Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes. Please forgive me—I need to get this information in front of me. Perhaps Phil Raines can say something first of all about the process by which the Government arrived at the figures, and then I will give you some more detail.

We will take on board a lot of the discussion that has been had on that. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, actually—

Because it is very difficult to put figures on what the Government might have to spend on the basis of not knowing what the UK Government will do in some areas. For example, not knowing what the electricity cost is going to be in five or 10 years makes that very difficult, so you can only ever give an estimate.

On policy decisions, we might decide that there are Government interventions that we want to make now in areas where there has not been a market or private investment. EV charging is a good example of that. Looking at the EV charging money that the Scottish Government put in in the past and what has happened since in terms of private investment, things have moved on significantly.

My worry about our modelling and setting out the figures associated with that at the moment is that the figures might be out of date very quickly, based on market movement, public sector investment and market creation, as well as UK Government interventions in key areas that have costs associated with them.

We will take that away. The legislation does not compel us to put disaggregated data into the public domain. A lot of it is sensitive data and a lot of it could be misleading in that people may assume—I am not saying that anyone in this room would—that the costs associated with something will fall to the Government, and that might not be the case.

We know enough about some of the noises outwith this Parliament from people who do not believe that the drive for net zero should be a priority for any Government that people may use some of that data in a misleading way in order to shake confidence in the drive for net zero. However, no other Government in the UK has to produce its financial modelling or give cost estimates that are associated with its climate change plan. We do so because, in the 2009 act, an amendment was taken forward that asked for an estimate on cost, and that was not Government cost. We also have the taxonomy associated with every budget.

There were other consultation responses, including from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, which said in its consultation response that the costs and cost benefits were set out very well. Phil, you wanted to come in with some additional information?

I understand that. I also want to point to some of the work, which has also been challenging, to ascertain the wider cost benefits associated with this. We have asked the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute to do some work on that. It has estimated that the financial benefits total £6.3 billion, but we have asked the institute to do additional modelling work and to take that into account.

This area of work is extremely challenging for the reasons that we have set out, and an awful lot more work needs to be done, given that we have a statutory responsibility to set out the costs and cost benefits associated with the climate change plan. I think that this is the first climate change plan for which we have had to do that. It has been very challenging.

Do we have to be more transparent about the modelling that we have used? Yes—I take that on board. Do we need to do further work on the modelling associated with estimating the costs and cost benefits of something that will fall not just to the Government but to a whole economy? Absolutely. Do the other Governments that can have an impact on our climate change plan, such as the UK Government, similarly have to do that work? I suggest that that would be very helpful, because then we could look at what is being done at a UK level to invest in climate action and what money is needed in order for us to get to net zero at both UK level and Scotland level.

I have heard and take on board those criticisms. We are looking at what we can put out to give more detail on that.

As you know, emissions associated with public and commercial buildings sit within my portfolio, but emissions associated with domestic buildings sit within Ms McAllan’s housing portfolio. She has set out what she would like to do in the next session of Parliament with regard to heat in buildings and some of the areas of work that the Government is looking into, particularly in compelling connection to heat networks. There is more cross-Government work that I would like to do, particularly on things such as private wire.

We know the scale of the challenge associated with decarbonising Scotland’s buildings, and we can estimate what that challenge looks like, but, in the solutions space, there are lots of different areas in which we would like some clarity.

I will give you an example that I am sure you will be familiar with. Obviously, we have constrained wind payments for the generation of electricity, and this is something that really exercises the public when they find out about it. There are payments going to electricity generators not to produce, because they cannot get capacity on the grid. Why are we not incentivising the diverting of some of that electricity to areas that need decarbonisation? Why is there not an incentive to do that, rather than to switch off and not generate electricity? That is one area that I want to look at with the UK Government, particularly about incentivising private wire supply to, for example, heat networks, which would decarbonise heat, particularly in urban areas, and would also get away from this ridiculous situation where payments are being made for non-generation of the green electricity that we want to use.

Of course, there are also the Government’s Home Energy Scotland programmes, which incentivise individual households to install heat systems, such as heat pumps, that will decarbonise their home heat. Grants and loans are available, and I know that you know that very well. Do we want to say that the Government will pay for people to do all of that? No. We would like to have a situation where the electricity cost comes down, so that installing low-emissions systems becomes a choice that makes economic sense for households. That is where the discussion with the UK Government is very important. As it stands, we have made an estimate of the number of households that we believe to have high-emitting heat systems, and the scale of the challenge is worked out from that figure. We are able to see how many households have access to Home Energy Scotland advice and, indeed, have taken up the grants and loans that are associated with it, but that number is nowhere near high enough, given the scale of the challenge. We have to look at a range of interventions that can be made.

I also mentioned the injection of hydrogen into the gas network. At the moment, it is talking about only 2 per cent, but, if the UK Government were to make the decision with regard to what a lot of experts say can be done with 10 per cent, that would not only take down the emissions associated with people who have yet to move away from gas boilers into electric-based heating, but reduce household emissions by 10 per cent very quickly, as well as creating an industry for hydrogen and a massive offtaker for that. There are a lot of moving parts in the decarbonising of buildings. We have set out a number of proposals associated with that, but each Government will decide on its policies.

One of the frustrations that we experienced in putting together the climate change plan was that we did not have early sight of the UK Government’s “Warm Homes Plan”, which has only just been published. I would say that it is still lacking in detail. That is another area where the UK Government is investing that will make a material difference to our climate change plan.

Are you talking about Government oversight of our progress?

Before I bring in Philip, I note that the emissions that are associated with all the policies are already in the plan. However, if you specifically want us to provide you with what the additional policies were from the point in time when we made that decision, as well as with the emissions that are associated with them, we can give you that. It is not set out in that way in the plan, but, if you want to see it in that way, we can do that.

Your issue seems to be with the calculations that are set out in the plan and the way in which all countries are asked to report on their own emissions. I do not agree that anyone should lose confidence in a climate change plan because of that issue.

On the other point that you make more generally, the context that you have to understand, which is the context that I and my officials work in, is that, even though it does not make a difference to our calculations, we would not want to do anything that would unnecessarily offshore our emissions—to do with agriculture, I suppose—but that aspect is not factored into our calculations, because that is not the way that the inventory works.

It is not Scotland or the UK that decided on the inventory. Phil Raines will know the detail of who has set down how things are calculated, but it is a global framework for the calculation of emissions domestically.