Chamber and committees

Our woodland creation targets are mainly achieved through grant support under the Scotland Rural Development Programme together with the Forest Leasing Scheme and some direct planting undertaken by Forestry Commission Scotland. The 2011-12 Draft Budget provides sufficient funding to meet 10,000 hectares of woodland creation and we have actually increased grants available for forestry by £8.9 million to £36 million.

Our policy is to continue to allow sufficient funding to achieve 10,000 hectares each year, which will deliver the 100 million trees target by 2015.

The Scottish Private Rented Sector Strategy Group considered this issue and acknowledged that there is a need to improve energy efficiency across all sectors including the private rented sector. It concluded that regulation of energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector should be looked at alongside the owner occupier sector and this was reflected in its final consultation recommendations report published in December 2009.

Regulation will be pursued using the powers available under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and a report will be published by the end of March 2011 setting out when Scottish ministers intend to make provision in respect of various sections in the act.

The Scottish Government will also continue to work with Energy Saving Trust to encourage voluntary action by landlords to improve energy efficiency measures.

The question of what should replace the reporting duties of local authorities in relation to action to improve the energy efficiency of housing stock in their area under the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995 (HECA) was considered as part of the consultation on the Energy Efficiency Action Plan. This reflected the new context following introduction of the Climate Change Act and the need significantly to increase impetus and focus in delivering energy efficiency. Most respondents said they did not want HECA to remain as a distinct duty on local councils, and half of the respondents supported moves to address energy efficiency in housing through Local Housing Strategies (LHSs). Existing guidance on Local Housing Strategies includes advice on setting targets for the eradication of fuel poverty. In line with the response to the consultation on the future of HECA, since 2007 we have been developing our strategic approach, while aiming to reduce the burden of reporting on local councils.

We will shortly publish, jointly with COSLA, supplementary guidance (Supplementary Guidance on Addressing Climate Change in Local Housing Strategies) which will further support councils in taking action on energy efficiency, assisting them to fulfil the duties they have as public bodies under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. This guidance follows HECA in placing on councils the responsibility for setting targets and monitoring progress at local authority level, but goes further by encouraging them to link action on energy efficiency with related strategies to improve the quality of housing stock in their area, and by providing them with advice on the range of powers, duties, resources and information at their disposal to help them to do this.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussions with Research Councils UK on this matter, but has held discussions with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) on research collaboration. Marine Scotland will be involved in the steering groups for a number of relevant projects.

Mitigation can be identified at the strategic level through the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Habitats Regulations Appraisal (HRA) processes. The Scottish Government has undertaken a strategic SEA and HRA for offshore wind energy in Scottish Territorial Waters. An SEA for marine renewables (wave and tidal) was undertaken in 2007. Work is currently beginning on an Appraisal of Sustainability for marine renewables which will refresh the 2007 SEA and also include a strategic level HRA. Further detailed assessment and identification of appropriate mitigation measures for individual developments must be made at the project level.

The Survey, Deploy and Monitor policy, which is currently being developed by Marine Scotland and SNH, will provide a pragmatic, risk based approach to allow the deployment of renewables and will be a key tool to facilitate the delivery of initial demonstration projects. In addition, research and the demonstration strategy are focused on tackling environmental issues.

The licensing process delivers mitigation by ensuring that any licence issued for relevant activities has appropriate conditions. Any conditions put in place with regard to a licence would be enforced by Marine Scotland.

A strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of the National Renewables Infrastructure Plan (N-RIP) was undertaken, in accordance with the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005, and the Environmental Report was published for consultation in September 2010. The purpose of the SEA was to identify potential environmental effects and measures for their mitigation, and to ensure that this information is made available when decisions are made by site owners to progress individual sites contained within the N-RIP. In this way, it was considered that the SEA would assist site developers and investors by providing information about the potential environmental issues pertaining to the development of the individual sites, and how they can best be overcome.

A considerable amount of work is currently being undertaken on the potential environmental effects of offshore wind, wave and tidal renewable energy in Scotland and across the UK.

The Scottish Government is working with other regulators, scientific bodies and industry to deliver a co-ordinated environmental research and monitoring programme to tackle gaps in knowledge and facilitate the commissioning of research projects to inform the licensing process and ensure good environmental data is available to planners, regulators and developers.

The current work programme consists of 19 ongoing research projects which are carried out by a range of organisations including Marine Scotland Science and research institutes. The total funding for these projects is £1.3 million, of which just over £1 million has been provided by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is working with the Natural Environment Research Council to develop a series of three new research projects which address aspects of the environmental interactions of marine renewable energy developments.

The number of schools and pre-schools awarded a Green Flag under the Eco-Schools programme in each financial year since the programme began in Scotland has been provided by Eco-Schools Scotland and is set out in the following table:

Financial Year	Schools*	Pre-Schools**
1994-95	0	0
1995-96	2	0
1996-97	1	0
1997-98	1	0
1998-99	2	1
1999-2000	5	0
2000-01	3	0
2001-02	4	0
2002-03	12	5
2003-04	31	5
2004-05	64	2
2005-06	89	15
2006-07	121	11
2007-08	172	14
2008-09	191	25
2009-10	173	26
2010 “ 1 March 11	197	24
Total	1,068	128

Notes:

*Includes Primary, Secondary, Independent, Special and composite schools many of which include nursery classes.

**Includes Nursery Schools (not nursery classes) and Early Years Partnership Providers.

Information has only been included in respect of first Green Flags. Many schools have been award a second, third or fourth Green Flag in recent years, though the focus now will be on attaining and retaining the Green Flag rather than have multiple flags.

The Eco-Schools programme is managed and administered by Eco-Schools Scotland which is part of Keep Scotland Beautiful, with funding from the Scottish Government.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-39970 on 11 March 2011. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The one-off grant scheme is managed and administered by Eco-Schools Scotland and funded through the core grant from the Scottish Government.

A one-off grant has been awarded by Eco-Schools Scotland to all schools which have attained their first Eco-Schools Scotland Award, irrespective of level (Bronze, Silver or Green Flag) and applied for the award. Schools are asked to provide an overview to Eco-Schools Scotland of how they plan to spend the grant. The number of applications for the grant is the same as the number awarded.

Information on the number of one-off grants awarded by Eco-Schools Scotland in each financial year since the first grant in 2003-04 is provided in the following table:

Financial Year	Number of one-off grants awarded by Eco-Schools Scotland
2003-04	204
2004-05	232
2005-06	309
2006-07	203
2007-08	461
2008-09	280
2009-10	271
2010 “ 1 March 2011	128
Total	2,088

 

A further 129 one-off grants are expected to be made before the end of March 2011.