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.

“The overall management provided by CXC ensured the project ran smoothly and in a timely manner. There was excellent communication with all parties, with the end result being of a high quality and accessible to a variety of audiences.“

– Scottish Government policy official

The challenge

When Covid-19 pandemic restrictions came into force in March 2020, a range of behaviours relevant to Scotland’s net-zero ambition changed – from travel and home heating to shopping and socialising. Overnight, measuring the impact of these changes, and how people felt about the new behaviours imposed on them, became important across several policy areas.

While strict lockdown restrictions were still in place, we scoped, procured and kicked off several projects looking at the pandemic’s impact of from different angles. These included business travel behaviours, the likelihood of net-zero behaviours continuing as restrictions eased, and the health emergency’s lessons for climate emergency communication.

Procurement with clarity and flexibility

For the ClimateXChange team the additional asks for pandemic-related research came at a particularly busy time – with the new financial year seeing the start of a number of projects. In parallel, the ClimateXChange Secretariat and all our research providers were adjusting to working from home ourselves.

In this situation, the relationships we have developed with Scottish Government teams were critical in understanding policy needs, how our resource could be used most effectively, and the critical factors for success. Our clear procurement procedures meant that policy colleagues could focus on the research aims, knowing that our funding routes and specification templates could be used flexibly to initiate projects and get work underway quickly without compromising standards.

“Very impressed with assistance taking a not clearly defined requirement to something that is productive and useful, particularly in areas where there is no tradition of climate policy.“

– Scottish Government Policy Official

Research as restrictions changed

Across a range of projects we looked at the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown measures as the pandemic unfolded and restrictions changed:

  • A snapshot of employers’ experience of their staff working from home / flexible working, business travel and commuting before the COVID-19 pandemic, during the first lockdown in March-June 2020, and as recovery began. The project sought to develop an understanding of employers’ long-term travel plans and intentions; identify what barriers and enablers currently exist to delivering more home working and sustainable travel; and what measures would support employers in facilitating this shift.
  • Identifying the potential impact the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has had on how the Scottish public understand and respond to climate change messaging and narratives. This learning can support a green recovery from the pandemic by using language and framing that speaks to people’s values, generates a positive impact on key audiences and encourages the action needed.
  • Following a group of people in Scotland from different backgrounds and with different daily routines to understand how behaviours changed, exploring people’s attitudes towards the behaviour changes they have experienced, and analysing the factors influencing whether these changes are sustained after restrictions eased.

These insights fed directly into discussions about a green recovery. Longer terms, the projects will help inform the approach to shifting behaviours in a net-zero direction to respond to the global climate emergency.

Working from home (WFH) has the potential to reduce carbon emissions associated with commuting and office space. However, these reductions must be balanced against an expected increase in emissions from heating and other energy use at home. As a result, the net impact has been unclear, and findings from other countries are not easily transferrable to Scotland due to differences in local housing stock and commuting behaviour.

Home working has increased sharply as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and for many people home working is expected to play an increased part of their working behaviour in the future, even if only for part of the working week.  This report assesses the impact of home working on Scottish greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by analysing:

  • the Scottish-specific emissions impact of home working; and
  • the drivers in personal emissions increases and decreases from a switch to home working.

Key findings

Working from home leads to a reduction in commuting and office emissions and an increase in home emissions. How these emission changes balance out for an individual defines their emissions impact from home working.

The analysis has found that if post-pandemic trends result in a higher proportion of people working from home across all types of houses and commuting behaviours, the overall impact on emissions will be small:

  • A 0.6% reduction in buildings and transport emissions if a mix of people with different house types, and heating and commuting behaviours work from home
  • A 0.6% increase in buildings and transport emissions if whole houses are heated all winter for home workers and office space remains open
  • A 2.0% reduction in buildings and transport emissions if only the home office areas of homes are heated, office sizes are reduced to reflected reduced demand, and working from home proves more popular with car commuters

Conclusions

  • Domestic heating is a large emission source which can offset much of the transport emissions savings of home working. Limiting domestic heating emissions through the rollout of smart heating systems, which only heat occupied areas of the house, would deliver the single biggest emission benefit from home working.
  • The lowest emission future is one where people commuting short to medium distances do so by public and active travel and continue to commute to the office, while people who commute long distance shift to working from home. 
  • The lowest emission working behaviour is a short commute to work in an energy efficient office. Changes to the Scottish National Planning Framework to support localism and the 20-minute neighbourhood concept could also look to support local shared office space to encourage the lowest emission working behaviour.
  • Larger properties with oil heating represent the worst place to work from home in terms of emissions. Targeting these properties for early decarbonisation can help to ensure working from home reduces emissions.
  • People who see an emissions saving from working from home today will also see a benefit in 2030. This means messaging around good working from home practices will remain relevant over time.

 

Nationally and internationally governments and stakeholders recognise that recovery from extreme weather events is not simply about rebuilding physical structures but that it needs to pursue wider social goals such as wellbeing and resilience.

This study investigates international approaches to assessing recovery from extreme weather events, the data sources underpinning them, and their applicability to Scotland. It seeks to enable a common understanding of climate resilience and the critical components in planning for local and national recovery from extreme weather.

The research reponds to a lack of national targets and data to measure recovery from extreme and/or repeated climate-related events as identified as an area of ‘high concern’ in the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) assessments of the Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme (SCCAP).

Findings

We identified a number of monitoring frameworks used internationally of potential relevance to Scotland and evaluated the extent to which they would work with the approaches set out in the National Performance Framework and the SCCAP.

Based on international experience, the building blocks for developing a system for monitoring recovery from extreme weather events in Scotland are:

  • Framing recovery within a set of wider social goals such as wellbeing or resilience.
  • An approach that establishes the different areas or recovery that need to be considered and the role the community will play in deciding the system to be used.
  • A set of indicators of recovery.
  • Joined-up data across different scales (national, regional/local and community) with a focus on process and outcomes.
  • Relevance of the spatial scale at which data is collected and the timing and frequency of collection to the indicator.
  • Drawing on existing information.

Please note publication of this report was delayed due to the Covid19 pandemic

In Scotland the responsibility for protecting property from flooding rests with the owner. It is important therefore that property owners and occupiers know how to protect their property to reduce the physical and emotional impacts of being flooded.

This report aims to support uptake of Property Flood Resilience (PFR) measures by:

  1. exploring the reasons why people do not install PFR measures, using in-depth interviews with home and business owners who have been flooded; and
  2. identifying what would help encourage owners to make resilient changes to their properties using lessons from Scotland, the UK and internationally, and across other disciplines, for example energy efficiency.

A recent study estimated that 284,000 properties in Scotland are at risk of flooding. This figure is expected to increase to 394,000 by 2080 as a result of climate change. The need for information and support for property flood resilience action will be greater as climate change increases the number of properties at risk of flooding in Scotland.

Key findings

The property and business owners we spoke to were at an early stage on the journey to making their properties resilient. Although their property had previously been flooded (and they knew what it was like to suffer significant damage to their property), their responses to the idea of PFR were not positive, overall, and the barriers that were apparent were complex and not easily overcome.

Both strands of research indicated that the timing of communications is key and should be twofold. Firstly, there is a clear need for general awareness-raising pre-flood in areas at risk to shift attitudes towards greater risk awareness and risk acceptance. Secondly, this should be combined with a targeted communication campaign and signposting to help and inform at the crisis stage immediately after a flood.

The evidence review demonstrates that looking internationally, there are few examples where interventions have made great inroads in increasing flood preparedness. Scotland has a long way to go, but so do most other nations. Taken together the interviews and the evidence review show that there is no single or quick fix to increase PFR uptake – what is required is a series of interventions to tackle multiple and complex barriers. These must meet people at whatever stage they are at on the journey towards resilience.

The literature on encouraging uptake of PFR also suggests that it is important to empower communities, and to create an environment around property owners that make uptake of PFR measures the easy choice.

’20 minute neighbourhoods’ are places that are designed so residents can meet their day-to-day needs within a 20 minute walk of their home; through access to safe walking and cycling routes, or by public transport.

Many places around the world have made commitments or drawn up plans to support the realisation of the concept. However, only a few  have made 20 minute neighbourhoods a reality.

The Programme for Government 2020 commits the Scottish Government to working with local government and other partners to take forward ambitions for 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland.

This project:

  • considers the ambition for 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland, taking account of the differing settlement patterns across the country, and to highlight interventions that would support delivery of the concept, supported by findings from the baseline analysis; and
  • analyses international evidence of the success of interventions to achieve these ambitions, including identifying specific success factors, place-making impacts, barriers to success, regulatory frameworks, funding mechanisms and stakeholder engagement and buy-in.
Key findings

A baseline assessment shows that communities across Scotland have the required services and infrastructure that would allow them to be 20 minute neighbourhoods. This is the case across both urban and rural settlement areas. 

However, the assessment does not allow for the conclusion that the required quality of services or infrastructure is in place. Nor does it conclude that these places are performing as 20 minute neighbourhoods.

From the examples reviewed it is evident that a clear plan with bespoke local considerations is needed to achieve the vision. It is also clear that this plan must be people-centred and developed with the stakeholders in the community.

The report sets out five initial ambitions for developing 20 minute neighbourhoods in Scotland:

  1. Scotland has the opportunity to be a global leader in delivering this concept across the country, showing that it is feasible in both urban and rural locations
  2. Every neighbourhood in Scotland should be facilitated to be a 20 minute neighbourhood
  3. Communities should be empowered to make changes in their neighbourhoods to allow them to meet their daily needs in a fair and equitable way
  4. This concept should enable people to travel actively in support of their health and well-being, without access being limited by the cost of transport
  5. The 20 minute neighbourhood concept should be the ambition that pulls together all other relevant policies in a given location

These ambitions can only be realised through concerted efforts across policy, national and local delivery, and further research.

Webinar: 20-minute neighbourhoods: climate, travel and health benefits

Watch a webinar with speakers from Ramboll, Transport Scotland, Public Health Scotland & Scottish Government discussing the climate, travel & health benefits of 20-minute neighbourhoods:

Watch webinar

Impact

Local living and 20 minute neighbourhoods: planning guidance

Scottish Government, 25 April 2024

Assessing investment needs and securing investment to adapt to climate change is a fast moving, cross-cutting and emergent policy area, nationally and internationally.

This project sets out to learn from international attempts at assessing and securing the optimum level of investment in order to keep pace with climate change. The research has a particular emphasis on flood risk management, coastal change and coastal erosion.

Flood risk management in Scotland is risk-based and plan led. Available investment is targeted at areas of greatest risk with consideration given to other factors like social vulnerability. In that context, this report sets out to explore:

  • how international jurisdictions are determining the appropriate level and desired impact of future investment;
  • how future change is accounted for in decision making;
  • how an optimal and balanced investment is considered;
  • how others are funding and planning to invest for the future; and
  • lessons and approaches that may be applicable and transferable to Scotland.
Key findings
  • Framing of investment challenges and ambitions directly influences investment portfolios, levels of investment and concepts of optimal investment. This subsequently influences how choices are made and the types of funding and financing solutions attracted and secured. The framing of investment ambitions is unique to each jurisdiction and is both place and time sensitive.
  • Scottish practices are commensurate with international peers. Innovation in resilience and adaptation is fast moving and continued investment, experimentation and learning will be necessary to keep pace with emergent international practice.
  • In the interest of Scottish practice going further and faster, it will be advantageous for Scotland to formalise international collaboration and learning with respect to investment decision making, and funding and financing practice.

These findings will support Scotland’s response to the climate emergency, and the Scottish Government and partners in delivering the Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Act 2009 and the Second Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme (SCCAP).