make clear what has happened. The most difficult area will involve moving from net emissions to gross emissions measurement, which the Scottish Government has committed to doing. That must be done in a way that does not make comparators impossible, because the public must never feel that they are being misled. I see back-loading in that group of things.

We make it clear in the report that Scotland would have met its targets even if the back-loading had not taken place. Relatively complex accounting rules govern how a target is defined and how we calculate whether it is met, but if we set aside the accounting, we try to make clear to Parliament and the public the level of real progress. If the back-loading had not taken place, Scotland still would have met its targets.

The fact that some of the ETS allowances have been taken out temporarily—the idea is that they will be put back in later—means that progress cannot be counted on, so the overachievement is probably overstated if we look at the simple figures. However, we know that there is a lot of discussion in Europe about reforming the EU ETS. Notwithstanding any Brexit issues, we expect that the EU ETS will be reformed over time. Part of that discussion will cover how to treat the permits that were temporarily taken out for back-loading.

So, the position is quite difficult to pin down. If the allowances are brought back in the next couple of years and if we do not make progress on agriculture and transport, we might end up failing again to meet annual targets. Who knows?

In objective terms, that is a possibility; we must make the reality clear. The EU ETS arrangements have huge advantages, but the disadvantage is that people do not know in advance the proportion of the weight that will be on the UK as a whole, so budgets must be made up without that knowledge. That makes it difficult for experts—let alone the public—to understand how that works.

I apologise sincerely, but I have to suspend the meeting for five minutes because of problems with the recording system—we think that the first few minutes of the meeting have not been recorded.

I wish that I had said something really outrageous.

We will come back to that.

10:14 Meeting suspended.  

10:20 On resuming—  

I offer my apologies and am delighted to say that we can now resume the meeting. There was a low-level recording of the initial stage of the meeting, which should be sufficient for the purposes of the Official Report.

We will pick up from where we were. I invite Alexander Burnett to ask some questions.

Good morning. It was good to see that Scotland played its part with a share of the UK’s reduction of about 8 per cent, which is more than its share of gross value added and population. However, as you mentioned, there are a number of anomalies, including a negative in farming and a positive in woodlands, that are obscured by that 8 per cent average. Going forward, how do you see Scotland’s ability to pay its share compared to its share of GVA and population? Will the performance of any other sectors be masked by the average?

Clearly, it will depend very much on Scotland’s ability to get significant reductions in agriculture. That is absolute. Transport is the other area where significant reductions will be necessary.

In both cases, the big issue is the need to clear the excuses out of the way before we start. With transport, for example, there is always the excuse that Scotland is a big area with a small population and therefore must have a lot more long-distance transport. It is true that there is a special problem, particularly for the carriage of goods, but that is only a very small proportion of the total problem. The big issue is how we reduce the impact of transport in the central belt, where the problems are very similar to those in any other urban area of the United Kingdom or beyond. It is important for committees such as yours to say that they will not be led astray by the easy answer that tends to come out in the half-minute that people get on television, when they say, “This is why we cannot do it.” That easy answer is not true.

The big thing with agriculture is to get accurate basic measurements on where we are and agree them. For example, we need to bring the peat areas into the calculations, to see where we are with forestry and what that really means, and to make sure that the industry as a whole accepts those things. Unless we have a more effective baseline, measurements in the future will be significantly difficult and we will go on having what the convener and I talked about before: what I call anecdotal compliance, which is nonsense, because people tell the anecdotes that suit and not all the other anecdotes. That bit will be the biggest problem for Scotland and it must be dealt with at once. It must be got right as quickly as possible.

Although the big issue may be livestock, we must not have the excuse that the smaller things that we can do—such as different methods of ploughing or no-plough methods—do not add up to a huge amount and are not worth doing. They are worth doing, not only because what they add up to is worth it but because it gets the whole farming community into a spirit of saying that it must play its part. If you do not get it to play its part in the relatively easy areas, jumping immediately to the difficult parts is almost impossible.

We know that the objective is to de-link economic growth and GVA from emissions growth. An important part of that is investment in infrastructure and in a range of things that contribute to economic growth but can help to reduce emissions. We have not yet mentioned the building sector or individual households putting in place energy efficiency measures and low-carbon heating measures as part of the infrastructure renewal programme. Those are components of allowing GVA growth to continue while continuing to reduce emissions.

Thank you. That was a useful scene setter. We will now drill down into certain sections, starting with energy.

It is clear that we are making good progress on renewable electricity generation and, with a reduction in overall generation in Scotland coupled with an increase in generation from renewables, that is indeed progress. However, your report highlights that a significant increase in the rate of renewable energy installation will be required to meet the target to generate 100 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020. There has been clear progress with tidal and wave energy, which is moving apace. In fact, there was progress on that yesterday as, thanks to a £23 million investment by the Scottish Government, some tidal turbines were placed in the Pentland Firth.

However, there are still areas where we are not moving forward as fast as we would like. For example, we are not meeting our targets on district heating, although I am pleased to say that there is an exciting initiative for a large district heating project in a major industrial complex in Grangemouth, in my constituency, which will provide cheaper heat to the massive petrochemical plant and further afield to council buildings and so on. The project is at an early stage but, hopefully, it will progress pretty soon. The initiative was first mooted in the 1950s and has been mentioned every decade since—it is a case of better late than never, and we are definitely getting there.

What are your views on the progress that has been made in cutting emissions from the energy sector as a whole? Where can we improve?

That is a very useful exemplar, because one of the problems that we have in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe is the difficulty of getting people to think differently. District heating is a good example, as there is an instinctive dislike of it that we have to get over. Another example, which is true in Britain but not in Germany or Scandinavia, is that we refuse to accept ground source or air source pumps—it is hugely difficult to get those installed.

If I were your committee, I would press the Scottish Government to look more closely at behavioural science. We have just put a behavioural scientist on our committee—I wanted to do that when I became chairman. There are certain areas—ground source heat pumps and district heating are good examples—where the technology really works and we can make a real change, but the problem is that people say, “I don’t like it and I don’t think it works. Doesn’t it mean that I have to have my heating on when they want it and not when I want it?” If I were setting a priority, it would be to work hard on helping people to realise the opportunities that are there. There is Government and cross-party agreement that those things ought to be made available. It is the general populace that we have to engage.

10:30  

Certainly, behavioural change is the key. We just have to look across the North Sea to Norway, where there is a high uptake of air source and ground source heat pumps. It is taken as read over there, with no questions asked, that those should be put in. There is therefore no doubt that behavioural change here is a must.

My question comes on the back of the discussion about behavioural change. What recognition is given to the importance of future energy storage, particularly given that the pattern of renewable energy production is variable and does not always fit with people’s behaviour? What emphasis have you put on energy storage as a method of reducing energy consumption?

We are very keen on energy storage, which is generally thought of as having two different sorts: carbon capture and storage, which we think is an essential part of enabling us to use gas for longer periods; and electricity storage, which would increasingly contribute to making intermittent production part of the base-load. If we could do electricity storage, it would be unimportant that energy is intermittently produced.

I am always a little leery about talking about energy storage, though, because there are always people in politics—he says after being in politics himself for a very long time—who will grasp at any excuse. What I do not want is a situation in which people say, as some do, “Oh, well, Lord Deben, it’s very easy, you know. We only have to wait for this to come and it’ll all be all right.” I do not want to get into that area, because we do not know what is going to happen. We have not even got a full-scale exemplar of CCS, apart from what is happening in Canada.

The reason why we all think that electricity storage will be delivered and we think that it must be okay is that so much money is going into it from so many successful businesses that have been very good at electronics and suchlike. However, we have not got it and it must not be an excuse for not doing other things. Electricity storage is central, though, and if we can get it, it would change the whole face of things. It may be that, given the uncertainty of a renewed nuclear contribution, which is part of the present panoply of things, electricity storage will have to be part of the mixture that delivers.

More generally, we tend to emphasise the importance of flexibility in the electricity system, which includes storage but also the demand-side response that we were talking about and a range of technologies that allow the electricity system to respond more flexibly to changes in demand patterns. There is a range of technologies, one component of which would be different storage technologies.

Some of the technologies are less easy to sell to the public. When we talk to them about smart grid, we have to go into some explanation. However, if we talk about energy storage, they understand that. The truth is that we are moving from a grid system that will look as out of date as rutted roads did to the age of metalled roads when we get smart grids, which will be wholly different. However, there is that journey to travel and many newspapers, for example, will attack smart metering and smart grids if they can find a reason to do so.

It is clear that we have made excellent progress in Scotland in developing renewable energy generation, but there is still a long way to go. Your report points out that, in effect, we need to more than double our installation rate within the next couple of years to meet the 2020 target. I am interested to know where you think that generation will come from. Will it have to come from offshore renewables? There are some controversies at the moment surrounding offshore wind. Do we need to reinvest in onshore wind and perhaps repower sites? What kind of subsidy regime will be required to support that?

You are right about the figures. Compared to what has been installed over the past few years, the rate of installation in the next few years to 2020 would have to increase quite substantially to meet your 100 per cent target. Having said that, we also observe that the projects that are in the pipeline and are at various stages of development would be sufficient to meet the target, so it is not that there is no idea about the set of projects that would be sufficient to meet the target. Were the things that are in the pipeline to be brought forward and to be installed and operational by 2020, they would be sufficient to meet the 2020 target. Those projects represent a range of different technologies, onshore and offshore.

However, that assumes that there is a subsidy regime that means that the pipeline of projects is economically viable. That is perhaps the difficulty that the industry now faces.

It is very important to recognise that the choice between the possibilities and the decision on the nature of a regime to achieve the aim is bound to be a political decision; it is not a decision for the Committee on Climate Change. We have to say, “Here is a range of things from which you can choose and this is the figure that you have to meet.” We can point out that this is or that is an advantage but, in the end—in the mixed economy that there is between Scotland, the United Kingdom and the European Union—it is for politicians to decide on the politically acceptable mix.

My only determination is that there should be a mix. The danger is if politicians decide that there is only one way forward and one answer, because every country and every sort of politician has a terrible record at picking winners. I am so old that I can remember the groundnut scheme. Right from very early days, when we thought that we knew how to pick winners, we have found that we do not know. There needs to be a range of things. Of course, that approach is more expensive than if you pick the right one, but it is a darn sight cheaper than when you pick the wrong one, so we have to take that approach. We have a duty to remind the Government that to go down one route and have one answer would be very dangerous.

Thank you for coming today.

I am interested in how we manage electricity demand in particular. You mentioned managing demand at a micro level through, for example, smart metering at the household level. I would be interested in hearing your views on that, but also on the impact of managing demand at a national level via industrial units. In Scotland, we have an issue of transmission capacity. Would, for example, the introduction of an electric arc furnace—they are used in other places across northern Europe—be a means of managing demand rather than the use of constraint payments? There is also the more general issue of transmission network use of system payments. Obviously, electricity generators in Scotland pay those charges and English consumers pay on the other side of things. Can you talk about demand management overall, at both a micro level and the national level?

We have to get a lot better at doing demand management and we have to learn a lot from other people. I am very conscious of the amount of reinventing the wheel that goes on in this area. Demand management happens in places where you would never think that it would happen. For example, the southern Texas electricity company manages demand by arranging a special deal for all its customers who have technology that automatically shaves a very small amount off their use in times of peaking. The cost reduction is so great that customers get a cheque in the post every month for doing it. That is a voluntary operation. I give that as an extreme example, because it comes from Texas, which is not at all where you would expect it to come from.

First, we have to recognise that there is a lot to learn from other people. Secondly, we can do a huge amount by using modern technology in the home. I am talking not just about smart metering, but about people being able to turn on the electricity from a smartphone instead of the old-fashioned system in which the electricity comes on at the usual time even though they have decided that they will not go home as early as they normally do. That sort of thing can make a huge difference and, of course, users know that they are saving money for themselves, which is an important encouragement.

My main comment is that some of these things are very complex and the Government has to be involved in how the big utility companies step up to the mark. One of the things that I am critical of is that, if we look at energy saving in the mechanism of delivering electricity, it is pretty difficult to see that there have been huge steps forward. There is a lot of pressure on the utilities to become much more fleet of foot and quicker at introducing new technology, and much better at explaining to the public why it is in their interests to use it. It is wrong to suggest that a smart meter is a kind of spy in the cab—the sort of thing that is used to attack the tachograph—when it is a means of people saving money for themselves. The utilities have to be much better at selling that. In the end, commercial operations make their money by selling their products. Why they cannot understand that they ought to be selling that is a problem for me.

At national level, are we encouraging industry to take on that electricity demand as a way of avoiding heavy constraint payments?

That is an important point. We have been concentrating on the degree to which we have not seen the savings in the industrial field that we might have expected, given the pressures. We have to look at that much more closely.

In its auctions and contracts with industry, National Grid has had increasing success in trying to enter into voluntary arrangements. It is important that those are seen as genuine voluntary arrangements. Again, sometimes when industry turns down its production at times of peak electricity or energy demand there is an overblown reaction to that as a negative outcome that reduces UK manufacturing, whereas in fact it is shaping manufacturing to when it is cheapest to do the production. The ability to make such adjustments is very important.

More generally on some of things that have been mentioned, such as transmission charging and the arrangements that are in place for pricing flows of electricity, which clearly sit with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, at this level it is important that the need to meet 2020, 2030 and 2050 climate change targets is an explicit part of those conversations. It is then for Ofgem to decide precisely what mechanisms are in place and what the pricing arrangements are to meet the objectives that we have set collectively; the climate change objectives are an important part of that.

Good morning to you both, and welcome. Does the Committee on Climate Change see a place for inclusive models such as co-operative and community models in relation to energy at all levels in Scotland? Does it have a view on whether there is a place for—to use a generic term—fracking for a transition fuel in the context of climate change?

I am personally a great believer in community-based generation. Part of the Germans’ success can be put down to the fact that half of their renewable energy is in the hands of co-operatives or local communities in one form or another; there is a much wider commitment to the success of renewables there than there is in other countries, certainly in the UK. I am very much in favour of finding ways of doing that. I do not think that we can just blame Governments—either the Scottish Government or the UK Government—for the fact that we are not very advanced in this area. There is no doubt that the co-operative movement in Germany was very proactive and that has not been the case in Britain, for all sorts of reasons. We have to energise the issue.

10:45  

We have taken a clear view on fracking: only if the very tough requirements that we have laid down are met can fracking be part of a society that is committed to meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. Our job is to set the budgets and parameters and to be clear about what can and cannot be done within those things. However, once one has been clear about that, the choice of where fracking takes place and so on is really up to the Government—it is for the Government to decide whether it wants to have fracking and on what basis it wants to have that fracking, whether in the UK or in Scotland. However, we have said that, if you have fracking, you have to meet three clear and major requirements and that, if those requirements are not met, fracking is inimical to meeting our fourth and fifth carbon budgets, which the nation has accepted. We have set out a clear statement. We do not have a philosophical opposition to fracking, but we have a clear statement about what you have to do to ensure that it is done within the budgets that we have lain down.

David Stewart has some questions on transport.

Your report and your earlier responses have highlighted that transport is an area where, frankly, we need to try a lot harder. As you know, transport is responsible for 28 per cent of emissions in Scotland. How important is it to you to emphasise modal shift from car use to other forms of transport?

It is clearly a crucial part. It comes back to behaviour. It is one of the surprises in life that, day after day, people will sit in their car in a traffic jam for an hour when they could get to the same place, perhaps on a convenient tram, in a quarter of the time. However, that is how some people operate. We have to understand more clearly how we can move people.

However, there have been remarkable improvements and changes. Where I live, in the centre of London, one is much more likely to be knocked down by a bicycle nowadays than almost any other form of transport. Things really have changed. There are serious examples of modal shift. In many cities, the introduction of trams has had an effect because people clearly find them more attractive than buses and are more likely to use them. We are more likely to get modal shift through that sort of method than through some of the rather high-falutin’ suggestions about getting people to walk further or longer.

First, you have to introduce people to the possibility of not using the motor car. Frankly, we will have to start thinking about making people feel shame about using their car for very short journeys, because the real problem is the number of short journeys in motor cars in big cities—that is common to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Earlier, you mentioned that, on one level, this issue is not really about technology as much as it is about psychology, changing attitudes and change management. I lived in London when congestion charging came in. Hitting people in the pocket certainly helped, and the huge investment in buses and the tube made a huge difference.

You cannot expect people to make behavioural change if changing is inconvenient. For example, just knowing when the bus is coming is one of the biggest advantages and producers of behavioural change. If you know that the bus is coming in two minutes, you will stand and wait for it; if you are just hoping that it will come, that is a very different choice.

Having real-time information at bus stops is important.

Real-time information is very important.

On the same theme, how important is promoting ultra-low emission vehicles? Clearly, having such vehicles is good practice for having very low emissions in Scotland and the UK.

Both are important. If you merely made a straight choice between the present mode of propulsion and electric vehicles, that would not have done much for the general problem of congestion. You are really trying to do two things. First, you need to ensure that the vehicles that you use produce as low carbon emissions as possible; secondly, at the same time, you need to create alternatives so that people use the roads more sensibly in terms of the capacity. That is all about using our resources properly. Climate change says to us that it is not only the immediate question of electric vehicles rather than internal combustion engines, but the longer-term question of how we run our society in the way that we want it to be run with less demand on resources. You want to lessen demand for the building of roads and the need for such infrastructure.

It is important that we make the transfer of freight from road to rail and, indeed, to sea, easy for business. Many businesses in my patch in the Highlands and Islands tell me that it is quite difficult to get freight on to rail.

I will give you an example of best practice. The previous committee went to Rotterdam, where, as you may know, a direct freight-only rail line from Rotterdam harbour to Germany had received funding. That cost billions of euros. Incidentally, it received European funding, which takes me back to another point that was made earlier. Is it important that we encourage the movement of freight off the road, as well as ensure that the infrastructure is there so that businesses are able to do that easily?

I agree. Sometimes, it is not about having big infrastructure, but about having information and getting people to think about it. In my former constituency, I had Britain’s largest container port, Felixstowe. Until a change in the control of the railways, if a new shipping line came in, only the lorry companies tried to get its business; the rail companies made no attempt to do that. However, given the competitive situation, the first people in the port’s offices are very often those from the rail sector, so we are now under real pressure to provide enough rail connections. Sometimes, it is not the huge things, but the smaller things and making people think that there is an alternative and different way of doing something. You do not need to do things as you have always done them.

I am conscious of the time, convener.

Your report recommended some very good best practice on urban consolidation centres. I visited one such centre in Rotterdam, again with the previous committee. For those who have not followed them, those are systems in which heavy goods vehicles put freight to a common centre outwith a city and smaller lower-emission vehicles are used to take the freight into the city centre. Obviously, that is excellent for reducing emissions. Do you see that as best practice not just for Scotland, but for the rest of the UK?

I certainly see that as best practice. However, the practice has to be spread beyond the use of HGVs. We need to adopt that approach much more in construction. It is much easier if the gathering together of that which is needed for a construction site is done outside the city, so that the delivery is in a smaller vehicle and, because the freight has been consolidated already, the number of trips is much less. We have to get to the point at which the construction industry operates on a just-in-time basis. That is the only way in which you would restrict the amount of traffic; you would also save significantly, because material is not left on sites for long periods where it gets broken or stolen. There is every advantage in following that approach; it is one of those areas in which a difference would really be made.

A problem—in both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom—is that the construction industry is not always the most modern and rapid. It tends to stick to what it knows works rather than trying to find new ways of proceeding.

This will be my final question, because I am getting a look from the convener.

Aviation is obviously a big cause of emissions. What is your assessment of the Scottish Government’s policy of implementing a 50 per cent decrease in air passenger duty?

I am always very careful not to take specifics and say that I think that something is good or bad, because it is the Government’s role to make those choices. If you make a choice of that kind, you need to look at what you must do in other areas to balance it.

You may well say that, for social reasons, you want to do something that is more difficult as far as emissions are concerned. What I am pushing for is very simple: if you do that, you have to say at the same time what the total effect will be on your carbon budgets; where you are going to make up for that; and what you are going to do to cover it.

It can only work if we all think like that. There are no absolutes in this area, except the absolute of reducing our emissions. The way that you do it is a political decision, but part of that decision involves never avoiding the fact that any decision costs something. You need to look at what it costs and say what you intend to do to offset that cost.

One of the advantages that the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 has over the United Kingdom’s Climate Change Act 2008 is that it provides for all aviation emissions to be captured in the carbon targets and carbon budgets. There is no question but that there is a legal duty on the Government, if the result of its decision would be to increase aviation, to seek to offset the cost somewhere else in order to stay within the carbon budgets.

Staying on that topic, do you see an alternative to air passenger duty that would reflect the true environmental cost of frequent flights while at the same time meeting the Scottish Government’s objectives?

You could decide to implement all sorts of alternative systems that some might say would be socially more equitable—you could do a range of things. Again, that is a fundamental political decision that a Government has to make.

If you do something that is damaging, such as increasing air transport emissions, it is necessary under the Scottish system—unlike in the rest of the UK—to compensate for that elsewhere. However, that is only the second point. The first point is that, when you do it, you must be concerned to discuss what it might mean.

That must be part of the whole ethos of the way in which you make decisions, so that decisions are not made first and you then have to catch up on emissions targets afterwards. Decisions must all be made with the emissions effect as part of the consideration—we have to move towards that approach. You will not meet your tough targets unless you do that. It is almost as if, when you are buying the pencils, you are thinking about what the effect on emissions will be from making that decision.

In your report, you highlight the benefits of cutting the upper speed limit from 70mph to 60mph, and you indicate that that would cut emissions by 8 per cent. Can we possibly get to the point at which transport makes an appropriate contribution without doing that?

Again, our job is to remind people of the cost of doing or not doing certain things. It is not for us to say that you ought to cut the speed limit to 60mph. However, we have to remind people of the realities of having a 70mph limit.

Yes, you can meet the requirements for transport by doing other things, but you need to remember that, in each case, you are asking people to make choices. What you cannot do—if I may make a very unsuitable remark—is to behave as you might in a family. If your wife says to you, or vice versa, “Do you think we can afford such-and-such a thing?” and you say or she says, “Well, we could afford to do that, but we can’t afford to do the other thing”, you do not want to do that—you want to do both. That is the truth. You want your partner to agree to the possibility of doing both things.

That is exactly the situation here, but we have to say that, if you do not do something, you will, if you want to meet the requirements, have to do other things. You will have to decide what the politically acceptable things are. You cannot simply say that you will do neither, and that is the issue. That is why it is worth highlighting something that we know is politically very controversial and saying that it would make a huge difference, so if you do not do it, you have to consider where else that 8 per cent comes from.

11:00  

Let us move on to another area where we need to see a better return, which is land use—agriculture, forestry, peatlands and so on.

I have a few questions on how we make more progress on agriculture. You have identified the possibility of greater international collaboration on that. What opportunities have you identified that could give more progress in agriculture through international collaboration?

Ireland, New Zealand and Finland are all countries with not dissimilar problems to those in Scotland. Agriculture plays an important part in their planning for climate change and they all want to do their best. They are doing a lot of work in that area, so there is a lot to learn from co-operating with them. In particular, the New Zealanders have been concerned to see what they can do. Scotland might well find it worth while to co-operate with similar-sized countries that have the same problem of having a relatively small population and a large area, with an important role for agriculture.

Matthew Bell has been concerned with the New Zealanders and no doubt would like to add to that.

There are different types of co-operation. At one level, for agriculture and land use, it is about understanding what works, doing analysis, trialling things and doing research to try to understand what works. Clearly, that is easier if several countries are doing different things and can then pool their learning.

In other areas, it is about how to balance the contribution that agriculture will make with the contribution from wider land-use change. That might be to do with forestry or more broadly how land is treated or how we think about soil fertility and carbon stored in peatlands and soils. Again, different countries will have different approaches and learning about what works, and some will be explicitly trying to co-ordinate research efforts.

Finally, we know that in agriculture we do not have all the answers yet, so research and development and innovation, on a range of issues such as animal feed, still have to take place in order for us to have a set of options that we can then try out. Consideration could be given to whether the Scottish Government by itself has enough funding to do the necessary research and development or whether it is better to pool some of that R and D funding and undertake that on a multilateral basis.

My next question is on changing cultural practices in agriculture, particularly through voluntary initiatives. I am curious to know how successful you think such initiatives have been. For example, in the farming for a better climate initiative, which is voluntary, the first phase demonstrated savings in emissions from the focus farms of 10 to 12 per cent, despite challenging weather conditions. Is that rate replicated across the scheme? How do we encourage greater uptake of voluntary initiatives?

One thing that we have been clearest about, not just in the current report but in previous reports, is the importance of proper evaluation of such schemes. We struggle to know how effective the farming for a better climate initiative is and the extent to which it has been picked up outside the farms that were immediately involved in it. We need better evidence on, evaluation of and tracking and monitoring of voluntary programmes. That is important to inform thinking on whether to continue with the voluntary approach or to think about other mechanisms, incentives and opportunities to roll out such initiatives. One thing that we have been clearest about is the importance of on-going monitoring and of reacting to what is found out. We find a lack of evidence in that area, not just in Scotland but more generally. That would be an important first step.

That brings me back to the point about baselines and knowing what one is calculating against. If one is calculating against only the figures from a particular farm, which is very often the case, there is no concept of whether the baseline is relevant. Farms that choose to do such things are very often farms that have always been good at that, so we cannot tell whether we are making a bigger impact.

I have actually stopped part of a report—not one for Scotland, I should point out—because I did not think that the quality of the baselines in agriculture was sufficiently good for them to be compared with the other parts of the report. I felt that it was better not to say, “We can’t answer this question, because we really don’t have the proper statistical base.” That brings me back to the point that getting that statistical base is absolutely essential.

With that, of course, you can trace whether the success of individual, voluntary arrangements is being duplicated on other farms, whether the practice is moving and actually happening, whether the farmers unions are helping with it and so on. I do not think that we can tell that now, because I do not think that we know. It all comes back to these things becoming anecdotal.

It is very dull and boring work, but it has to be done. We have to get those figures right if we are going to be able to prove to ourselves what works. We might discover that the voluntary system does not work, but we need to know that. We cannot turn to farmers and say, “We’re going to make this compulsory because you haven’t done it right” if we cannot prove that they have not done it right.

I believe that Claudia Beamish has a question on that very issue of mandatory versus voluntary approaches.

As politicians—as Lord Deben has suggested—we are all keenly aware of the reasons for making something voluntary or mandatory.

In the previous Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, we looked at the possibility of mandatory on-farm carbon audits. Has your committee looked at such audits and do you see a place for them—bearing in mind, of course, your comments about the need for evidence if we are to expect people to do something?

We have not done all the work that I hope that we will do on this issue. Like everyone else, we have to start with priorities; we are moving into agriculture now in a way that we have never done before, because we had to get the first part right. In that sense, the change of the structure in London and the move from having a closeness between energy and climate change to taking a wider view is, I think, advantageous, as long as it continues in the same direction—and there is every indication that it will. It is advantageous to say that climate change is about not just energy, but a whole range of things, and it is very strongly going to be about agriculture.

We will have to do some more work on that. Again, though, as you have pointed out, unless we get the basic measurements right, there is no point in having an audit. You can have an audit only if your figures are right.

Just to build on that point, I think that it will be useful if you could share your experience in Government with us. How do we achieve policy coherence? After all, these issues have been separated into two areas in Scotland. We have two committees, one of which deals with rural affairs and agricultural issues and the other with the environment; we have two separate ministers; and we have different groups lobbying on either side—if I dare say that there are sides to this debate. Do you see a way for us to deliver greater policy coherence here? I have to say that I see making significant progress in this area as a real challenge in Scotland.

The convener’s introduction to this little discussion about land use is key to this. I am just completing an article for a periodical in which I argue the case for our being much more serious about land use. I just think that we have to recognise that land use is crucial in these islands and that if we want to have these sorts of responses, we have to be thinking about how we deal with rural land, urban land, forestry and all those things together.

Of course, it is not for me to say how your committees should work, but I think that one of the problems with the separation of committees relates to the concept of thinking about land use in a certain way. Why, for example, is planning not involved in both the environment and agriculture? After all, they are all part of the same picture. If we are going to deal with not just flooding but what happens with much heavier rain coming down in much more concentrated bouts on the west side of Scotland and what that will mean for the countryside and how we protect ourselves as well as how we make use of it, we can do that only if we think about land use as a whole. I think that we have been very slow to understand that. My key point, therefore, is that we need to think about land use together with everything else.

I want us to move on to housing, which Alexander Burnett will ask about.

Before I ask my question, I refer to my entry in the register of members’ interests—I have interests in house building and the rented sector.

We obviously want improvements to be made in housing, housing standards, energy efficiency and how buildings’ energy efficiency is monitored through energy performance certificates. There have been considerable discrepancies in the quality of EPCs. Varying results can be obtained depending on which firm is used, and there seems to be a lack of consistency in the standard. I think that the energy efficiency standards are a very good thing, but they have become more and more important and have more and more financial implications, whether in relation to the feed-in tariff, the level of renewable heat incentive funding that people can qualify for or their ability to let a property. What is your view on that? How important an issue is it? Who do you think should be taking the lead in getting greater consistency in the standard of EPCs?

First, I think that it is an extremely important issue. The energy efficiency of houses continues to be not good. We are still building houses that we will have to retrofit, because we are not building them to a standard to which other countries would automatically build them.

I also think—this is an area in which I have some expertise—that the argument that building energy-efficient houses cannot be done because it is so much more expensive is just nonsense. The truth is that the only reason for it being more expensive is that we do not do enough of it, so we do not get the same long runs that we do using less efficient systems. We just have to realise that. The situation is similar to that with offshore wind. At the start, it is very expensive indeed. It is only when a company has a proper order book and can have bigger boats and do all sorts of things that it could not do before that the price falls very significantly. If Government does not set high standards and insist on them and not change the date, the industry will not make the changes that it needs to make. What is more, the good companies will suffer, because the people who think that they can get away with it will get away with it. We do not want that to happen, because it is bad for morale and morally unacceptable. I take the issue very seriously.

The argument that I like least is that of the people who say, “Oh, it’s only a tiny bit. You have to understand, Lord Deben, that most of the houses we’ve got are already built, and that’s what we’ve got to concentrate on.” Yes, that is true, but it does not mean to say that we should make the situation worse by not building the new houses to the standard to which we hope to change the existing ones. Therefore, I think that you are right. The issue is absolutely central.

Time is against us, so I want us to move on and look at waste.

I have just one focused question, which is on your recommendation on encouraging recycling and separate food waste collections in rural and island communities. In general, when a new service is introduced, some rerouting is done to mitigate the financial impact of that. In rural and island communities, authorities have significantly less scope for economies of scale. Therefore, how could your recommendation on the use of such systems in those areas be fulfilled?

It is not easy, and I would not pretend that it is easy. I am not sure that it is possible to do it without accepting that it will be more expensive to do it in those areas than elsewhere. As with the penny post, I think that we must—in so far as we can—provide services in rural areas that are commensurate with those elsewhere.

In many of those rural areas, of course, people are able to do a lot of their own composting. I am very keen on the money that you have being spent to get those who are not doing that to understand how to do it and certainly to provide the preliminary equipment that will make that possible for many.

There are a number of ways of doing it, and I think that that in particular is the best. It is certainly the one that we found in the very rural area in which I live, but it is nothing like as difficult there as it is on the islands. You are quite right.

11:15  

Claudia Beamish has a short, sharp question about the business, industrial and public sectors.

Actually, the question, which is to both witnesses, has almost been asked. What opportunities exist in devolved areas in Scotland in relation to the public sector, industry and business? As you will know, we have moved towards mandatory reporting in the public sector after a complex range of discussions in the previous session of Parliament. Do you have comments to make on any of those sectors, please?

I am very much in favour of reporting, as long as somebody reads the reports and ensures that what has been reported has a result in changing attitudes and improvements. I am terribly concerned about the amount of reporting that goes on to no good purpose at all, except to report. You have a wonderful opportunity of making people feel that, when they report, my goodness, somebody will look at that report and say, “What about this?” and “Well done.” It is very important to say that when a report has been done well. Saying thank you is one of the cheapest and most important things for us all to learn.

An appropriate note for our committee might be to get back those who are doing mandatory reporting, listen to what is said about where things are going and, I hope, say thank you.

We will move on to the third report on proposals and policies. I want to explore how you think RPP3 can build on RPP2, the implications of the Paris agreement for its development, and having in place proper monitoring of progress, which is touched on in your report.

That is a good place to start off, as one thing that we have recommended most strongly is that the next RPP climate change plan sets out clear and measurable objectives against which progress can be measured in each sector, whether that is in areas that we have talked about, such as transport, buildings and agriculture or, indeed, in the continued progress on the electricity and power fronts. It is not simply a collection of policies or good ideas; it is also a programme against which we can evaluate progress and make adjustments. We know that there will be learning as people go along and that where they set off from might not be where they end up, but it is important to have the information—we have just talked about the monitoring of public buildings and monitoring more generally in schemes.

As we have indicated in response to other questions, it is often not our position to say what the precise policy is that should go into RPP3, but it is important that there is a range of policies in each of the sectors that we have discussed, that different things are trialled, that things such as district heating schemes are put in in a meaningful way, that meaningful efforts are made on modal shift, electric vehicles and agriculture, and that monitoring takes place such that we can make adjustments over time, because these are medium-term plans.

That is crucial for the public because there will be a very bad effect if people do not believe that those things are really happening or if they think that someone else is not doing them while they are, or that one country is not doing them and another is. Last night, I heard somebody say, “Oh, well, we’re doing it all, and France and Germany aren’t.” As a matter of fact, that was absolutely untrue, but the point is that we need the figures if people are to continue to work hard.

Okay. What about the impact of the Paris agreement?

For me, it is the most important agreement that we could possibly have, as it has told the world the direction that we are moving in. We may find some difficulty in keeping up with it; we may have to pressurise all the time; and, of course, some people have promised what they will not deliver whereas other people will deliver more than they have promised. In my view, the Chinese will deliver more than they have promised, as that is their mechanism of thinking, but others will not do that; they just signed up because they had to.

The fact is that nobody now can doubt the direction in which we are moving and what we intend to do. The Paris agreement is crucial to that. We should not underestimate what it is: never before in the history of mankind have all the nations of the world come together voluntarily and agreed something as extensive. It is a staggering fact and it has changed the world.

On a number of occasions, you said that it is not your role to tell the Government what to do. However, you make recommendations and you have given the Scottish Government two options on Scotland’s annual emissions targets to 2032. Will you briefly outline the merits and demerits of each option?

That is what I have a chief executive for. [Laughter.]

The difference between the two options is not huge. With both of them, we end up in broadly similar places, particularly given all the uncertainty that we have just been talking about in relation to agriculture and other policy areas.

The first of the two options that we have presented recognises the fact that the annual targets out to 2027 were set a number of years ago and, since then, new evidence and new facts have emerged. Were we in a world in which nothing was changing, that new evidence and those new facts would suggest that we should change our annual targets out to 2027 as well as set the new targets that have to be set for 2028 to 2032. We recognise that the reality is that we are not in a world where everything is standing still. In particular, the Government proposes to introduce a new climate change bill. If that new bill will result in a set of new targets, it might be superfluous to try now to go through the legislative process of changing all the targets between the present and 2027, when we know that, in a year’s time, we will have a new climate change bill that will do that.

In effect, that is the difference between our two proposals. It is clear that you have to set new annual targets from 2028 to 2032 by 31 October 2016. Whether you decide to amend the targets up to 2028 is a judgment about whether the proposed new climate change bill will be introduced quickly enough, be meaningful and provide the direction that everybody needs to make that additional legislative process superfluous.

Gentlemen, I know that you have another meeting in Edinburgh to attend. I thank you on behalf of the committee for a fascinating morning’s evidence. I have no doubt that we will continue to engage with you in the years ahead.

11:22 Meeting suspended.  

11:26 On resuming—