Chamber and committees

Thank you for the feedback about what is happening in your constituency. That is an important point to raise.

I know that Patrick Harvie is doing some work on the measures and obstacles that have to be addressed to decarbonise home heating. I am happy to pass on your comments for him to respond either to the committee or directly to you, Mr Beattie. In any case, you have highlighted just one example of the changes that we have to consider as we move forward.

I am, as well. If you go on to Twitter or any other social media, you will see people ruling out certain uses of hydrogen and saying where it should be used. There is a big debate about where it could best be used.

I am confident that we will make progress in that regard. There is a lot of work to do with the college and university sector, and that work is under way. I was very encouraged by the Fraser of Allander Institute’s report “International Scotland”, which was published in November. I was at the first event that was held on the report to talk about the net zero aspect of it. The report says that Scotland is further ahead than the UK in relation to green education courses, so there are good signs that show that our system is gearing up, but there is a long way to go.

Employers are looking for people, and they tell me that, when young people are looking for work and applying for jobs, they ask them what they are doing to tackle climate change. Employers are waking up to the issue. That is a sign that our young people want to go into the right sectors to play a role in decarbonising Scotland and tackling climate change.

I hope that all those things will come together. I hope that young people will want those jobs, that they will get those jobs and that we will be able to train people for those jobs.

Yes.

Yes. It will be a place-based plan. It will be published in the spring alongside the other plans that I mentioned. It will be an outline at that stage, because we then want to undertake a co-design exercise. As you will be aware, Grangemouth is responsible for a lot of emissions, but there is a lot of potential for the role of the complex there to evolve with hydrogen and biotechnology, for example. Of course, in industrial emissions alone, Grangemouth has an important role to play.

The Climate Change Committee’s report is a clear signal of the urgent need for transformation across our economy and society in order to achieve our targets. There are strong messages in the report for the Scottish Government on the pace that is required to achieve our targets. There are also comments in there on the role of the just transition and pointers towards the progress that we are making in that area. For instance, it highlights the role of skills in meeting our net zero ambitions for energy, transport, construction, manufacturing and so on. The report recognises that there has been good progress on the funds that we have brought forward, such as the green jobs fund, the just transition fund, which I mentioned in my opening remarks, and the national transition training fund, which has been in place for some time.

Your question about how we will take those strong messages into account in the formation of our just transition plans is a good one, because we will have to take those into account. We are being told that we have to go further faster, but that has an impact on the just transition debate, because it means that a radical transformation of the economy in the years ahead has to happen to achieve our targets.

Next year, we will outline our plans for construction, agriculture and land use and transport, as well as a place-based plan for Grangemouth, which alone is responsible for between 8 and 10 per cent of our national emissions. We will then carry out a massive exercise across Scotland to ensure that the detail in those plans is co-designed with the communities that will be most affected.

Next spring, we will outline our initial plans and begin that debate, which will take into account the need to be transformational.

Yes. Every part of what we are discussing will be a massive challenge for Scotland and for society, given what we are facing and what we have to do in the coming decades to 2030 and to 2045.

According to reports, Scotland has the second-best electric car charging point infrastructure in the UK outside London. Other parts of the UK are trying to catch up and, as Graham Simpson said, we have to do better. Of course I accept that, and I accept that the challenge is massive, but we are making progress on that agenda. We are trying to achieve the transformation of our economy and our society, but where we got to today took us several hundred years and we are trying to cram the equivalent transformation into the next two or three decades, so it is a big challenge.

All I can say is that some of the changes that we require to make to reduce our emissions and to decarbonise Scotland are so challenging that we need to have political consensus to support those measures.

We also need the tools.

Your question goes to the heart of what the just transition is about. When people ask me what the just transition is, I am always keen to emphasise that, as we go through the economic transformation to decarbonise Scotland in the decades ahead, we should use that as a window of opportunity to tackle inequalities and not repeat past mistakes. After all, if we are going to rebuild and redesign our economy, we want to make it better for everyone and to tackle inequality. That is at the heart of the just transition.

Co-design is a very important principle of the just transition. I know that there is a lot more to do, but I always emphasise to any community that I visit and to any organisation that I meet, whether it is in the public sector or the private sector, that any policies that are put in place and any projects that come forward should be co-designed with local communities, because we want to have buy-in.

We have the wider challenge relating to who pays for the just transition. That is why the Government, through its use of public sector funding, is ensuring that we support people on low incomes by, for example, retrofitting their homes or tackling fuel poverty. You will be aware of various funds that have been introduced to support people on low incomes, who are the hardest hit.

Overall, we want to ensure that everyone benefits from the just transition and the prosperity that is available to us. Tackling fuel poverty through deploying Scotland’s massive energy resources will be a key outcome in the next few years, especially in the light of the current energy and cost of living crises. We live in an energy-rich country, yet people are paying through the nose in energy bills. If people in a country that is producing several times what we require for energy are still paying through the nose for energy in 10 or 20 years’ time, the just transition will have failed.

I am up front about those tests. A lot of work and challenges will be involved in getting there, but we have to aim for that. We cannot live in an energy-rich country where people are fuel poor. That is the test of the just transition.

No, I am not hearing enough of that. It would be great to have political consensus on the major steps that have to be taken to transform Scotland’s economy in the years ahead, and consensus that we need the powers to do that. We are held to account for not implementing radical transformational projects, but we need the support of all parties to get the powers to do that in the first place. Other constitutional debates are taking place right now, but borrowing powers are the obvious example.

The more I think and talk about it, the more I realise how important political consensus is, because there are examples of issues that are considered to be important, but which are not necessarily the big issues that we will have to deal with. Those issues become huge storms in the Scottish Parliament and in political battles. We must have more national political consensus about what needs to be done if we want to save the planet, reach our net zero targets and save humankind and civilization, because those are the problems that we face.

Maggie Chapman mentioned keeping the temperature increase to below 1.5°C, but some people are talking about an increase of 4°C by the end of the century, which has major ramifications for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. If we are to tackle the issues that cause that increase, we will need more political consensus