S5M-15380 Carbon-neutral Economy (Just Transition)

The Presiding Officer (Ken Macintosh): The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-15380, in the name of Roseanna Cunningham, on securing a just transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

Exactly 10 years ago, I was at the 14th conference of the parties—COP 14—in Poznan, in Poland, and the present climate change minister has been to COP 24 in Katowice, also in Poland. Ten years ago, the core of what we were discussing was climate justice, and I had the privilege of meeting, for the first time, Mary Robinson, who is now of the Mary Robinson Foundation—Climate Justice, when she spoke at an event that was organised by the Scottish Government.

Ensuring a just transition has moved up the agenda as an important issue of which we need to take account in protecting people’s jobs, exploiting the skills and opportunities that come from the transition and supporting the people who will need to undertake it.

Why does the agenda matter? In my intervention on the cabinet secretary, I talked about the very welcome move of employment from coal to renewables in the United States. It is estimated that hurricane Florence—a single hurricane—whose ferocity was broadly attributed to climate change, cost $22 billion. Therefore, the cost of doing nothing on the agenda is enormous. Ten years ago, we were being told by the UK Committee on Climate Change that the costs of doing nothing were approximately 10 times as great as the costs of addressing the agenda. I have not heard an update on that ratio, but there is little doubt that it will have remained the same—if not increased—as the issue has become more important. That is why we are addressing the agenda.

The Scottish Government has been doing quite a lot to address the agenda. There has been a just transition of ScotRail drivers from diesel trains—which burn 75,000 litres of fuel a week between Edinburgh and Glasgow, via Falkirk High, according to my back-of-the-envelope calculation—to electric trains, which are now used on the line. There are slightly more of them, with many more seats—30,000 seats per day—and the power that they need comes from only 10 wind turbines. If we compare those two options, we see why, in economic and climate terms, we will be making the transition from an environment in which we rely on oil, particularly in transport.

Oil is important, and the industry in the north-east is important for my constituents. My constituency has the St Fergus gas plant, which brings a huge proportion of the UK’s gas ashore. East Anglia is the other main place for that, together with some places off Blackpool. The skills that have been developed among my constituents and in my constituency are transferable skills that can enable us to build a new renewables industry, but we have got to manage that—it will not happen simply by accident.

We also have the Acorn carbon capture and storage project, which is undergoing its early stages at St Fergus, although the project is not quite of the size that we previously looked forward to at the Peterhead gas station. That is an ideal place to have a carbon capture system because of its proximity to the pipelines that would take the carbonic acid away and into reservoirs offshore.

Will oil continue to matter to us? Yes, it will. We have not found a way of successfully replacing oil in any meaningful way as a feedstock for our chemical industries. That is a challenge. We can see some of the way forward, but we are certainly not ready to complete that transition. We are not yet in a position to say that oil does not matter to our economy or to the future of the human race, but we can certainly see the way forward in transport, and we should. Oil is too precious for us to be burning as much of it as we currently do in transport.

Turning to the just transition process, I very much welcome the debate and its focus on the just transition principles. I am broadly comfortable with the Labour amendment, although not quite as comfortable as the cabinet secretary is, because I am not at all clear that the establishment of a commission that was

“independent of government and accountable to the Parliament”

would make sense or work. Why do I say that? There is a place for outside bodies that fit into that category. An example is the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, who is our policeman. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards? We need independence in that role. Similarly, the Boundary Commission for Scotland should be independent of politicians and should therefore not report by the normal ministerial lines.

However, I genuinely have concerns about having an independent commission in a policy area such as this. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body would have to find the money from parliamentary funds to fund it every year. Also, the commission would have to have a line of accountability to the Parliament—and how would that work? We know that ministers can be hauled up at our behest to account for the areas that are their responsibilities, but the commission’s area would not be their responsibility if the commission was independent and reported directly to the Parliament. Can I be persuaded on the subject? I probably can but, so far, the argument has not advanced to the point that I have heard the arguments for that aspect of a just transition commission—which, in principle, I strongly support.

This is an excellent debate. Some ministers have shown us the way to do things. In 2008, the Welsh Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, Jane Davidson, was able to travel by train from Cardiff to Poznan, in Poland. The journey took her two days each way. I regret that, as a minority Government minister in 2008, I had to fly. I hope that that will not happen in the future.

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