Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes, that is a very simple question, convener.

I will take the question globally and then address it from a Scottish perspective. As you said, there is scepticism about whether the 1.5°C target can be met. Of course, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and we surpassed 1.5°C for, I think, the whole year. However, that rise was not sustained and therefore the Paris agreement was not breached, but it is deeply concerning and unacceptable.

The global stocktake at COP28 and the work that came from that considered the commitments that have been made in terms of fossil fuel and so on and determined that the target of 1.5°C could be kept alive globally if the actions of states were in line with that.

In respect of Scotland’s position—noting, of course, that Scotland cannot solve the climate crisis, but that the climate crisis cannot be solved without countries such as Scotland doing their bit—my understanding is that retaining 2045 in our legislation would keep us aligned to 1.5°C. I will ask questions of, and seek advice from, the Climate Change Committee when it comes to setting those carbon budgets.

I think that 2045 remains the correct aim, and the CCC has recently confirmed its view that 2045 remains the correct net zero target for Scotland.

I am glad to take the opportunity in closing today to restate the value that I put on following science, so that what we do is feasible as well as ambitious.

Yes, convener—thank you very much. Good morning to you, and to members of the committee. I will take this opportunity to make some short remarks.

I note that, since I accepted your invitation to appear before the committee, we have had confirmation of a surprise or snap UK general election. Apart from my colleague the Minister for Climate Action, who has appeared in respect of the continuance of legislation, I am probably the first minister to appear before the committee since the election was called. Now that we are facing that election, the First Minister has sought advice from the permanent secretary as to what is appropriate for ministers to commit to or confirm as things that we intend to pursue while we are in a pre-election period. The First Minister is awaiting that advice from the permanent secretary and, until I am in receipt of it, I must err on the side of caution when it comes to future plans and confirmed commitments. All of that is in the context of the First Minister having set out his high-level priorities last week and his intention to set out a programme for government in June. That is all under consideration, and I have to be careful about what I say today.

I will, however, cast my comments back to set the scene for our discussion. First, Scotland nearly halved its emissions between 1990 and 2021, while our economy grew by 57 per cent—which is a very helpful statistic, I think. We continue to decarbonise faster than the UK average, and I believe that Scotland is in the process of becoming a renewables powerhouse.

That progress will continue. In this financial year alone, we have committed £4.7 billion to support the delivery of our climate goals. On 18 April, we announced a new package of climate action measures to support our transition to net zero. It was always my intention for that policy package to be taken forward alongside the already committed-to actions this year, not least the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill, agricultural transformation and work to decarbonise Scotland’s buildings.

I have confirmed the need for a climate bill to make adjustments to our legislative framework in the name of facilitating continued progress. I am sure that the committee will wish to get on to that today, so I will say no more on it.

In the meantime, I note that the committee has had a number of helpful sessions, not least with the Auditor General for Scotland, whose comments on our improvements to climate governance in the Scottish Government I welcome.

It has continued to be a busy period for climate action in the Scottish Government in relation to budgetary matters, policy matters and legislation. With the new First Minister placing the climate among his top four priorities and being halfway to net zero, we are well placed to continue delivering, which is my focus.

I shall, convener, to the extent that I am able to, given the pre-election period.

There is a little bit of context that is important for us all to wrestle with, which is how it came to be that we have to—as I described it—adjust our legislative pathway to 2045. It bears discussing that grounding our emissions reduction pathway in scientific advice is the best and only way to approach it.

It is worth remembering that, when the Parliament set the 75 per cent reduction by 2030 target, the Climate Change Committee’s view at the time was that 75 per cent went beyond what was reasonably feasible or within the number of pathways that it had set out. If I remember correctly, it recommended that a target of 64 to 68 per cent would have been right for 2030.

The Government at the time wished to be ambitious, and I understand that my predecessor, Roseanna Cunningham, recommended 70 per cent. It was then a Scottish Labour Party amendment that took it to 75 per cent, which the whole of the Parliament got behind—except, I think, Green colleagues, who, as I understand it, wanted to go a little higher.

I set out that context because, following the passage of the bill, the Climate Change Committee’s advice was:

“we find that the legislated 2030 target of a 75% reduction in Scottish emissions goes beyond any of our five scenarios for emissions reduction by that date.”

I say that to make absolutely clear that it is not any inaction by the Government in the meantime that has necessitated the need to change the pathway. It was always beyond what was possible, and the legal obligation around it has crystallised under the climate change plan, so I must now change it to make progress.

I want to introduce the bill as quickly as possible. Indeed, there are deadlines by which it must be done, not least in relation to the production of the draft climate change plan under the current framework. However, I cannot confirm today when it will be introduced. As I said, that work would have been under way in respect of our programme for government. Due to purdah and the advice that we await, I cannot give a timeline.

What the bill will include will be clearer to the committee once the bill is published. However, during my statement, I set out my intention that we would seek advice from the Climate Change Committee on the new trajectory to 2045 and retaining 2045 as the net zero target; that we would move away from annual targets, which the CCC confirmed in its recent letter are susceptible to annual fluctuations in weather, for example; and that we would move to a carbon budgeting approach—again, always set according to advice from the Climate Change Committee.

The existence of a right to a healthy environment that is properly accessible and judiciable is a very important part of a human rights bill in Scotland. I cannot confirm the timetable for the human rights bill, not because of the purdah question but because it is the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice who is leading on that bill. However, I can confirm to the committee that I and my officials in environment have been closely engaged with the development of the bill to date, including the question of a right to a healthy environment.

On agriculture—

I reiterate what I said about there being two sides of the coin when it comes to heat in buildings. The first side is that it is very complicated and we require a number of areas to come together, including the supply chain, skills, technology, public funding and private financing. It is a big piece of work and it needs very careful handling. The other side of the coin is that it is absolutely critical to Scotland’s progress on emissions reduction. With buildings making such a large contribution to our emissions, there is no pathway to net zero without doing that work.

On that note, we have consulted on a series of proposals, as you know. We have received 1,700 responses or thereabouts—I apologise if that is not exactly the right figure—and we are currently considering them all and considering how the Government intends to take the matter forward.

Yes. The centrality of decarbonising our buildings to our emissions reduction pathway is such that, without that work, we would have a big gap.

I take those points on board. I absolutely welcome the work of the people’s panel and the work that the NZET Committee has done with it. I have already written to you, convener, with some responses. I take this opportunity to thank the committee and the people’s panel for their contributions and recommendations. It is worth noting that we are due to conduct a review of our public engagement strategy on climate change, which we will do shortly, and the work of the people’s panel will feed into that.

On climate action hubs, I often wrestle with the fact that everything that needs to be done in the name of emissions reduction and support for nature means significant change across the board and on a tight timescale. That can be very beneficial to communities, but it can create stresses. I very much believe that the best climate action is locally driven and locally appropriate, and that it is action from which communities can benefit.

That is the idea behind the climate hub network: it should be locally driven and locally appropriate, with trusted voices, as Ms Lennon was saying, communicating about issues of climate change in communities according to what is needed there.

You are quite right: we are providing around £20 million of funding during this parliamentary session to expand the climate hubs, and that has included £5.5 million this year. That is a significant chunk of money, and it gives us full coverage across the country in a locally appropriate manner. I take on board what you are saying about the hubs ensuring that they are well known, not least by locally elected representatives but also by the communities that they are serving. Kersti Berge and I have discussed in the past how we ensure that there is an appropriate analysis of the impact of hubs in relation to the funding that they are receiving. Kersti might wish to say something more about that—or Bob Doris might want to add something.

I want to come on to lessons learned, because I see the forthcoming bill as being the lessons that we as a Parliament have learned since we, rightly, set very ambitious targets a number of years ago.

It is worth first exploring a little more what Mr Ruskell rightly says about the CCC’s advice in the aftermath of the passage of the legislation. That goes to the core of the CCC’s function as a statutory adviser. It has to advise on the legislation as it is set. Therefore, it was not going to advise the Government and the Parliament to change the legislation. Elected politicians had made that decision, and its role was to give advice on how to fulfil it.

In that letter of December 2020 to Roseanna Cunningham, the CCC set out some scenarios, as Mark Ruskell says, that “could potentially reduce emissions” and that

“the Scottish Government may wish to consider”.

Among those were, as Mark Ruskell says, an early start to engineered greenhouse gas removals. That relates to what we call BECCS, which is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or direct air capture and storage. The CCC considered at the time that those would come on stream around the early 2030s. Its advice was that their coming on stream earlier could assist us in reaching our newly set targets. However, carbon capture and storage infrastructure coming on stream was almost entirely in the gift of the UK Government. The fact is that we have not seen that it could be done earlier, as the CCC advised; indeed, we have seen a slip in the deployment of carbon capture and storage. I point out that one of the first interventions was not something that the Scottish Government could directly control.

The CCC’s second recommendation was early decarbonisation of the Grangemouth cluster, which, again, clearly relied on the deployment of carbon capture and storage as a key means of industrial decarbonisation. We all know that, for a variety of reasons that we do not need to get into right now, CCS has not been deployed across the UK at the speed at which we thought it might, never mind on an accelerated timetable.

There are certainly lessons that I wish us to learn, the most important of which must be to follow the independent advice of bodies such as the Climate Change Committee when it comes to setting our targets. I ask colleagues across the Parliament to work with me in doing so when we come to look at the new bill. I will seek advice from the Climate Change Committee on the appropriate levels of the carbon budget. I intend to follow that advice and I ask the Parliament to do so, as well. We also need to set a framework that is capable of recognising that contextual issues will arise from time to time, not least pandemics and wars on the continent, which, to an extent, disrupt our ability to make transformational change.

I reflect on the fact that we are a devolved nation. We seek to implement transformation right across our economy and our society, but not all the tools that we need to do so are in our gift. I point back, for example, to the deployment of CCS.