S3M-6416 Climate Change (Annual Targets) (Scotland) Order 2010 (Draft) [Opening Speech]

Scottish Parliament

Thursday 27 May 2010

[The Presiding Officer opened the meeting at 09:15]

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Climate Change (Annual Targets) (Scotland) Order 2010 (Draft)

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Alasdair Morgan): The next item of business is a debate on motion S3M-6416, in the name of Bruce Crawford, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, on the Climate Change (Annual Targets) (Scotland) Order 2010. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons. I point out to members that we have a negative amount of spare time this afternoon, if they get my drift, so I will stop members as soon as they reach their allocated time limit.

Motion moved,

That the Parliament agrees that the Climate Change (Annual Targets) (Scotland) Order 2010 be approved.—[Bruce Crawford.]

14:55

The Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change (Stewart Stevenson): Members will be aware that last week the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee voted against the original annual targets order. I take very seriously the requirement in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 to set targets for 2010 to 2022 by 1 June, and for that reason I withdrew the original order on the next day and laid the new version that Parliament is considering today.

I understand that there is a view in some quarters that we are still not being ambitious enough and that we are not being clear about the emissions reductions that are possible in the early years. I will outline clearly where we are. This Parliament passed unanimously an act that requires that we take independent expert advice before we set targets. We took that advice from the United Kingdom Committee on Climate Change and we considered it seriously. That committee suggested that we set flat targets for 2010 to 2012, but we were keen to make early reductions in emissions. For that reason we set, in the original targets, more stretching targets for 2011 and 2012. So, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that for 2011 we set essentially the same target as for 2010—a zero per cent reduction. Instead we went further, requiring that emissions fall by 0.5 per cent.

For 2012, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that we set the same target as for the two preceding years. Again we went further, requiring a 0.5 per cent reduction on top of the 0.5 per cent in the previous year. We were clear in the statement that accompanied the order how challenging that is. We were clear that additional actions would be needed to meet the 2012 target and that we would have to give full consideration to options that might allow that.

The act requires that we report on proposals and policies for achieving the annual targets after the targets are set. That is exactly what we intend to do. We have committed to publishing a draft report on proposals and policies for parliamentary consideration in September. The Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee voted to reject the order. We listened and went still further for 2012. So instead of the 0 per cent reduction that was recommended for 2011 and 2012 by the Committee on Climate Change, we have set targets requiring a 0.5 per cent reduction in 2011 and an additional 1 per cent reduction in 2012.

It is worth reminding members what the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition said about the annual targets order that we introduced originally. It did not give a whole-hearted welcome to the targets for the early years. It would like to have seen bigger reductions, as we all would. It acknowledged that

"a step change in policy effort would be required if these and future targets are to be met".

It emphasised that the targets should be seen as the minimum reduction. We agree. It recommended that the TICCC recommend the order to Parliament, but the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee chose to recommend rejection of the order. It is disappointing that the committee chose to ignore the factors that work against us in the early years: the fact that traded-sector emissions that follow the emissions trading system cap, in line with international practice, are flat in that period; the fact that we are seeing a significant decline over three years of 3.5 per cent or so in forestry sequestration, which results from a decline in planting rates since the 1990s; and the fact that international aviation emissions that are included in our targets, but not in the UK Government's carbon budgets, are unlikely to fall significantly in the short term.

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 has rightly been the subject of widespread praise in Scotland and internationally for the level of ambition that it sets out. It is worth reminding ourselves of that and comparing our ambition with that of the UK. Based on advice from the Committee on Climate Change, in 2011 both we and the UK have reduction targets of 0.5 per cent. In the order that is before us today for 2012, we will have 1 per cent, while the UK will have 0.5 per cent. In 2013, we will have 8.67 per cent and the UK will have 4.9 per cent. In 2014, we will have 2.78 per cent and the UK will have 1.4 per cent. In 2015, we will have 2.88 per cent and the UK will have 1.3 per cent. In 2016, we will have 2.9 per cent and the UK will have 1.5 per cent. In 2017, we will have 2.97 per cent and the UK will have 1.5 per cent. In 2018, we will have 3.05 per cent and the UK will have 2.5 per cent. In 2019, we will have 3.16 per cent and the UK will have 1.7 per cent. In 2020, we will have 3.34 per cent and the UK will have 2 per cent.

Ambitious? Of course we are ambitious—as a Parliament and as a Government. It is important not to undermine the credibility of that ambition—which we shared, as a Parliament, when we passed the act in June 2009—by rejecting an order that is, as I have demonstrated by reading out the numbers, clearly ambitious to an extraordinary degree.

It would be irresponsible of Parliament to set targets that could not be shown to be deliverable for this Administration or any future Administration. That would send a disastrous message to our domestic stakeholders and to the international community.

I ask the Parliament to agree to approve the order.

15:01