Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is very much on my mind. I come back to what I was saying about the question of heating buildings: we have to make sure that it is affordable and that people feel the benefit from it.

I will come on to the nuts and bolts of how we make it affordable. Yearly budget decisions will be made, but we will set out our costings in the climate change plan, too. We will also point to the fact that it is, rightly, not going to be only a Government spend. There must be Government and private contributions to it.

I also point to the cost of not doing it. There is a cost associated with not doing it in terms of the impact that that will have on the resilience of communities. There is also another cost, which points to some of the innovation-related things that I have been talking about. If Scotland is a hothouse for innovative ideas to get us to net zero by 2045, our economy will be boosted as a result of that activity. I mentioned Copenhagen: people there had the idea that they wanted to decarbonise Copenhagen. Out of that came many industries and businesses that are now world leading. That is where I see Scotland in relation to floating offshore wind and carbon capture and storage. There will be a long-term economic benefit associated with the actions to reduce our emissions. I am absolutely confident that there is a massive economic return.

We need to make sure that the short-term costs are fair. The Government has to step in where it can. We must also recognise that the Government cannot foot the bill for the entire transformation and that there are business opportunities associated with driving down emissions in all sectors. Those need to be quantified as well, and I will be able to set them out in the climate change plan.

Today’s meeting is about the carbon budgets rather than about the detail of the plan, which will be put to the Parliament in October.

It will have an estimate—

Yes.

Do you mean the emissions impact of the legislation or of the budgeting?

I am not going to go into all the substantive points. People have made their views clear. I do not think that it is lazy to suggest that there is a cost, a danger and a great deal of risk associated with doing nothing.

I align myself with the comments that the deputy convener made about the Parliament’s responsibility. I feel that we fell down in our responsibility in the previous session by not doing what we could to support even the most minor policy directions that were put to the Parliament. It is not enough to support a target. There has to be concerted action. If we do not do it in this generation, the next generation will ask, rightly, why it was put in such a precarious position.

I have moved the motion in my name, but I will leave my comments until such time as I have a full plan in front of me and I am able to answer all the detailed questions that have been asked today.

I have had many conversations with UK Government ministers on that. It is no secret to say that I was very disappointed that Grangemouth was not factored in when those initial announcements were made and Teeside was allocated £50 million. Given that project willow had probably just published its report, in which SAF was one of the nine options, it would be an understatement to say that I was surprised about that. I am not telling you anything that Ed Miliband and Michael Shanks do not know. They know how disappointed I was about that.

There is an opportunity for some of that funding to be leveraged into Grangemouth. The refinery is an ideal place for SAF production. Indeed, the Scottish Government funded some studies to allow Petroineos to bottom out its capability to produce SAF in Scotland. One of the reasons why that was not progressed is that, at the time, the previous UK Government was against removing the HEFA cap. That put a limit on Petroineos’s ambitions in that area.

Petroineos was quite up front—this was mentioned at the Grangemouth future industry board, when ministers from the previous UK Government were involved—that the HEFA cap was a real barrier to it progressing anything on sustainable aviation fuel or any biorefining projects, in relation to which the Scottish Government had given it funding to carry out studies. That was a missed opportunity.

What you have asked about, Mr MacDonald, is exactly what I have been putting to the UK Government. I hope that I am being listened to.

When I came into post as Minister for Energy, one of my first meetings was with the Scottish cluster, which, at that point, was hopeful of getting track status. It has been marched up a hill so many times, but the previous UK Government never committed to getting it track status. We pledged money to the cluster for the point at which it would need it. I had very strong signals from the cluster that it would ask for the money when it needed it; it did not see it as worth while to take the money that the Scottish Government had pledged when there was no track status guarantee. The pledge absolutely stands, and I really hope that there is an announcement on that today.

Everyone was very surprised that the project did not achieve track status under the previous Government, because it was one of the most viable carbon capture, utilisation and storage projects out there. The core team included Storegga and Petroineos, and other partners included Shell. They all wanted to take advantage of the infrastructure that we have in Scotland, including the geological infrastructure—the empty reservoirs in the North Sea—and to harness some of the work that had been done, even more than 15 years ago, when CCUS was originally funded by the UK Government. That funding was then taken away. The cluster has been very patient.

However, I also want to say that the Acorn project has the biggest capacity in the whole of the UK in relation to the amount of CO₂ that can be taken, and it potentially rivals some of the reservoirs that the Norwegians have earmarked for CCUS. There is huge capacity that could take CO₂ from all over the UK and also help our European neighbours to decarbonise some of the hard-to-abate sectors across Europe. On many occasions, the Climate Change Committee has said to both the UK and Scottish Governments that CCUS is absolutely essential for us to meet our 2045 net zero target and our UK 2050 net zero target.

I am cautiously hopeful—but very hopeful—that, in the spending review today, the current UK Government will make the commitment that previous Governments failed to make. I will be first in the queue to welcome that.

I am having very regular conversations with all energy producers in Scotland about workforce issues, capacity and potential for changing to different activities associated with the just transition. The Deputy First Minister is having the same conversations with regard to economic growth and the green industrial strategy, and the First Minister is having them as well. That is happening across all the areas that will be involved in the just transition as we decarbonise and look to maximise the opportunities that exist, particularly from Scotland’s renewables proposition. The green industrial strategy is absolutely at the heart of that—of its five main areas, the majority are energy based.

If you are looking for detail on the matter, we can get it to the committee.

Is that right? That is on the official record. [Laughter.]