By GINA HANRAHAN, Acting head of policy, WWF Scotland
IT is nice to finally draw breath at the end of 2017, which will forever be known in Panda Towers (also known as the WWF Scotland office) as Consultageddon.
This year we asked for and had hundreds of pages of Scottish Government consultations on everything from huge strategic visions of the country’s energy and climate change future to technical regulation on heat networks.
The two centrepieces of this mammoth burst of activity were the draft Energy Strategy and the draft Climate Change plan, both supposed to give strategic direction to the profound changes that will shape our energy landscape over the next decade and beyond.
Next week, we should know the outcome of our collective efforts with the publication of the final Energy Strategy. Has the Government listened to what the energy industry, academics and campaigners said? Does it assert enough leadership to make the low-carbon transition real or does it still cling on to some of the last vestiges of old, polluting ways?
The draft strategy offered lots of promise and was more integrated and ambitious than previous energy road maps. In particular, the flagship commitment to deliver 50 per cent renewable energy across the entire economy in heat, transport and electricity by 2030 was significant.
This welcome target provides clear direction to industry and, as WWF evidence shows, it is both necessary to deliver our climate targets and achievable with existing technology. In uncertain times for investment, it is a statement of intent that Scotland is open for low-carbon business. It builds on the aim to deliver 100 per cent of our electricity needs from renewables by 2020. It will surely remain in the final document.
Some weaknesses need to be addressed in the final strategy. There were outdated intentions to maximise oil and gas extraction and possibly replace old thermal power stations, which go against the grain of the energy transition and the need to tackle climate change. This week, the World Bank announced it would stop funding oil and gas extraction projects from 2019 for climate reasons. Despite the right intentions to consider supply and demand for energy, demand was the ugly sister in the strategy with weak ambition and little substantive action.
We can’t have action on one without parallel action on the other. Nicola Sturgeon’s laudable commitment in the Programme for Government to end the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles in just 15 years will help clean up our dirty air and bring down carbon emissions.
But Transport Scotland assumptions that the miles we drive will increase by almost one-third over the same period make this harder to achieve and more expensive. We need to help get people out of their cars in the first place. The Scottish Government needs to make sure policies are joined up and industry, government and individuals work as hard as possible to reduce our demand for energy.
The same is true of energy in our homes, where draft documents envisaged increased energy demand over the next15 years, despite the Government’s commitment to make energy efficiency a national infrastructure priority.
Other issues that will hopefully receive more clarity include: how to start weaning Scotland off polluting gas heating over the next decade; goals we’re aiming for on energy efficiency as the 15-20-year Scottish Energy Efficiency Programme gets underway; and the future pathways for clean electricity. With growing demand for the Climate Change Bill to increase our ambition in line with the Paris Agreement, a clearer vision and bold, substantive policies will be needed more than ever.
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