Chamber and committees

I would have to ask the SCIS. Philip Raines might have more information. It is possible that you missed your opportunity, because you had a representative of the SCIS in front of you, but I could certainly find that out for you.

I have two big concerns about this. The first is the one set out in the plan, and the second is the capacity that local authorities might have to measure scope 3 emissions, given the expertise required and the complexity of what is involved.

The issue of unintended consequences that you also mentioned arises out of the current situation that we are in, and which was well rehearsed by your previous panel, of the absence of a standardised, tested, accurate solution for measuring and reporting. If, as the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service in particular was saying, you do not have a way of accurately measuring things, you might make decisions based on data—from, say, a supplier—that you cannot verify. Who is checking that the information that you are getting back from this chain of people who are reporting back to you, so that you can do these calculations, is verifiable and correct?

The current approach to reporting on procurement emissions relies on the spend-based method and the conversion factor that some of the previous panel mentioned. However, that is just an estimate of the emissions associated with the total spend. You could reduce your emissions by reducing what you procure, and spending less on something would correlate with those reductions, too, but what would be the unintended consequences of that? You still need to procure those items for a service to keep going. You could then have an apparent reduction in emissions by procuring lower-quality items. However, although they might have fewer emissions associated with them, what would be the impact of that on your services? After all, lower-quality products might need to be renewed more. Under the current system, that could mean putting off investment in more expensive items that might be more energy efficient and last longer, and which therefore have a longer-term impact, too. A solely spend-based approach is not suitable for on-going use.

If we are to prevent these unintended negative consequences arising and driving the wrong type of behaviour, the methodology has to be worked on and researched. As a result of the improvement plan, the Scottish Government has been involved in putting together a focus group to bottom out the methodology, so that some of the unintended consequences arising from the current system and the capacity issues get bottomed out, too.

Moreover, if there were a model out there that was being used by other countries and which we could replicate and bring over here, we would do that. At the moment, though, this same conversation is happening in a whole lot of countries. Indeed, the other countries of the UK do not have a methodology or have not asked their local authorities to report on scope 3 emissions.

The fact that we are having this conversation will drive the action that will get us to the place where we need to be. It is still worth while doing this, because certain scope 3 emissions will be easier to report on than others, and that, too, will drive action.

Or they might not know how they are doing. I was struck by what the last panel said: if you go far enough down the supply chain, you might well come to quite small businesses. A small business with fewer than 50 people that provides goods that have been procured by a local authority—or, indeed, provides goods to a person who is procuring directly for a local authority—will not have the capacity to debate or perhaps talk accurately about its emissions. Also, will such a company have a person with that expertise?

There has to be some proportionality, because we are a country of small and medium-sized enterprises. We do not want a situation in which, as the convener mentioned in his earlier question to me, a company has to put in a 60-page report on this one issue in order to bid for a local authority contract. That might be too much of a burden to put on those people.

The question that I always come back to is this: what are we doing to drive action? That is why, in our response to Environmental Standards Scotland, we were able to agree straight away on four recommendations that would drive action. However, this recommendation is trickier, because just reporting on scope 3 emissions would not necessarily prompt action and, indeed, could tie up local authorities in having to do an awful lot of reporting and monitoring work, which might take away from their other efforts or lead them, as you have identified, to make decisions based on potentially inaccurate data.

In fact, I do have a list—I have just realised that I had it in front of me. In category 1, which is purchased goods and services, 9 per cent of local authorities reported their emissions. In category 5, which is waste, 94 per cent reported their emissions. In category 6, which is business travel, 91 per cent reported their emissions. In category 7, which is employee commuting, the figure was 13 per cent, and, for home working, it was 72 per cent. In the categories in which it is easier to have that data, local authorities are reporting back on that.

We need to measure what we can and improve on what we can. We can measure what we can in the categories of scope 3 emissions that I have mentioned—a substantial amount of work has been done with local authorities on that. If we improve on that, we will make a massive difference.

I made a note of what Silke Isbrand, who was on the previous panel, said. She said that local authorities need to use the data in the most effective way to drive down emissions. I think that that is the headline here. We need to use the data in order to drive down emissions. If some of the data is harder to get or inaccurate, it might not drive down emissions.

Yes. The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service, a representative of which was on your earlier panel, is actively working on that. That will be what Ms McAllan was referring to. You will have heard that that service, which is based at the University of Edinburgh, has been set up as the result of a partnership between COSLA, local authorities and the Scottish Government. Right now, the SCIS is working with local authorities to provide them with the methodology that exists to look at their emissions.

The work of the SCIS is absolutely critical. Probably most critical is its work on the short and medium-term gains that can be made and the plans that local authorities will have to put forward. The advice and the expertise of the SCIS are absolutely critical. In the background, we will work with it and many others on the methodology around scope 3 emissions, but that will take a lot more time. Meanwhile, the SCIS is working in real time with local authorities.

Yes.

It was interesting to see that that particular category was developed for high-level reporting on the greenhouse gas emissions of the big franchises that we all know about—Starbucks, Costa and all the fast-food outlets that operate under franchise arrangements. I asked the same question that you ask. I do not think that any local authorities have specifically reported back on the franchises. Philip Raines might have that information.

We are currently in the middle of making an assessment of that, and are working with local authorities around it. We looked at the ESS report and then we organised two workshops with the people in local authorities who were already dealing with the various climate change plans and emissions reductions. Those workshops considered the areas that might be difficult to report on and the areas that could probably be reported on easily—exactly what you are talking about. There was a conversation around assessing how much could be done in that regard.

If we introduced any legislation around scope 3 emissions reporting, it would take effect around about 2026-27, but that would be informed by the on-going conversations that we have with local authorities about the areas in which we can see the benefits of reporting on certain scope 3 emissions and the gaps where they have not been reporting but there has been an assessment and the data probably exists and just needs to be collated.

The Scottish Government wants to keep pace with the EU generally, so we always factor that into our decision making.