SCOTLAND’S journey to net zero and making that “just transition” must be integrated into everything we do. That’s the view of Iain Gulland, chief executive of Zero Waste Scotland who said: “It all comes down to skills and training.

“It is about a different mindset approach when it comes to the circular economy and it is a completely different way of doing business,” he told the conference. Collaborating locally with other businesses can help find solutions, Mr Gulland added.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre, Professor George Crooks, called for a “top down and bottom up” approach and urged policymakers to be “bold and consistent”. He also said that citizens had to be empowered with everyone given the tools to “take things forward”.

Jen Tempany, the co-founder and chief operating officer of social enterprise Fuel Change, said people who claimed to understand climate change yet said they were “too busy” to play their part annoyed her.

“Climate change needs to be absolutely front and centre of what we do,” she stated – and it needs to be part of the school curriculum. “People with the right skills can collaborate and think outside their own sector,” Ms Tempany added, urging all companies and organisation to “stop using language and acronyms that are meaningless to people in their everyday life”.

At the Energy Skills Partnership (ESP), director Jim Brown praised the Scottish Government for its work in the energy efficiency, transport and offshore wind power spaces but warned: “We need to draw areas of best practice and make them the norm.”

Impact director at the Construction Scotland Innovation Centre, Lucy Black, reiterated the importance of skills and training while Jacqueline Redmond, executive director of PNDC (Power Networks Demonstration Centre), said: “Every organisation needs to be able to explain to its employees what it is doing about climate change.”