Scotland’s seas cover nearly six times its land area and approximately 63% of the total UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) (Scottish Government, 2022). They also support several sectors crucial to Scotland’s economy, from oil and gas and aquaculture to fishing and marine tourism, collectively forming what is known as the “marine economy”.

The impacts of climate change on Scotland’s seas are expected to become more frequent and severe over the coming decades: Warming seas, reduced oxygen, ocean acidification and sea level rise are already affecting ecosystems in the North Sea, adding pressure to historically overexploited fish populations, and exacerbating invasive species and disease spread in aquaculture.

This research reviews climate vulnerability assessments (CVAs) of natural and socio-economic marine systems in Scotland and internationally to:

  1. identify focus, spatial scale and gaps in CVAs relevant to Scotland;
  2. identify examples of CVAs methodologies used internationally, including the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies; and
  3. suggest how to strengthen vulnerability assessments of the marine environment and marine economy in Scotland.
Key findings and recommendations

Our review found that Scotland already has many of the foundations in place to conduct a full CVA for its marine environment.  It is also evident that the strengths and weaknesses of Scottish marine CVA literature are similar to those which exist internationally.

Addressing the identified gaps requires an understanding of the effects of climate change across the range of sectors that are relevant to the marine economy.

To strengthen CVAs for the marine environment in Scotland the report proposes to:

  • engage with experts and stakeholders in Scotland, starting with those in MCCIP and those engaged in the UKCCRA process to facilitate a cross-sectoral discussion of climate vulnerability in Scotland’s marine environment;
  • identify priority sectors where additional research is needed and those deemed important for Scotland’s marine environment in order to gain a complete picture of climate vulnerability in the marine environment in Scotland;
  • identify robust studies included in this review which would potentially benefit from being updated and develop a plan for funding priority research activities; and
  • draw from robust sources such as those identified through this study to expand on the existing CVA work in Scotland.

 

Having a better understanding of the public’s awareness of the risks of climate change will help provide a platform for more effective engagement at the community and society level. This study aimed to explore the Scottish public’s understanding of current and future risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate, and highlight any gaps that should be the focus of future public and community engagement on adaptation.

The report is based on a rapid evidence assessment (REA) of previous quantitative and qualitative studies of public perceptions of climate risks and adaptation in the UK, and a nationally representative survey of the Scottish public.

Key findings
  • Echoing recent trends, concern about climate change in Scotland was high and increasing, and a majority felt that Scotland was already feeling the effects of climate change. 
  • Weather-related events were generally seen as more of a serious problem for Scotland overall than for respondents’ local areas. 
  • Risks to both the natural and built environment were also more likely to be seen as a problem for the whole of Scotland than for respondents’ local areas.
  • Respondents generally recognised the need for action to address the impacts of climate change but were fairly moderate about the perceived efficacy of individual or household actions. 
  • Most respondents had already taken, or planned to take, at least one action to help address the impacts of climate change. 
  • Concern about climate change and perceived seriousness of risks varied between groups and by location. It tended to be higher among women, younger people (aged 16-34), those educated to a degree level and homeowners.

These findings can inform future public engagement in a number of way, including on how to communicate climate risks and extreme weather and build on the public’s awareness, and the most effective starting points for action.

Emissions trading systems (ETSs) have been at the core of climate policy in the EU and the UK for more than 15 years. Operating under a ‘cap-and-trade’ principle, they are designed to enable decarbonisation to take place in industries where it is most cost-effective. However, there is a risk that these systems push carbon-intensive industrial processes to other territories with less stringent carbon pricing, regulations or emissions standards. This can result in a subsequent overall increase in greenhouse gas emissions or ‘carbon leakage’.

To lower the carbon leakage risk, the Fit for 55 Package, published by the European Commission in July 2021, included a proposal for the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

This research project has developed an approach to assess the impacts of ETS and CBAM on Scottish business.

Key findings
  • Scottish ETS installations face considerable uncertainty in relation to their future exposure to carbon liabilities due to the changeable policy landscape.
  • The main product groups within ETS sectors include primary energy and electricity, petrochemicals, metallic and non-metallic products as well as outputs of the pharmaceuticals, food and drink, wood-based and paper product industries.
  • As well as the Scottish domestic market, the main ETS sectors primarily compete with producers in the rest of the UK. The key ETS exporting sectors mainly compete with producers in the EU and the wider European Economic Area, followed by the US.
  • Our mapping suggests that sectors such as paper, metal forging, glass fibres, and non-metallic minerals may be particularly vulnerable to international competitiveness impacts. However, many of these sectors trade primarily with the EU, where carbon pricing is comparable. Many other sectors display “medium” risks; including glass, oil refining and chemicals.
  • If the EU draft CBAM was implemented, the aluminium and iron and steel ETS sectors in Scotland would be affected. In addition, non-ETS sectors such as fertiliser production, may also see an impact, but further data collection is needed to fully quantify the impact.
  • Our calculations suggest that the ETS installations considered in our study incurred an ETS cost of around £230 million in 2019.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about extraordinarily rapid changes in individuals’ behaviours. Lockdown restrictions designed to contain the spread of the virus had a knock-on impact on our daily movements and behaviours relevant to Scotland’s net zero target.

This study aimed to explore the experience of behaviours with a positive or negative impact on net zero. It followed a cohort of people in Scotland through different phases of COVID-19 restrictions from July 2020 to June 2021.

The research provides an in-depth understanding of the contextual factors influencing behaviour change, including how those changes are experienced and whether the changes ‘stick’.

Key findings
  • The disruption brought about by COVID-19 restrictions led to changes across the full range of net zero behaviours investigated. A central driver of these changes was the requirement to spend more time at home. This triggered changes to routines and schedules which impacted on many aspects of travel, leisure, shopping and cooking.
  • The behaviour changes that flowed from the disruption to daily schedules were wide reaching and did not take place in isolation, with many net zero behaviours being interlinked. For example, changes to travel behaviours as a result of a switch to working from home was found to have knock-on effects for shopping habits which, in turn, affected cooking habits.
  • Using the ISM tool to analyse participants behaviours revealed that changes to behaviours were influenced by a range of individual, social and material factors including: participants’ values, attitudes and beliefs; their time and schedules; the availability (or lack of) supporting infrastructure and objects required to adopt particular behaviours; and the networks and relationships surrounding them.
  • There was an appetite for a number of the changes to participants’ daily lives to be sustained, particularly reduced reliance on cars, shopping locally, reducing waste and cooking from scratch. However, participants also highlighted barriers to maintaining these behaviours, including a lack of infrastructure or services, a knowledge or skills gap, and cost.
  • Participants were generally in support of actions being taken by government to encourage positive net zero behaviours. In particular, participants were positive about government providing advice, information, financial incentives and infrastructure. Participants were generally unsupportive of charges, regulation or enforcement of behaviour by government.

The findings underscore the importance of creating an ‘enabling environment’ for net zero lifestyles in the recovery from COVID-19 that will help individuals to sustain the positive net zero behaviours that they have adopted during the pandemic.

The Scottish Government has committed to ending the practice of landfilling biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) by 2025, in line with recommendations from the Climate Change Committee (CCC). The waste sector accounts for approximately 4% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with the degradation of biodegradable waste to landfill accounting for a large proportion of the waste treatment sector’s GHG emissions.

The CCC also recommended the ban be extended to include all biodegradable waste generated from non-municipal sources. The Scottish Government has agreed to this, subject to consultation.

The Scottish Government is working with local authorities to secure alternative treatment options for wastes encompassed by the ban. There is a need for effective delivery planning to ensure that residual waste treatment capacity matches the waste supply. This assessment considers the national residual waste capacity requirements to inform such delivery planning.

Key findings

The research models three scenarios.

  • A baseline/ ‘business as usual’ scenario (Scenario 1) results in a large gap in current and planned treatment capacity to deliver the BMW landfill ban (0.61 Mt) in 2025. This is exacerbated under the extended biodegradable non-municipal wastes (BNMW) landfill ban (0.66 Mt) as more material is required to be diverted from landfill to alternative treatment facilities.
  • Under an approaching targets scenario (Scenario 2), there is still an estimated capacity gap in 2025 under the BMW landfill ban (0.13 Mt), which increases (to 0.18 Mt) under the extended BNMW waste landfill ban.
  • In the scenario where all policy targets are achieved (Scenario 3), there is an estimated overcapacity due to the high impact of waste reduction measures on total waste requiring management. This results in a surplus treatment capacity (-0.48 Mt) in 2025 for the materials within the scope of the BMW landfill ban. This surplus treatment capacity reduces slightly (-0.43 Mt) under the extended BNMW landfill ban.

Carbon modelling

Carbon modelling of the scenarios shows that the most significant reduction in carbon emissions results from increased contributions to waste reduction and recycling. As extra efforts are made to divert materials from becoming waste in the first place, and with increased recycling, Scenario 3 results in the greatest carbon savings.

The Programme for Government 2020 committed the Scottish Government to working with local government and other partners to take forward ambitions for 20 minute neighbourhoods: “where people can meet their needs within a 20 minute walk from their house – enabling people to live better, healthier lives and supporting our net zero ambitions.” – Protecting Scotland, Renewing Scotland: The Government’s Programme for Scotland 2020-2021.

The concept has been used in a number of urban settings globally, for example in Melbourne, Barcelona and Ottawa. This presented a challenge in terms of translating the concept to a Scottish setting – applicable to urban and rural settings.

Finding ways to create successful 20 minute neighbourhoods across Scotland – in communities, towns and cities – can make an important contribution to specific policy aims such as reducing car kilometres and reaching net zero. But it also delivers significant benefits to local economies and to health and wellbeing.

ClimateXChange was asked to map current features of Scottish neighbourhoods, rural and urban, and to work with stakeholders to define options, ambitions and actions to realise 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland.

Our work created a set of ambitions that relate to the many dimensions involved in 20 minute neighbourhoods: the co-benefits with tackling the climate crises, reducing health inequalities, strengthening the local economy and improving the quality of life.

“An extremely valuable piece of research which from its publication has helped to demonstrate how the concept can be made relevant to both urban and rural Scotland and the importance of both access and quality of services in local areas.“

– Ian Gilzean, Chief Architect, Scottish Government

The concept takes in several dimensions relating to physical infrastructure, the services available and how accessible and enjoyable these features are to people living or working in, and using, a neighbourhood. To cover all these aspects, we had a project steering group with a wide range of expertise and engaged with stakeholders on project scope, methodology and data gathering, and to frame the ambition and recommendations for action.

Grounding the recommendations in both physical data and the feedback from stakeholders meant the report was immediately picked up to inform debate; the findings have defined the agenda and been presented across diverse settings. These range from events organised by the SURF regeneration forum’s 20 Minute Neighbourhood Practice Network to the Place Standard Tool Our Place website and a Nordic Council session at COP26 looking at healthy, climate-friendly places.

The recommendations are practical and consider current policy, governance, delivery options and knowledge gaps. This means the report is instantly usable in a wide range of policy-development and decision-making processes: it speaks to the challenges stakeholders experience in making local communities more walkable, equitable and enjoyable.

“We have benefited from having a research report that could readily be used in policy development and provides an excellent baseline for further work on 20 Minute Neighbourhoods.
Ian Gilzean, Chief Architect, Scottish Government”.

– Ian Gilzean, Chief Architect, Scottish Government

Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) are technologies which remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, resulting directly or indirectly in net negative emissions.

This report explores the applicability for deployment in Scotland of technologies used across international NETs case studies. The case study projects cover direct air capture with carbon capture and storage (DACCS); and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). 

Key findings

The case studies are diverse in background, scope, maturity and targets, but show a few consistent high-level similarities. These similarities lead to the following conclusions:

  • Implementing a commercial business model through the sale of CO2 credits, licensing of the technology, or the creation and sale of co-products, makes scalability easier and reduces risk.
  • Availability and contribution of public funding can enable projects to start with lower private investment. This is particularly the case for projects with a higher capital costs.
  • Successful projects are often located near long-term storage locations, minimising cost of transport and storage.
  • Schemes which capture higher purity CO2 streams are likely to be more economically viable, with lower associated costs (particularly operating costs).
  • Many BECCS projects require secure, local and sustainable feedstock supplies which meet the plant capacities, quality and biogenic content requirements.
  • Higher carbon prices, carbon taxes or tax credits in some countries have created markets where NETs are more commercially viable.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, together with the increase in electricity generated from renewable energy, are dramatically changing the electricity supply landscape. Among other things, this has involved the closure of large, fossil-fuelled thermal power stations. Such changes introduce challenges associated with security of electricity supply including: having access to enough dependable sources of electricity to meet all of the demand for power sufficiently often; and preventing, containing and recovering from interruptions to supply arising from disturbances. The latter includes the capability to restore supplies following a blackout of the whole country.

This study reports and reviews the opinions of industry experts and stakeholders regarding security of electricity supply in Scotland, collected in May 2021 via an online survey and subsequent discussions in a round table event (conducted under ‘Chatham House rules’) in July 2021. As well as perceptions of the status of security of electricity supply today and in the future, this report presents the consulted stakeholders’ views as to the most significant challenges and the steps needed to ensure security of electricity supply as the energy transition proceeds.

Main issues examined

Security of electricity supply aspects

  1. Electricity imports: If there is not enough power available from power plant within a particular area at any one time to match demand in the area, demand could still be served by importing power.
  2. Meeting Scottish power demand: Central to electricity security of supply is the capability to meet the consumer’s power demand with a sufficient level of reliability. Considering the transitioning power system, it is important to be confident that demand for electrical energy can be met reliably both now and in the future.
  3. Power system operability: Operability of the power system concerns the ability to operate a stable system in which its physical limits and those of its various elements are respected. 
  4. Scottish power system resilience: A resilient power system is one that can prevent, contain and recover from interruptions to electricity supply arising from disturbances to the system.
  5. Power system restoration: In the event of widespread disruption, the power system must be able to quickly restore critical supplies, and thereby minimise the impact of the disruption to electricity supply. 

Environmental sustainability aspects

  1. Meeting Scottish greenhouse gas emissions targets: This aspect provides insights as to the perceptions of power industry experts and stakeholders on the likelihood of achieving Scottish 2030 and 2045 emissions reduction targets.
  2. Meeting Scottish offshore wind ambitions: This aspect provides insights on the perceptions of power industry experts and stakeholders on the likelihood of achieving 11 GW offshore wind capacity by 2030.

 

 

We are slowly building up the evidence base on the question: ‘How can flood risk management at a national, local and community level take account of climate change impacts and manage them appropriately?’ Each [CXC] research project has been used in SG policy/strategy and also formed the basis for further work on details and implementation.

Scottish Government Flood Risk Management Team Member

  • CXC researchers, including fellow seconded into Scottish Government, contributed specialist skills in economics, modelling and mapping.
  • As well as with policymakers, CXC worked closely with multiple stakeholders, from affected property owners to local authorities and the Centre of Expertise on Waters (CREW).
  • Climate change now an integral part of government thinking around this policy area and a consideration in all flood risk management action.

Flooding is not a new issue for Scotland’s communities: flood risk management has been an important policy area for local and national government for decades. However, with climate change causing more frequent extreme weather, and rising sea levels and coastal erosion, the risk of coastal, river and surface water flooding are all increasing.

The challenge

How could flood risk management as an established policy area incorporate climate projections and develop adaptive plans that take account of increasing, yet uncertain, risks?

Through a series of projects and the secondment of a research fellow to the Scottish Government Flood Risk Management Team, ClimateXChange has built understanding of climate change impacts and projections across the flood risk management community.

Our research has examined a wide range of issues:

  • How to develop adaptive pathways in flood risk management
  • How to encourage property owners to increase their properties’ flood resilience
  • The impact incremental loss of flood plain can have on the increasing risk
  • How increased flood protection is funded and financed in other parts of the world which are comparable to Scotland
  • How to create shared-responsibility flood risk management scenarios that help secure investment and economic development

Specialist skills and dialogue

Across our projects it has been important that CXC research teams have been able to provide specialist skills in, for example, modelling, economics and mapping. These specialists have worked closely with multiple stakeholders involved in flood risk management, at national, local and community level, to frame and present the findings to a non-climate-specialist audience. This means our reports are useful and usable not only for Scottish Government policy-making, but also in local authorities, and for community groups and individual property owners managing local flood risk.

The [research fellow] secondment put through a couple of very useful projects and opened my eyes to a new type of research. It made me realise that this was where I should put more of my research energy when [CXC] can reach that sort of provider.

Scottish Government Flood Risk Management Team Member

Close working with the flood risk team in Scottish Government – and continuous conversations about policy challenges and research needs with stakeholders, including joined up working with the Centre of Expertise on Waters (CREW) – means climate change is now an integral part of government thinking around the policy area and a consideration in all flood risk management action.