Seòmar agus comataidhean

The inventory that is associated with how we calculate the emissions that we have to report on is set out as being the domestic emissions that occur.

You started off with the point about beef. We cannot factor in the emissions that are associated with importing beef from Argentina, but we can factor in the emissions that are associated with beef that is reared in Scotland.

The position on anything to do with oil and gas production is around the production emissions. There is a drive that many countries are taking part in, and Norway in particular is lowering its production emissions by avoiding the use of diesel and keeping platforms operating. That is why we have introduced the option of the innovation and targeted oil and gas licensing round, which would allow oil and gas production platforms to be connected with floating offshore wind—or offshore wind in general—to take power cables, so that the production emissions, which are largely diesel based and high emitting, are reduced.

There are obvious reasons for doing that, but one of the considerations that is important for oil and gas producers is that they want to decarbonise their production as far as possible, in line with all other sectors that want to decarbonise as far as possible.

The way that it is inventoried—not just in Scotland or the UK but in every country—is that each country must report on its domestic emissions.

I am not going to talk about Peterhead power station.

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There are smaller-scale carbon capture and storage options. We already have carbon capture in a number of small sites throughout Scotland. The Scottish cluster was brought together in order to look at emissions from a lot of processes, not just energy from waste—from concrete production, for example—using Scotland’s existing pipeline infrastructure, some of which is not being used and could be repurposed. The Scottish Government has been working on that with the industry—with SGN in particular.

Obviously, we want a Scottish cluster to exist. We want Acorn to go ahead. There are smaller-scale opportunities as well but, at scale, we want Acorn to happen.

Exactly. They are full. The sites that are in planning should have been operational by now, but for various reasons to do with private financing, inflation and construction costs going up, as we have seen, they are taking a bit longer. SEPA and the Scottish Government have a line of sight as to when those sites should be available. When they are in operation, that will make up for the shortfall.

The simple answer is yes. We have an easy-to-read version, a version for young people and children and a Gaelic version. You are right that some people want a lot more detail, but I had a discussion with the climate change hubs, and they said that the plan was too large, complex and detailed, and that they wanted something more accessible. They also made the point that they have to respond to local authority climate change plans, so they felt a bit of overload.

Phil Raines has just reminded me that, in order to make such a large document accessible, we put all the sectoral detail in the annexes, so that somebody who just wanted an overview of the plan could read the first part of it—the condensed summary—and somebody who wanted additional detail could go into the annexes.

That point was made to me by the representatives who came into Government for the young people’s Cabinet takeover in the two years that I have been there. They wanted more resources to be put into schools. As a result of that, I had conversations with Jenny Gilruth about making sure that schools had all the necessary materials available for work on climate action more generally.

It is a huge area of work, and I really prioritise it. It will not be in the climate change plan, because it involves a separate piece of work on the good practice principles.

There are two areas of work. We have the voluntary good practice principles that are associated with community benefit in Scotland. We like to think that developers will sign up to those, but they are advisory, because we do not have the powers in that area.

There has been some movement on the issue from the United Kingdom Government, and the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 will allow community benefit and the principles associated with that to be mandated. I did not want to wait for community benefit to be mandated, because I did not have success in convincing the previous Government to mandate it, so we went ahead with the revision of our good practice principles. The consultation on that is closed, and my officials and I will do a separate piece of work on refreshing the good practice principles and looking at how we can embed some of the developments at the UK level that now allow us to mandate levels of community benefit and industry engagement with communities.

That will not be in the climate change plan, because that work will not be completed until after the plan is in place. Also, it does not necessarily have an impact on emissions.

I hear you.

I will need to get back to you on that. [Interruption.] Actually, we can say now.