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As I said, a number of energy statements will happen over the next few months. I will not commit myself to timescales, because I need to work with my officials on when they will happen. There will be clarity on a lot of the energy sectors and the Government’s policies on them at the same time.

I think that I have set out the levers. You mentioned a lever that relates to the auction round, which is a decision for the UK Government to make. It has to make the auction rounds and the contracts for difference more favourable to Scottish projects. I have always said that. I am not quite sure whether that is in the letter that I will send to the committee, but I have certainly made that point in multiple letters to the UK energy minister.

I am not Cabinet Secretary for Transport, so I do not have the detail on the intricacies of whether electrification or hydrogen is more attractive for the changeover of vehicles. However, I know that Ms Hyslop has been working with the sector in readiness.

The heavy goods vehicle market readiness fund was launched in July, with £2 million of support to be provided to the HGV sector over the next year to reduce the complexities around the transition for fleets in Scotland in the short term and develop market readiness for accelerated future uptake of zero-emissions vehicles.

The infrastructure issues that you put to me are of course salient, and we have to look at the barriers that are in place and do what we can to address those. Notwithstanding that, however, I think that the carbon footprint associated with goods and services, and questions of how goods are delivered and how the supply chain operates, will become even more important to consumers. For large supermarkets, it will become important to have ambitions in that regard, and that is only going to ramp up over time.

You mentioned the grid infrastructure. Another issue with that, as I mentioned, is the cost of electricity. The market arrangements have to be reformed to make it attractive for firms to swap over, largely from diesel, to any type of electric fuelling.

There are a number of moving parts in all of this. Yes, it is going to be difficult, and you might disagree with the projections that the CCC sets out, but we have to work with the sector and support it as much as possible in order to be able to look at how we take down the barriers at both UK and Scottish level. That is what Ms Hyslop is trying to do.

We have the new-build heat standards, so we already have regulations in that space. With existing homes, however, I was worried that compulsions would mean that people could not afford to do the work. There is massive expense associated with it.

Yes—of course.

I am completely open to listening to how sectors can go further and faster. The vast majority of the people I know who have an air-source heat pump installed are happy with that. For some, it has been an absolute game changer. I have constituents who get in touch about things that have perhaps not been installed to the standard that they would have expected, but that is the same for any kind of work that is done in someone’s house.

I do not want to pre-empt what Ms McAllan is going to bring forward in the heat in buildings bill. I do not want to put words in the mouth of someone who is working very hard with us to make sure that the bill dovetails into the climate change plan. As with everything, if there were innovations or improvements in how things can get done that would make it more attractive for households to take on the technology, that would be great news. The market is growing, but I disagree that there would not be unintended consequences of compulsion on some of this.

You will hear differing views on that, which I suppose brings us back to the point that I made to Sarah Boyack about collaboration with sectors. We need the right planting in the right place with the willing partners that we have. I have seen, in my constituency, well-managed planting on farms; indeed, it is often better managed than some of the not-so-well-managed pine plantations that we see, with indigenous trees alongside the production on those farms.

What we need to do—we are already doing it with the agriculture bill and the whole farm plan that Ms Gougeon leads on—is to work out how we value the work that is already done in farms and land management and to communicate the benefits of the types of planting that have been done for the bottom line and for the health of a farm. Recently, someone in the sector put it to me that some very small farms do not have the headspace to look beyond their production, because they are one or two-person businesses. We need to be able to assist those farmers to make decisions about what to do on their farm that is not onerous for them. I thought that that was a very good point.

We think that we can go further. I will not be able to set you up with a lot of detail on that, because I need to discuss it—we are discussing it—ahead of the draft plan being laid. Mr Fairlie has responsibility for peatland restoration.

When I asked all the cabinet secretaries and ministers where they can go further, peatland restoration was one area in which there was Government agreement that we could do so. It is an area in which Scotland has an advantage. The geography of Scotland has an advantage. It is a double win: reducing the carbon leakage and producing carbon sinks.

The Climate Change Committee wants to see a lot of short and medium-term actions. The first carbon budget is really challenging because a lot of the action associated with peatland restoration will mean that carbon reductions come in the second, third and fourth carbon budgets.

I am happy to be briefer, as long as people do not say, “Well, she never talked about this,” or, “She never talked about that.” I will try my best to be succinct.

We have funding streams associated with industrial decarbonisation. The Scottish industrial energy transformation fund is a consistent budget line. At every budget opportunity, I will make the pitch for that to continue, and, given that we have a climate change plan that will be reliant on industrial decarbonisation, I may even pitch to ensure that that funding increases. We have also pledged £80 million to support the Acorn project, which will be fundamental in industrial decarbonisation through capturing the associated carbon, as will the Scottish cluster.

We are all familiar with project willow, which is the incentive to come into the Grangemouth industrial cluster, and with the efforts that Scottish Enterprise makes to attract low-carbon and emerging technologies to be based in Grangemouth. We have £25 million of Scottish Government money associated with that project, to help it to get to final investment decision status so that it can then access the money that has been pledged by the UK Government as part of the Grangemouth deal that both Governments have made.

There has been a lot of incentivisation. Government money being associated with low-carbon technologies is an incentive for companies to diversify.

The convener is asking me to keep it short, so I will leave it there.