Chamber and committees

I thank Gillian Martin for raising the topic for debate. From her role as convener of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee in the previous session, she will be aware of the cross-party concerns that the committee expressed unanimously about a reliance on CCS to cut Scotland’s emissions by a quarter by 2030. In fact, the committee went further and, in its report on the climate change plan, which was published only in February this year, called for the Scottish Government to produce a plan B alternative. As we head towards the beginning of a new climate change plan cycle next year, I hope that the minister is aware of the pressing need to come up with that plan B.

Capturing carbon emissions and storing them underground appears, at face value, to be part of the solution, but the unfortunate reality is that, so far, the history of CCS deployment has been one of overpromise and underdelivery—

I would like to finish my sentence.

That is at a time when we need technology that can be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed in the next eight years.

I will certainly give way to Ms Martin, if I can get the time back.

No. I think that the global context is that there has been a technical failure with the capture of emissions. That is just the reality. I will say more about that later in my speech.

The key test is whether CCS accelerates a phase-out of fossil fuels to keep us to a rise of less than 1.5°C or whether it just builds in dependence that delays a just transition while diverting and crowding out investment in renewables.

I will offer an example that relates to the blue hydrogen that would be produced from the carbon storage element of the Acorn project. The current plans are to blend blue hydrogen, at a rate of 20 per cent, into the gas grid, but the question that that begs is about the other 80 per cent of the fuel mix, which will continue to be natural gas that will be burned in boilers with no carbon abatement. At the point in the next decade when we should be scrapping gas boilers, we would be extending our dependency on a gas grid and gas fuel, with blue hydrogen as the enabler.

The argument that will be made in reply is that we are talking about a transition and that, in the future, we will be able to switch from blue hydrogen to green hydrogen, which is made from renewable energy. I get that, but green hydrogen will be a precious and highly sought-after commodity that will be used to fuel the steel furnaces of Europe. I hope that Scotland will have a serious role to play in that, but it would be an expensive low-grade use of green hydrogen to use it just to heat our homes.

There are critical questions to be answered about the effectiveness of CCS. A recent report by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research showed that the scale of deployment that would be necessary to reduce emissions in line with our climate targets has not yet been demonstrated anywhere in the world. Projects around the world have received billions in public investment, but with pretty minimal success.

In fact, right now, CCS global capacity is 0.1 per cent of annual global emissions per year. Not only are these technologies underdelivering, but capacity is not intended to increase significantly until 2030. Deployment takes six to 10 years from construction to completion, by which point our emissions targets will already have been missed.

There are critical questions that we need to ask of, and which need to be answered by, Government. For example, what guarantees will there be with regard to the capture rate for plants that will feed into the Acorn project? What about the huge energy requirements to power CCS, which risk causing more emissions than will actually be captured?

It has been a couple of weeks since COP26, and, yes, the eyes of the world are on Scotland, with a demand for meaningful change. However, we need to cast a critical eye particularly on strategies and solutions that come from the boardrooms of oil and gas corporations, which, to be honest, have spent decades denying even the existence of climate change. We just need to have a bit more critical thinking about the deployment of these technologies.

Will Dean Lockhart give way?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its progress with implementing the recommendations of the grouse moor management review group. (S6O-00448)

If we “throw the kitchen sink” at carbon capture and storage, where will the public funds come from to crowd in investment in renewables? Surely we need to make choices about which technology we wish to deploy public money to, in order to get the biggest bang for our buck and the biggest cuts in carbon emissions.

Do the witnesses have any brief reflections on what remains of the UK presidency in the run-up to COP27? What do you see as the key milestones or objectives that the UK needs to aim for?

Also, what about the linkage with the biodiversity COP? We saw some significant text in the Glasgow pact on biodiversity and the nature emergency, but what do you think alignment with COP15 on biodiversity should look like?

I am reflecting on what you said, Mike Robinson, about the opportunity to take particular sectors and develop a protocol. I think that you mentioned that in relation to cement. I would be interested to hear you explore that a bit more with the committee. My sense of COP was that the process was not ideal. What happened on the Saturday, in particular, with the watering down of texts and some of the geopolitics around that, was deeply worrying. One of my children watched it and found the response from other countries, such as Switzerland, incredible. It seems that a more diplomatic effort is needed in the run-up to COPs. I am interested in whether you envisage protocols or initiatives for particular sectors in the run-up to COPs.

Aligned to that, could we have some reflections from both of you on the various high-ambition alliances that are emerging? There seemed to be more of an informal multilateralism at this COP. The Costa Ricans have been very prominent in the development of alliances around nature, and there are also the High Ambition Coalition and the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance. I am interested in the architecture of all of that, and what can happen alongside COP that can feed into much more ambition at future COPs.

My question is slightly different. In the final text of the Glasgow pact, there was, for the first time, a recognition of the need for a just transition, but I wonder what the definition of that is. At COP26, I was walking around the blue zone and looking at all the country pavilions. On the one hand, the definition of just transition from the oil and gas-producing states seemed to be about saying, “We’ll continue to extract and burn oil and gas because we need it, and we’re going to make a just transition by investing in carbon capture and storage and blue hydrogen.” On the other hand, some states had formed the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance, which says that we should phase out oil and gas but do so over time, rather than turning the taps off overnight.

There seem to be many different interpretations of just transition. What are your views on where the global conversation is? Do we have clarity on what a just transition for oil and gas looks like?

Do you have any thoughts on the biodiversity COP?