Why can't we have some common sense in the energy debate?

Ms McAllan seemed to have missed out on the years during which our great leaders then paraded our “world-leading” targets as evidence of both moral superiority and, of course, difference from lesser mortals to the south without actually doing an awful lot to demonstrate it.

Instead, she intoned: “I say that to make absolutely clear my view that it is not any inaction on behalf of the (Scottish) Government in the meantime that has necessitated the need to change this - this was always beyond what was possible. And the legal obligation around it has crystallised under the climate change plan, so I must now change it to make progress.”

Is that “absolutely clear”? No, I thought not. In fact, it is complete gobbledegook in which Ms McAllan may have gained a Masters Degree from the University of Bannockburn before becoming a Special Adviser.

Setting a target “beyond what was possible” and then boasting endlessly until it all ended up in hubris just about sums up the style of government Scotland has lived through for a decade.

Most of these targets which serve the short-term purpose of generating favourable headlines disappear into oblivion without any calling to account. However, the 2030 target was different because it was legally binding. Somebody – ie, the Climate Change Committee - was watching, measuring and ultimately pronouncing that it was wildly unattainable and needed to be dropped. This had a domino effect.

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The ”impossible” target had become the holy grail so the Greens got extremely grumpy and Humza Yousaf kicked them out of government. In the process, he lost his own job and opened the door to the re-emergence of John Swinney who had negotiated the agreement that brought the Greens into government and, of course, embraced the doomed target. This might be described as the circular political economy in action.

But what was it all about other than a textbook example for any government or party of why declaring grandiose targets carries long-term risks as well as short-term rewards. Meanwhile, of course, targets alone deliver nothing for the promised outcome - in this case, a sustained, co-ordinated drive to reduce carbon emissions and reach net zero by 2050. Oh, sorry - 2045 since, once again, we had to be different.

It helps to know what these targets actually mean, before engaging in a bidding war. The 2008 Climate Act introduced by the last Labour government committed the UK to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels and set up the Climate Change Committee to drive that outcome and monitor milestones. Subsequently, the 80 per cent objective was upgraded to “net zero”.

In other words, a lot of the heavy lifting towards that outcome was done inadvertently in the 1990s through the run-down of heavy, polluting industry. The incremental increases thereafter needed to be challenging but not impossible to meet. They also had to take account of other factors including affordability and unintended consequences. None of this is easy but could be achieved through hard work and sustained commitment. It is not suitable territory for empty posturing.

Anyone who doubts me on these points should take a look at evidence given to the same Holyrood Net Zero Committee by Chris Stark, just before he left the post of chief executive to the Climate Change Committee. “Holding up genuine action from policy makers is a good example of what happens when you have the wrong target’, he said.

Hitting the Scottish Government target would have “required a nine-fold increase in recent rates of decarbonisation in the Scottish economy. We do not see a policy package that could deliver anything close to that .. we have had a target for 2030 that could not be met in any practical sense”.

His colleague Professor David Bell added: “If we are on a pathway that gets us to a 75 per cent reduction by 2031 or 2032, that is still worth having, even if it is not quite 2030 … In the end, there was a sort of paralysis in the face of the daunting challenge of getting everything done by 2030.”

Between them, they knocked down one shibboleth after another. On the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage project about which so much grievance and talk of betrayal were whipped up, Chris Stark described it as “a great project” and said: “We can probably have a more sensible discussion about the pace of deployment of CCS … not to achieve fantastical targets by 2030”.

North Sea oil and gas licences have become a distraction (Image: .)

Perhaps most tellingly, he bemoaned the focus on new North Sea licences as a complete diversion: “We know that we will need gas until 2045. We see that, without new licences, there will be a 97 per cent reduction in North Sea gas production by 2050. With new licences, that reduction will be 95 per cent.

“That difference between 95 and 97 is not the issue, but those two percentage points have dominated the political discussion of climate for two whole years. My biggest concern is that that has crowded out the discussion about how to get off the stuff in the first place”.

So much common sense from the people who were monitoring the realities of delivering Climate Change policies while the likes of Ms McAllan were boasting about “fantastical targets” and North Sea licences became another false totem of unscientific political debate. All parties please note.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.