Climate Change Plan: third report on proposals and policies - written statement

Finalising the Climate Change Plan

12. This statement sets out details of the resolutions and reports relevant to the draft Climate Change Plan and the changes that have been made to the final Climate Change Plan as a result. The statement has been structured to first cover a number of cross-cutting themes which emerged from the Parliamentary reports, and cover in more detail issues arising in the sector chapters of the Climate Change Plan.

13. In finalising the Climate Change Plan, Ministers have had regard to the recommendations in the report prepared by the four Parliamentary committees and the resolution of the Scottish Parliament to agree to motion S5M-04534.

14. A number of amendments have been made in finalising the Climate Change Plan. Many of these are minor drafting amendments, updates and corrections that reflect the transition from a draft to a final document, including reference to Parliament's role in the scrutiny of the document. Where amendments are substantial, details are provided here about those changes. The format of the final Plan has also been changed from the draft Plan in order to improve the structure and facilitate understanding of the content.

15. Some of the recommendations in the four Committee reports were in the form of agreement with either the Scottish Government's position or with certain issues, or noted that the Committee would examine a policy through their scrutiny of the Energy Strategy, for example. In other instances, the reports records the Committees' position on a particular matter but does not make a recommendation to the Scottish Government. We welcome such constructive comments, but since they do not require further amendment to the Plan we have generally not made reference to them in this statement. We would also note that, as with any scrutiny process where a diverse range of views are expressed, not every recommendation has resulted in a change to the Climate Change Plan.

16. For the remainder of this document the Climate Change Plan will be referred to as simply the Plan.

17. This statement is structured around the following sections:

• Development of the final Climate Change Plan
• Consultation
• Costs
• Wider Benefits
• Public Sector
• Local Government
• The Planning System
• Building Standards
• Communities
• Behaviour Change
• Sector Ambition
• TIMES Modelling
• Monitoring Framework
• Governance
• Scrutiny

Sectors

• Electricity
• Buildings
• Transport
• Industry
• Waste
• Land Use, land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) [including Blue Carbon]
• Agriculture