Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-39825 on 9 March 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

A joint review process is in place for Local Housing Strategies, involving Scottish Government and local government officials. Each strategy is reviewed against a number of criteria, including the extent to which fuel poverty, energy efficiency and climate change have been addressed. We expect most local authorities will publish the review of their Local Housing Strategy on their websites, and we are discussing detailed publication arrangements with COSLA. To strengthen climate change coverage in Local Housing Strategies and further help local authorities meet the duties they have as public bodies under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 the Scottish Government and COSLA will shortly be issuing additional guidance.

Our woodland creation targets are mainly achieved through grant support under the Scotland Rural Development Programme together with the Forest Leasing Scheme and some direct planting undertaken by Forestry Commission Scotland. The 2011-12 Draft Budget provides sufficient funding to meet 10,000 hectares of woodland creation and we have actually increased grants available for forestry by £8.9 million to £36 million.

Our policy is to continue to allow sufficient funding to achieve 10,000 hectares each year, which will deliver the 100 million trees target by 2015.

Mitigation can be identified at the strategic level through the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Habitats Regulations Appraisal (HRA) processes. The Scottish Government has undertaken a strategic SEA and HRA for offshore wind energy in Scottish Territorial Waters. An SEA for marine renewables (wave and tidal) was undertaken in 2007. Work is currently beginning on an Appraisal of Sustainability for marine renewables which will refresh the 2007 SEA and also include a strategic level HRA. Further detailed assessment and identification of appropriate mitigation measures for individual developments must be made at the project level.

The Survey, Deploy and Monitor policy, which is currently being developed by Marine Scotland and SNH, will provide a pragmatic, risk based approach to allow the deployment of renewables and will be a key tool to facilitate the delivery of initial demonstration projects. In addition, research and the demonstration strategy are focused on tackling environmental issues.

The licensing process delivers mitigation by ensuring that any licence issued for relevant activities has appropriate conditions. Any conditions put in place with regard to a licence would be enforced by Marine Scotland.

A strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of the National Renewables Infrastructure Plan (N-RIP) was undertaken, in accordance with the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005, and the Environmental Report was published for consultation in September 2010. The purpose of the SEA was to identify potential environmental effects and measures for their mitigation, and to ensure that this information is made available when decisions are made by site owners to progress individual sites contained within the N-RIP. In this way, it was considered that the SEA would assist site developers and investors by providing information about the potential environmental issues pertaining to the development of the individual sites, and how they can best be overcome.

A considerable amount of work is currently being undertaken on the potential environmental effects of offshore wind, wave and tidal renewable energy in Scotland and across the UK.

The Scottish Government is working with other regulators, scientific bodies and industry to deliver a co-ordinated environmental research and monitoring programme to tackle gaps in knowledge and facilitate the commissioning of research projects to inform the licensing process and ensure good environmental data is available to planners, regulators and developers.

The current work programme consists of 19 ongoing research projects which are carried out by a range of organisations including Marine Scotland Science and research institutes. The total funding for these projects is £1.3 million, of which just over £1 million has been provided by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government is working with the Natural Environment Research Council to develop a series of three new research projects which address aspects of the environmental interactions of marine renewable energy developments.

The Scottish Government has not had any discussions with Research Councils UK on this matter, but has held discussions with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) on research collaboration. Marine Scotland will be involved in the steering groups for a number of relevant projects.

The most recently published information is contained within Table 1 of the Annual Report on Environmental Performance of the Scottish Government estate for the 2008-09 financial year. This report was published on 21 May 2010 and is available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, (Bib. number 50874). 73% of waste was recycled during this period.

The most recently published information is contained within Table 1 of the Annual Report on Environmental Performance of the Scottish Government estate for the 2008-09 financial year. This report was published on 21 May 2010 and is available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 50874). It highlighted good performance in the areas of waste reduction and recycling but weaker performance in reducing emissions from energy use.

Carbon dioxide emissions arising from energy use in the then 18 target Scottish Government buildings decreased by 0.3% between 1999-2000 and 2008-09.

The Government On Line Sustainable Performance Information Exchange (GOLSPIE), a web portal within www.scotland.gov.uk is under development and will publish daily energy consumption data. In line with our commitment in Conserve and Save: Energy Efficiency Action Plan we will start to publish this information in the spring. Copies of the Action Plan are available from the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. Number 52545).