Climate change Scotland: Ending Bute House Agreement ‘cause for concern’, warns outgoing Scottish Government adviser

The First Minister's choice to scrap the power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens, which has left his own position on a knife’s edge, was partly sparked by the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) recent damning report on Scotland’s progress on targets.

In an exclusive interview with The Scotsman, Mr Stark, who finished up as the CCC’s chief executive on Friday, said the ending of the Greens partnership was a major “cause for concern”.

Fresh plans to hit Scotland’s 2045 net zero target outlined by the Government last week had included allowing councils to potentially charge motorists for using roads and to reinvestigate applying air departure tax on flights in and out of Scotland.

But Mr Stark, who said he had not expected to see such major political disruption in Scotland in his final couple of weeks at the watchdog, stressed the SNP’s decision to end the power-sharing deal could have major ramifications for the country’s decarbonisation plans.

“We don’t need a coalition government to push through policies, but we really need policies,” he said. “It is policies that matter, and if you have a minority administration that can’t get strong policies through, then I really fear for our ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“It could have a very big impact. It remains to be seen how a minority SNP government will operate, but it’s obviously going to be harder. My main criticism of the Scottish Government is that they haven’t produced enough climate policies, so anything that makes it even harder still is clearly a cause for concern.”

Mr Stark said the next few months would be a “risky period”, with a new Climate Change plan in the pipeline and the next CCC pathway report not due out until next year.

“We’re now left with a situation where we are going to have an empty Climate Change Act, with only a target for 2045 during a period of real turmoil in Scottish politics,” he said. “So the plan is to fill in the gaps in the act next year, when the CCC gives advice on the next pathway for Scottish emissions. But that is a long way away suddenly.

“I am also worried about the Climate Change Act itself in Scotland at the moment because it is quite a risky period.

“The plan was to remove the targets for 2030 and 2040 and leave in place the 2045 target, and then return to the right levels for new targets when the CCC does its next major piece of work next year. But the idea of there being a sort of loose piece of legislation around this at a time when there is this much turmoil in Scottish politics is worrying.”

Mr Stark said arguments around North Sea oil and gas, including licencing for new fields such as the controversial Rosebank scheme, have been “wasting time” and the debate “is what stops us having the discussion about what we’re replacing oil and gas with”.

“It doesn’t matter what you do with oil and gas licenses,” he said. “It will not change the fact that the geology of the North Sea is such that there is none left.”

During his six years at the helm of the CCC – an independent public body set up to advise the UK and devolved governments on emissions targets and report on progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions – national climate goals have been raised, based on advice from his team.

It is work he is very proud of – particularly the part he played in pushing leaders to set legally binding goals to reach neutral emissions, or net zero.

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Under his leadership, the CCC recommended a UK net zero target date of 2050 – put into law under Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019, making the nation the first major economy in the world to do so. Scotland, under First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, followed suit shortly afterwards, setting a 2045 deadline.

“When I started the job, we didn’t have a net zero target,” he said. “We now do. And it’s more than just a target.

“We also have a strong sense of what is needed to deliver that target. And I think there is a very active public support for net zero. That is something I’m tremendously proud of.”

Mr Stark, who studied law and finance at the University of Glasgow, was previously director of energy and climate change for the Scottish Government and held a variety of roles in the UK government.

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During his tenure at the CCC, he oversaw the production of more than 100 publications, including six UK progress reports. Most recently, analysis of Scotland’s progress concluded the aim to cut emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 was “no longer credible”, prompting Scottish ministers to scrap the target.

But although the outcome seems like a failure, Mr Stark said he believed the move may actually help the country go greener.

“Scotland ended up in a situation where we had an impossible target for 2030,” he said. “My feeling is that it has caused more delay, that the impossibility of hitting it has meant we’ve done nothing at all because they’re trying to get it right.

“The Climate Change Act is a legal obligation and the Lord Advocate won’t let the Scottish Government publish something that doesn’t show how they hit it. So that has meant indecision and delay rather than moving more quickly on this.”

And he said there was plenty of room for hope.

“We do see a way forward on this, that the 2045 target is very much in view,” he said. “In fact, some evidence says we might even be able to get to net zero even earlier with pragmatic steps. So there’s every reason to be optimistic.”

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Ditching the 2030 targets should mean more progress is made on some of the most crucial emissions cuts, he says – notably heating homes, transport, industry and farming.

“If we make the best use of the next 12 months in Scottish policy circles, then I think we’ll end up in a not bad place at the end of it,” he said. “But if we sit on our hands, then it just gets harder and harder into the future to see how these targets will ever be met.”

However, he has hit out at the lack of collaboration between Westminster and Holyrood on climate action.

“I don’t think we’ve got it right now in UK and Scottish politics because we haven’t got the ability to co-operate,” he said. “That’s my biggest regret. We’ve got to be better, having these two governments alongside each other rather than in opposition.

“If we’re going to get this thing done, it’s going to involve proper cooperation between governments north and south of the border – and indeed with Wales and Northern Ireland. That’s an expression of how all-encompassing this target is. So we’re going to have to sort ourselves out.”

And he says politicians on both sides should stop playing the “blame” game, pointing fingers at each other over failures.

“It is such a tired trope now that we’ve heard so many times – that it’s not any one government’s fault,” he said. “We need to get past all this silliness. These things are long-term, difficult and require deep co-operation.

“That requires a more positive discussion between the two governments – and actually it would still be the case, even if Scotland were independent. So we have got to be better at this stuff.”

He acknowledges the existing political set-up can present extra difficulties.

“I definitely feel independence and the constitutional questions muddy the waters, but I’m not here to say one constitutional arrangement is better than the other,” he said.

“The idea of the Scottish Government being permanently in opposition as well as in government makes it difficult to have co-operation. And you can see that.”

He also insists Scotland should have a proper seat at the table in issues that affect the whole of the UK, such as upgrading the electricity grid.

“It goes both ways,” he said. "We definitely do need more from Scottish ministers, but we also need them to be actively participating in decisions.

“Again, that’s a strong test of whether we can actually pull this off, because it’s obviously going to be more difficult with an SNP administration in Scotland and an administration at UK level that doesn’t support independence. But we’ve got to make it work. The climate doesn’t care about national boundaries.”

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Mr Stark has been impressed by some of the political figures who have been leading on climate change over the past six years, name-checking Ms Sturgeon and environment secretary Roseanna Cunningham, as well as former prime minister Boris Johnson.

But he was critical of the incumbents in First Minister Humza Yousaf and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“Neither of them has been as fulsome in their support of net zero and on climate steps as their predecessors,” he said. “Yes, they are facing all sorts of crises, as you always do as a leader.

“But I want to give them some encouragement to push climate action up the priority list, because I think people want it. It’s still sitting up there in the top five issues for voters.

“I would like to see bolder leadership from both the First Minister and the Prime Minister on climate. And I think there are votes in it.”

So what makes him bang his head against the wall?

“The more recent discussion of the politics of net zero is, I think, the thing I find most frustrating,” he said. “It has moved from being a very positive, progressive, optimistic discussion into being one that has been captured by the culture wars.

“So net zero is a slogan as much as a scientific target now, and that’s very tricky. The politics of it has definitely become more miserable, so I feel very strongly that I would like to see political leaders reclaim the positive arguments.

“If we don’t see that, then you get a vacuum being left because politicians aren’t talking about it at all. And that vacuum is filled by the naysayers, the people who have always felt they didn’t want to do anything at all about climate change. It will be a great shame if we get to that point.”

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He thinks the transition to net zero has been “mischaracterised” in many ways, and this has affected people’s understanding of and willingness to accept changes.

“It is often presented as some sort of radical shift, and I think that’s scary for people,” he said. “But let me tell you, the world we’ll be in by 2045 or 2050 is largely the same as the one we have today.

“We’re still going to have people working in mostly the same jobs. They’ll be warm and toasty in their homes, although they might be heating those homes differently.

“They’ll be traveling to work and still driving in cars. It is not a radical shift in society.”

Mr Stark said there should be more work to “normalise” the move to a low-carbon society.

“The quicker it happens, the better for the climate and for the economy,” he said. “But we shouldn’t be frightened of it.”

Working with the CCC has been the “dream job”, Mr Stark says. So why is he giving it up?

“I’m only leaving because I feel you shouldn’t do it forever, and it feels like the story of my time there is definitely now coming to a close,” he said. “Someone else will come in and have a different story to tell.”

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Mr Stark, who is also an honorary professor at his alma mater and sits on the board of the V&A Dundee, is moving to a new role as chief executive of the Carbon Trust, a UK-based consultancy working to help private sector decarbonisation. But he said he would remain a strong supporter of his former employer.

“Having the Climate Change Committee – an institution that marks the homework of government and tries to give a solid description of what needs to happen in the long term – is just brilliant,” he said. “It is such an important institution for all sorts of reasons. So I’ll be its staunchest defender.”