- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 11 March 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 25 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether Zero Waste Scotland developed a communications strategy for the proposed Deposit Return Scheme before the appointment of a scheme administrator, and, if not, what the current status of that work is.
Answer
During the development phase of Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), Zero Waste Scotland developed a dedicated DRS microsite ( https://depositreturnscheme.zerowastescotland.org.uk/ ) and targeted communications with a range of sectors involved in the scheme.
As recommended in the independent Gateway Review ( https://www.gov.scot/publications/deposit-return-scheme-gateway-review-report-june-2021/ ), Zero Waste Scotland is now leading on the development of a co-ordinated engagement and communications strategy in liaison with Circularity Scotland Ltd, SEPA and the Scottish Government.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 11 March 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 18 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the Dogs Trust's recommendation that border checks of animals must include a visual check to ensure that the animal is the same as listed on the passport, is the age stated and is being transported in acceptable conditions, and what plans it has to implement such checks at Scottish border points.
Answer
At present no assessment has been made by the Scottish Government in relation to the Dog’s Trust recommendations.
However, it should be noted that the Scottish Government, in conjunction with the Animal Health Protection Agency (APHA), UK Government and other devolved administrations already operates a robust pet travel checking regime for animals entering the country. All non-commercial dogs, cats and ferrets entering Scotland currently under the Pet Travel rules have to undergo 100% documentary and identity checks by authorised pet checkers.
Scotland’s authorised pet checkers are trained by APHA prior to being granted approval, and receive annual audits of their checking and processing to ensure they uphold the requirements of the Pet Travel rules. They also receive regular training and work as part of a wider APHA network to identify trends in non-compliance and additional training requirements.
Pet checkers will refuse travel or share intelligence with the APHA who can intercept at the port/border if non-compliance is suspected.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 10 March 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 17 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of grant support options for SME hospitality businesses seeking to fund expansion and growth projects.
Answer
Hospitality businesses, like all other businesses, may seek advice on SME funding sources from the Business Gateway ( https://www.bgateway.com/ ) who have a network of offices across Scotland and will tailor the advice dependant on the particular business needs and location. This could include advice on possible grant support in areas such as Research and Development to help bring new ideas to market, on technical and commercial feasibility studies, or on knowledge transfer partnerships with educational institutions. Hospitality businesses can also search the ‘FindBusinessSupport’ portal ( https://findbusinesssupport.gov.scot/ ) which lists all the main sources of advice, training and funding – including the loans and equity funds under the Scottish Growth Scheme - for businesses in any sector.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 25 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by George Adam on 10 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it records when special advisers are asked to comment on freedom of information requests and, if (a) so, how many times this happened in each of the last three years and (b) not, what the reasons are for its position on this matter.
Answer
Our decision-making criteria agreed between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Information Commissioner defines the roles and responsibilities of different parties in relation to FOI request handling, including the role of Special Advisers in providing views and comments and is available here .
Documentation for all FOI requests is held in individual case files. We do not keep a collated record of all cases on which Special Advisers have been asked to comment, since we have no business need to do so.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 22 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 3 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the amount spent on initiatives to promote the re-use of electrical waste in each of the last 10 years.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold information which provides a breakdown of spending on initiatives to promote the re-use of electrical waste.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 04 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 1 March 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on whether a producer registration system has been established for its Deposit Return Scheme, and, if not, when one will be established.
Answer
Under the Deposit and Return Scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020, producers must register with SEPA either directly or via a scheme administrator for their products to be sold legally onto the Scottish market. In line with the full implementation date that I announced in my statement to Parliament on 14 December 2021, the window for producers to make such registrations will run from 1 January-28 February 2023.
SEPA’s digital registration service is currently in development and will be online from 1 January 2023 in accordance with the producer registration window.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether municipal waste incinerators in Scotland are currently required to accurately measure direct CO2 emissions through the use of calibrated flow rates and calibrated CO2 continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS), and, if not, what plans there are to require this, in line with the approach taken by the UK Government Environment Agency.
Answer
As per S6W-06417 answered on 28 February 2022 , measurement of CO2 emissions using calibrated flow meters and CEMS is not a current requirement in SEPA permits for existing MWIs.
All SEPA Permits for existing sites must comply with the requirements of the Waste Incineration BAT Conclusions (WI BATCs) by 3 December 2023. SEPA will review Permits for MWIs to ensure they will be compliant by the deadline. This will include the new requirement for a calibrated flow meter.
The calibration of CO2 CEMS is not required by the WI BATCs. However, as part of the BAT review process, SEPA will consider whether to include a requirement for calibration of CEMS for CO2 and reporting of CO2 mass emissions to align with the approach taken by the Environment Agency. Whether or not each MWI has an appropriate CEMS in place which is able to be calibrated for measurement of CO2 will be confirmed during the BAT Review for each Permit.
All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the amount of (a) waste incinerated and (b) electricity exported at each municipal waste incinerator in Scotland in each of the last three years.
Answer
Please see a breakdown of the available data for a) and b)
Waste Incinerated and electricity produced at MWIs 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021
1. Waste incinerated by site (Tonnes)
The following data is from Waste Data Returns. Please refer to attached table which notes that the data below is higher for some sites than incinerated tonnages in Annual Reports made under the Permit.
Site | Permit Number | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021* |
Lerwick Energy Recovery Plant | PPC/A/1003141 | 23,054 | 20,890 | 22,850 | 19,037 |
MVV Environment Baldovie | PPC/A/1003157 | 94,625 | 102,819 | 104,519 | 160,632 |
Viridor Dunbar ERF | PPC/A/1032878 | 41,284 | 262,138 | 324,762 | 320,373 |
Viridor GRREC | PPC/A/111002 | | 93,340 | 123,831 | 98,975 |
FCC Millerhill | PPC/A/1136072 | 16,460 | 142,490 | 156,654 | 159,481 |
Levenseat Renewable Energy Limited is still in commissioning - Site is reporting waste inputs and outputs but no incineration tonnages.
1. Electricity exported to grid (MWh)
Site | Permit Number | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
Lerwick Energy Recovery Plant | PPC/A/1003141 | Nil - Note 1 | Nil - Note 1 | Nil - Note 1 | Nil - Note 1 |
MVV Environment Baldovie | PPC/A/1003157 | Note 2 | Note 2 | 33,800 Note 3 | Data is not yet available |
Viridor Dunbar ERF | PPC/A/1032878 | Note 2 | Note 2 | 224,848 | 237,524 |
Viridor GRREC | PPC/A/111002 | Note 2 | Note 2 | 46,668 | Data is not yet available |
FCC Millerhill | PPC/A/1136072 | Note 2 | Note 2 | 100,765 | 103,760 |
1. Heat recovery plant only.
2. No data held post cyber-attack.
3. Lower figures than 2019 due to operation without steam turbine from October 2021.
4. Levenseat Renewable Energy Limited is still in commissioning and are therefore not required to report this data.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022
To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown for the most recent year for which data is available of direct CO2 emissions recorded through calibrated flow rates and calibrated CO2 continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) from each municipal waste incinerator in Scotland; what proportion of the CO2 was (a) fossil-based and (b) biogenic, and how this split was derived.
Answer
There is no requirement for the direct measurements of CO2 via calibrated flow meters and calibrated CO2 CEMS in SEPA permits for municipal waste incinerators (MWI) in Scotland. The requested information is therefore not available either in total, or as a breakdown by proportion derived from fossil fuel and proportion derived from biogenic sources.
Permit holders are however required to report their annual CO2 emissions via the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI) and SEPA can therefore provide this data for the last reported year although this may include CO2 from additional sources to those from the incineration process eg. standby generators. This data can be found in SEPA’s SPRI data tool informatics.sepa.org.uk/SPRI/ . This is usually estimated using emission factors. There is no requirement in SPRI for MWIs to further breakdown their reported CO2 emission data into the proportions derived from fossil fuel or biogenic sources so this data is not available.
- Asked by: Maurice Golden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 10 February 2022
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Current Status:
Answered by Lorna Slater on 28 February 2022
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-05517 by Lorna Slater on 24 January 2022, regarding the estimated 27% lower impact of incineration over landfill, whether it will confirm that this involves an underlying assumption that (a) it is an estimate of historical (circa 2018) impacts rather than current or anticipated climate impacts of incineration, (b) it is based on sending waste directly to landfill with no biostabilisation component, (c) the impact of displaced energy is modelled using the UK grid rather than the relatively more decarbonised Scotland grid and (d) the technical report that contains the 27% estimate acknowledges data gaps in the composition of municipal waste and the energy outputs of energy from waste (EfW) plants.
Answer
All the underlying assumptions used in the analysis, including the information requested by the member, are available in the Zero Waste Scotland report The Climate Change Impacts of Burning Municipal Waste in Scotland and the accompanying technical report. Both are available on the Zero Waste Scotland website: The climate change impact of burning municipal waste in Scotland | Zero Waste Scotland .