Seòmar agus comataidhean

Carbon capture and storage and negative emission technologies will be mission critical to delivering our climate change targets. That is not just my view—it is the view of the Committee on Climate Change, who are expert independent advisers on these matters. Indeed, such approaches will be critical not just to Scotland but to the whole of the UK. For the whole of the UK to achieve the UK Government’s target of net zero by 2050, it will need negative emission technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

The Scottish cluster lost out on track 1 status, and we have continued to make representations to the UK Government on reversing that decision, simply because the UK Government’s own net zero strategy and carbon capture targets cannot be achieved without the Scottish cluster in the mix. We need to move forward with carbon capture, because it represents an important opportunity for us here to meet not just our climate targets but our energy transition, too.

As I have said, we continue to engage with the UK Government on this matter. It had been planning a track 2 process possibly this year, but perhaps into next; however, there have been ministerial changes and I do not know whether that timeline has changed.

Just last month, I met Scottish cluster representatives at St Fergus. What we need to understand is that not only is this approach mission critical, it is costing a lot of money to keep the partners together, and unless there is a very clear indication that this work will materialise soon, it will become increasingly difficult to make that happen. That is what worries me the most, and it is why we have offered £80 million of financial support. However, we need to get the regulatory agreement for it to move forward. The danger is that we lose the opportunity and the time slot to keep the partners together and ensure that we deliver on the Scottish cluster.

There is unanimous agreement on this matter across the Scottish Parliament; indeed, I know that Liam Kerr is a supporter of the Scottish cluster. We all want to see it happen but it needs to happen sooner rather than later, because it is costing money. The longer the process takes, the more difficult it will be to hold the partners together in order to make this a success.

I am happy to do that.

It will be out by the end of this year—I cannot be any more precise than that.

However, we also have our hydrogen investment proposition, which I published last week and launched at our hydrogen supply chain event for stakeholders in Edinburgh. The proposition is quite important, because a lot of the initial investment and opportunities around hydrogen will be driven largely by export potential rather than by domestic demand. There is huge interest in Scotland’s capability to produce large quantities of green hydrogen not just for our own domestic consumption but for export potential. The UK Government has an objective of producing 5GW between now and 2030; Scotland alone is looking to do 5GW, and there is a lot of interest from mainland European countries that will need to import green hydrogen and are therefore looking at import opportunities.

The investment proposition and supply chain event were important in starting to set out Scotland’s potential opportunity with regard to manufacturing and producing green hydrogen for our own needs and for export. We published the proposition last week, and I will publish the action plan by the end of this year. I cannot give you a specific date, but it will certainly be by the end of the year.

I can imagine the reaction that placing more duties on local authorities would receive. However, I think that it is a fair point. A lot of what local authorities are focused on is their direct corporate responsibility in looking to decarbonise and change their processes to make them less carbon intensive, whatever that may be. Is there a need for us to get them to think a bit wider than that? There are some local authorities that are better at it than others. If you look at some of the things that some local authorities are doing around transport issues, for example in active travel, EV charging infrastructure and the 20-minute neighbourhoods—all those things have a positive effect in the community. They are not direct corporate matters, but they have wider community and environmental benefits.

There is a fair amount being taken forward by local authorities that goes beyond just their direct corporate buildings and vehicles, but I think that there is a fair challenge there in questioning whether there is more that we could get local authorities to do. I am a bit hesitant to put more statutory targets around them at this stage, given the new statutory targets that come in in two months’ time on their own reductions targets.

We have the regional partnerships for transport planning, and taking that forward is then down to individual local authorities. Some local authorities are more proactive and better than others at pursuing transport planning. Is there more? We gave a commitment to review in this parliamentary session the structure for transport planning and to look at whether it is the optimal model to take forward. We want to do that co-productively with local authorities to make sure that the structure that we put in place reflects what they believe is the best approach, alongside what we are trying to achieve with transport planning. I would say that the model that we have now is maybe the optimal model, but there is scope for us to look at how we can improve it. Some local authorities are making good progress.

The details of the bill are still to be published and I do not want to pre-empt what must be agreed through Government and published. However, grouse management is a key aspect of the bill, as is how to balance it with biodiversity challenges. I hope that it will help to provide a more modern framework for grouse management and how that balances with the need to tackle biodiversity loss.

If I recall correctly, the challenge around that is that we had intended to respond to the committee’s report with our work on developing a new marine plan. That work was paused and delayed, which meant that we were not able to provide a full response. I am more than happy to ensure that we look at providing that response as part of our work to develop the new marine plan.

You will need to wait to see what is in the draft bill. I will not pre-empt it. We also need to make sure that when we provide any additional powers, particularly regulatory powers like this, to third-party bodies that we are satisfied that there is the appropriate regulatory function for managing that. For example, powers that are exercised by the police have a stringent range of challenges around them if they are seen to be inappropriately used and so on, in a way that the SSPCA’s powers may not have.

I hope that once you have seen the bill, you will be in a position where you can determine whether the powers that we provide are sufficient or not. We also need to be mindful of the regulatory aspect of providing any additional powers to a third-party body.

Yes. I will ask David Pratt to come in. He will give you a bit more detail on how we will take that forward.

Six public events took place over the course of August. Five of them were in person and one was virtual. I do not know the exact details of the number of responses that we have had, but we received representation looking to extend the consultation period for an additional amount of time to allow other stakeholders to engage in that process, which is why we agreed to an extension of the timeframe.

I am more than happy to ask officials to provide an update on the quantity of feedback that we have received so far and pass that on to the committee, if that would be useful.