Seòmar agus comataidhean

The next item on our agenda is a round-table discussion on the Scottish Government’s draft climate change plan, with a focus on the buildings element of the plan as well as the role of local authorities.

We are joined by Dr Richard Atkins, a chartered architect representing the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland; Dr Jocelyne Fleming, senior policy and public affairs officer, Chartered Institute of Building; Io Hadjicosta from WWF Scotland, who is representing Stop Climate Chaos Scotland; Cornelia Helmcke from the University of St Andrews, who is representing the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods; Alistair Hill, head of energy transition, Consumer Scotland; Neil Osborne, service lead, climate and energy, the Highland Council; David Raine, policy manager, Homes for Scotland; and Derek Rankine, head of policy and strategy, Built Environment Forum Scotland. We are joined online by Professor Janette Webb, professorial fellow in social and political science, University of Edinburgh.

I warmly welcome everyone to the meeting. There is no need for you to operate your microphones, and I remind us all to ensure that our devices are on silent. We have agreed to hold the session in a round-table format to encourage a free-flowing conversation on the content of the draft plan. If you would like to come in on a question or at any point in the conversation, please indicate as much to me or the clerk.

We have about two hours for this discussion, and we have quite a lot to get through. As time goes on, I might need to ask you to make your contributions a bit more succinct—that tends to be what happens—and to come in only if you have something to add to the conversation instead of reiterating someone else’s point. If you wish to respond to a particular point, but the conversation has moved on, you are, of course, welcome to bring up the point when you come back in, but you can also write to us with anything that you do not manage to say.

I do not think that there is anything else to highlight, except to say to colleagues that I would be grateful if you could indicate who you are directing your questions to in the first instance. That would be helpful, as it would let people know who was getting the question first.

I am going to start with a general question. I think that it would be good to hear from everybody on this, so I will just go round the room. Because you are the nearest to me, Richard, I am going to ask you to speak first, then I will just go round everyone and finish with Janette Webb, who is online.

What are your views, in general, on the climate change plan? Will it drive progress in reducing emissions and build on the previous climate change plan?

I have a comment on the second instrument. We have received some short-notice information on the instrument—two letters—and it would be good for us to take time to consider and potentially write to the Scottish Government on the back of that correspondence. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

There is the question of who is going to build it and what are the skills needed. There is also a piece that has been coming up this morning, and which has been around before, which is about scale. Who is going to be the person who goes go into the neighbourhood and has that capacity for project management, but also talks to neighbours and gets everybody on board, including a resistant, nervous person. There is a human relational thing that goes along with the project management, and the skill set for that needs to be addressed as well.

I am walking a fine line, because we are here to talk about the climate change plan and buildings, but of course that takes us into the heat in buildings issue. The committee recently went to a waste-energy-to-heat project. Last week, the research team in the Parliament held a breakfast session on the issue. We heard from Glasgow City Council about how it might tap into the Clyde. Are you looking at things like that in Inverness?

So we really need that certainty to be built into the plan, so that there is an opportunity for private finance to come in and partner with you. I also hear what you said about getting tighter on and not allowing opt-outs through exemptions.

Jocelyne, you indicated that you want to come back in. Then I will bring in Willie Coffey and we will deepen the questioning into skills and workforce.

We have a bit of a tension in the conversation about skills and the need to train people up, and then the opportunity of 16,500 jobs coming our way by 2030. As somebody asked earlier, “Where are those people going to come from?”

Placemending—that is very nice. That is the new word for me this morning.

I will move on and bring in some other themes. If anyone wants to come back in on skills, they should do so, as we did not bottom that out completely. I will bring in Alexander Stewart on the just transition—with a connection to skills.

I will embellish Mark Griffin’s question a little bit. Can you also talk, from your perspectives, about the process of the development of the plan—the consultations and so on—and, given that we have been waiting a while for the initiative and we are quite close to the end of a session, the timing of the scrutiny?

It was on the timing of the scrutiny.

If nobody else wants to comment on the consultation, engagement and timings, we will move on.

It has been a really great morning. It has been good to hear your thoughts on the buildings chapter of the draft climate change plan. That will help our scrutiny of the plan.

I briefly suspend the meeting to allow you all to get your coats and go out into this gloomy day. Thank you very much for joining us.