Dr. Thomas Muinzer:

The Scottish targets is a useful and interesting question. It is worth contextualising how the targets in Scotland developed. That is quite interesting. The UK passed its Climate Change Act in 2008. In 2009, Scotland passed its sub-state Climate Change (Scotland) Act which was extensively amended last year, as I am sure the committee knows. When the original Act was passed in 2009 it was a relatively well developed piece of legislation and was quite ambitious. Over the course of passing that, the Scots looked at targets which is one of the things that is being agonised over in Ireland in relation to our Bill. Effectively, Scotland absorbed the two milestone targets under the UK's Act for 2020 and 2050, but ratcheted up the 2020 target for a range of reasons. It increased it to 42% at that time under the initial regime. The Scots said they would go further or at least try another alternative device. We would like to be a little more granular in how we account for our emissions reductions trajectory. The UK Act has stringent five-year carbon budgets that are pegged to interim targets insofar as the 2020 interim target and the 2050 target set the range that the carbon budgets travel on. The carbon budgets are set in secondary legislation and approved by parliament.

The Scots built in annual targets of at least 3% per year. From the get-go in 2009 Scotland took a sub-state annual granular approach to targeting. That has proved very useful and has set Scotland up well. It has had a very successful emissions reduction drive. The country was well placed to introduce more robust interim targets in the recent amendments to which the member referred. To cut a long story short, the interim targets are very important. They are key to the success of carbon budgeting and granular targets. I could say more, but I will conclude there.