Foreword
With the passing of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and publication of its associated Delivery Plan, Scotland now stands at the forefront on climate change.
Meeting the challenging targets set by the Act will require a better understanding of the carbon implications of Government activity - of its estate, its expenditure and its policies. To enhance our understanding of these implications, we have been pursuing ambitious work to develop a methodology for assessing the carbon impact of the Government's Budget, in line with my commitments to Parliament. This is new and innovative work which we have taken forward with the support of independent consultants and with input from a range of external experts.
The carbon assessment of the Draft Budget has proved to be a complex and challenging task: the technical nature of this report highlights some of the difficult methodological and data issues that have needed to be considered. Despite these challenges we have managed to develop a tool that draws on three well-developed data sources and systems to undertake a high-level assessment of the carbon impact of the Scottish Government's Budget. Based on this methodology, I am pleased to now publish this first, high-level carbon assessment of a Government Budget alongside the 2010-11 Draft Budget.
This assessment provides, for the very first time, an assessment of the overall carbon impact of the Government's proposed expenditure. Undoubtedly, as with any new and ground-breaking approach, further work will be required to refine the methodology and develop the functionality of the tool. It is also important to emphasise that the high-level assessment is but one tool for estimating the carbon implications of the Government's activities. It has its limitations. To obtain a more balanced and complete picture of carbon impact, other tools (currently in development) will be needed to complement the high-level assessment. For example, carbon appraisal of individual policy measures and specific spending lines will be needed to better understand the carbon implications of individual strands of Government activity, including, importantly, their abatement potential - which is not captured in this high-level assessment. And clearly carbon costs need to be weighed against other objectives that spending programmes are intended to deliver.
I do not believe, therefore, that this report - and the methodology it describes - will be the final word in assessing the carbon consequences of the Budget. But it is a good and valuable first step. It will form part of an important discussion taking place across our nation about the carbon implications of activity across the economy and across society and how Scotland can best deliver the ambitious emissions reduction targets set by the Climate Change (Scotland) Act.
John Swinney, MSP
Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth