Kairsty Topp¹, Lorna Cole², Henry Creissen¹, Sascha Grierson², Marie Haskell¹, Robin Walker¹, Christine Watson¹

¹SRUC, ²SAC Consulting

August 2023

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/3970

Executive summary

Aims

The Scottish Government is committed to support the transition to net zero, whilst restoring and regenerating biodiversity. Organic farming practices have the potential to deliver to both agendas.

This Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) and stakeholder engagement assesses the evidence for organic farming practices that contribute to the Biodiversity Strategy targets, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and making Scottish agricultural systems more resilient to the projected climatic conditions of 2045 (adaptation).

The review assessed greenhouse gas emissions in terms of both a reduction in emissions and an increase in soil carbon.

Key Findings

The stakeholders emphasised that organic farming is a holistic approach to farming the land, and benefits arise from the combination of management practices adopted. The literature review supported the holistic nature of organic farming.

We found that:

• Organic farming practices offer benefits to biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), soil carbon, and how organic farming practices might help farmers adapt to a changing climate in Scotland over the next two decades to 2045 (termed adaptability) (Table 1).
• The inclusion of specific measures such as leys and cover crops, organic bulky materials and crop residue management in organic systems tends to increase the soil carbon.
  • In terms of reducing GHGs, these can be achieved through potential reductions of on-farm emissions, although these are variable, and reductions of purchased inputs and the transport associated with these inputs.
  • However, the cost of these benefits is a reduction in yield, potentially increasing global emissions due to the requirement for increased food production elsewhere (Smith et al. 2019).
• Organic systems are typically more diverse than conventional systems (Reumaux et al. 2023).
• At the farm level, the wider range of crops creates a mosaic of habitats, while at the field level, intercropping, varietal mixes and a greater prevalence of weeds creates a variety of microhabitats.
• Diversity at the farm, field and microhabitat level has positive implications for biodiversity.
• Organic management practices tend to increase resilience making the farming systems more capable of dealing with the weather conditions projected for 2045.

Table 1. Summary of impacts of practices on biodiversity, soil carbon, GHGs and adaptation gathered from the Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) and the Stakeholder workshops (S/H); green indicates a positive response (+), yellow neutral (n) and red negative (-). Blank cells indicate insufficient evidence.

Gaps

• There is lack of evidence on the trade-offs between the individual organic management practices and the ecosystem services delivered.
• Although there is evidence that organic management practices can increase soil carbon, there is a need for better quantification of the long-term potential.
• There is a lack of evidence of the cumulative benefits of organic management practices on GHGs coming from the multi-year application of crop and livestock rotations.
• Continual development of carbon calculators to better incorporate updated science and data is required to help support the farming community make informed decisions.
• There is a need to increase the focus on developing systems that have the resilience to cope with the projected climate change.

Conclusions

The wider adoption of organic farming practices will benefit the environment. This would require support for the industry to transition and maintain the system. Advice and training would be required.

Introduction

The Scottish Government programme for a fairer, green Scotland, 2021-2022 is committed to doubling the land area devoted to organic farming by 2026, and supporting the growth of organic food production in Scotland. The Scottish Government is also committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and supporting the transition to net zero.

Climate is changing and we are likely to experience more extreme weather events including droughts and flooding. Therefore, it is crucial that agriculture takes steps to adapt their management practices to be fit for purpose in the face of the changing climate. At the same time, the Agricultural Reform Route Map sets out Scotland’s commitment to deliver biodiversity conditionality in the future agricultural payments framework with wider targets including creating Nature Networks across Scotland connecting people with the natural environment. To achieve these targets, and increase the resilience of Scotland’s food production systems, there is a need to enhance both above and below-ground biodiversity from our farmland.

The adoption of management practices associated with organic farming by the wider farming sector, and expansion of the organic sector has potential to deliver to the net zero targets for Scotland, enable farming to adapt to climate change and contribute to the Biodiversity Strategy.

This Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) delves deeper into the specific agroecological practices that underpin organic farming systems in Scotland to assess the evidence for the contribution a wider adoption of organic farming practices can make to achieving these targets. This work therefore complements previous work undertaken for Climate X Change that explored the potential for a range of agroecological based farming approaches (including organic farming) to tackle the biodiversity and climate emergency (Cole et al. 2021).

What is ‘organic’ farming?

Organic farming, as defined by the EU council regulation 834/2007 is “a holistic production management system which promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health, including biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity. It emphasizes the use of management practices in preference to the use of off-farm inputs, taking into account that regional conditions require locally adapted systems”.

In Great Britain, organic farming is certified by Defra using the “Retained Council Regulation (EC) 834/2007” which sets out rules for labelling agricultural products and foodstuffs as ‘organic’. Through the Windsor Framework, the EU organic regulations continue to apply in Northern Ireland. These rules certify the process of organic production rather than the actual product. As such they tend to deal with elements of the farming system that can be easily measured and controlled rather than dealing with more complex issues such as energy use or biodiversity. All food which is sold with the organic label must originate from producers or processors who are certified as organic and regularly inspected by an approved body (Chapter 12: Organic farming – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk))

Some producers adopt the agroecological principles of organic production but without engaging with the certification process, meaning they cannot label their produce as organic. Organic farmers are agricultural practitioners that do not use synthetic pesticides or synthetic fertilisers, and instead rely on cultural methods for weed and pest control as well as plant nutrient supply. Some farmers adopt the principles of organic farming but are not certified. Typically, organic farmers have mixed systems incorporating both animal and crop enterprises, including the use of crops and livestock bred without using genetic modification technology, that are adapted to local conditions wherever possible. However, there has been an increase in stockless (i.e. systems which do not rely on manure or other inputs from farmed livestock) organic systems in recent years.

Organic farming systems utilise diverse crop rotations, with carefully selected sequences of crops (both species and varieties), to help control pests, weeds and diseases. Nitrogen fixing crops such as clovers or grain legumes form an integral part of the system to sustain the fertility of the soils in the long-term (Watson et al. 2017). Organic farmers aim to utilise home grown, or locally grown, livestock feed. They will apply careful timing to all their field and animal care procedures, and other management practices. The latter includes the use of cover crops, green manures, timeliness and timing of field operations linked to soil and weather conditions, and practices such as composting of animal manure to aid weed control (Stockdale et al. 2001). Although organic farmers typically plough their field to control weeds, they do aim to minimise soil disturbance. Thus, reduced tillage has been included as a farm management option to be assessed.

Organic farming typically increases diversity within the crop (e.g. through intercropping and increased weed abundances) and at the wider farm level (e.g. through supporting a greater diversity of crops within the rotation) (Hardman, et al. 2016; Reumaux et al. 2023). With loss of habitat diversity identified as a major driver of biodiversity decline (Benton et al. 2003) this highlights the potential for organic farming to deliver biodiversity goals. In addition, the practices associated with organic farming tend to have positive effects on many supporting and regulating ecosystems services including water and soil quality, water regulation, pollination and pest and disease management (Tamburini et al. 2020; Beillouin et al. 2021). The focus of organic farm management practices to maintain soil fertility and exclude synthetic inputs offers the potential to increase soil carbon and reduce GHGs on a land area basis. However, organic management practices typically lead to a reduction in yield which may lead to the emissions per unit of product being similar or slightly higher than conventional systems (Smith et al. 2015). In addition, due to the lower yield, global emissions may increase due to the requirement for increased food production elsewhere to offset the lower yield (Smith et al. 2019).

Report focus

Organic farming is an holistic system with the promotion of biological processes and ecosystems at its core. Many of the individual practices or components of organic farming systems are slowly being adopted by some conventional farmers (e.g. the use of herbal leys and clovers in grassland).

This report focuses on individual organic farming practices. The range of practices assessed is based on Cole et al. (2021) and excludes the synergistic effects resulting from the adoption of multiple practices seen within commercial organic farming systems.

The focus of the report is on assessing the benefits and disbenefits of individual organic management practices on biodiversity, soil carbon, GHG mitigation, and adaptation to climate change. Consequently, documents that do not specifically focus on organic farming practices and the means to encourage or support the adoption of these practices by conventional and regenerative farmers are outside the scope of this report. A glossary of terms is provided in Section 9.

The evidence for benefits and disbenefits of organic management practices

The organic management practices that were selected for review were identified by Cole et al. (2021) as being typically adopted by organic farmers (Table 1). These included rotations, reliance on legumes, species and variety mixes, cover crops, crop residue management, use of organic fertiliser, no synthetic inputs, cultivation practices, livestock grazing management and the restricted use of veterinary products. The contribution of these selected organic management practices to deliver the climate change and biodiversity targets was assessed through a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA), and stakeholder workshops. The impact of organic management practices on climate change has been considered in terms of both mitigation and adaptation. The mitigation contribution has been described in terms of the effects on soil carbon storage and GHG, where GHGs include nitrous oxide and methane emissions from crop, soil and livestock management and carbon dioxide from energy use. Six of the management practices were presented in the stakeholder workshops, although the stakeholders comments covered a broader range. Details of the methodology are set out in Annex 1.

An overview of the effects of organic management practices on biodiversity, soil carbon, GHGs and how organic farming practices might help farmers adapt to a changing climate in Scotland over the next two decades to 2045 (termed adaptability) as found in this project are shown in Table 1. The evidence assessed indicates that organic management practices tend to be beneficial for biodiversity and soil carbon. With respect to GHGs, Eory et al. (2023) identified that cover crops, and legume grass mixtures, practices associated with organic farming, reduced emissions, although this is expressed on a per area basis. Nevertheless, crop residue management may be a hot spot for nitrous oxide emissions while mechanical weeding increases fuel use. Organic management practices also tend to make the system more resilient, and hence better able to adapt to the projected weather conditions of 2045.

Table 1. Summary of impacts of practices on biodiversity, soil carbon, GHGs and adaptation gathered from the Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) and the Stakeholder workshops (SHolder); green (+) indicates a positive response, yellow (n) neutral and red (-) negative. Blank cells indicate insufficient evidence.

Organic Farming – holistic assessment

Organic farming is a systems approach to farming the land, and hence the environmental goods and services delivered are not easily attributable to individual practices. Consequently, rather than investigating specific practices in organic farming, most of the literature takes a systems approach when exploring differences between conventional and organic farming systems. This section summarises the key impacts on the holistic assessment of organic farming.

The literature therefore focusses on comparing a combination of management actions that characterise organic systems, typically investigating the consequences of:

• the exclusion of agrochemical inputs (e.g. inorganic fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides)
• reliance on organic manures
• the inclusion of pasture and legumes within the rotation

Furthermore, organic farms also tend to have higher habitat diversity (Hardman, et al. 2016). In a limited range of studies, lower water run-off and greater water infiltration was observed in organically managed treatments (encompassing a range of factors indicated above) compared to conventionally managed ones. A combination of management strategies is also used on organic livestock farms (e.g. lower concentrate feeding, more robust breeds, more use of pasture etc.) which also makes identification of the key causative factors difficult. Moreover, many of these practices are not exclusive to organic farm management and several are increasingly utilised in systems that are not certified as organic, and therefore arguably labelled conventional. This makes it difficult to determine the key factors exclusive to organic management that drive impacts.

Biodiversity

When comparing organic and conventional farming systems, impacts of organic farming on biodiversity were typically positive or neutral, with negative impacts rarely observed. Impacts differed depending on context (e.g. arable versus grassland, landscape type) and group of organisms (taxa).

Typically, plants benefitted from organic farming practices (Rotchés‐Ribalta et al. 2020; Dobben, et al. 2019; Happe et al. 2018; Albrecht et al. 2020), and this was more pronounced in arable situations (Gabriel et al. 2010; Gibson et al. 2007; Schumacher et al. 2018) and for insect pollinated plants (Happe et al. 2018; Geppert et al. 2020; Gabriel and Tscharntke 2007).

Impacts on plant communities, were strongest within fields, but effects were often found to spill over to adjacent field margins and hedgerows (Happe et al. 2018; Gabriel and Tscharntke 2007; Boinot et al. 2022; Rundlöf et al. 2010; Gabriel et al. 2010). The greater abundance and diversity of crops and weeds in organic systems often result in a greater abundance and diversity of both pest insects, e.g. aphids, as well as their enemies; aphid-parasitoids and predators such as ladybirds (Puech et al. 2014; Sidauruk and Sipayung 2018; Birkhofer et al. 2016; Caballero-López et al. 2012).

The higher abundance and richness of flowers both in the crop and in the field margins typically attracted more pollinating insects including butterflies (Hardman et al. 2016; Feber et al. 2007; Gabriel et al. 2010), solitary bees (Happe et al. 2018), hoverflies (Geppert et al. 2020; Power, et al. 2016) and bumblebees (Sidemo‐Holm et al. 2021, Geppert al. 2020) with threatened bumblebees particularly benefitting (Marja et al. 2018). Impacts on pollinators were, however, context specific with some studies detecting no impacts on bumblebees (Happe et al. 2018; Hardman et al. 2016) and solitary bees (Gabriel et al. 2010; Hardman et al. 2016). Only one study found negative effects of organic farming on pollinators, specifically hoverfly adults. This trend was not found for larvae and was attributed to spill over, where organic farms acted as a source of adults that spilled over to neighbouring conventional farms (Gabriel et al. 2010).

Assessments of the impact of organic farming on organisms that feed on dead and decaying material (for example, earthworms) showed inconclusive results. Studies on earthworms found both positive (Pelosi et al. 2015) and neutral effects (Pelosi et al. 2009). For organisms that kill other organisms, and which could be considered natural predators for the control of pests (natural enemies), impacts varied across functional groups with characteristics such as food preferences, ability to move location and how they hunt prey coming into play (Boeraeve et al. 2022; Chemlik et al. 2019; Gallé et al. 2019). For example, ground hunting spiders which typically have low dispersal capabilities were favoured in organic systems (Boeraeve et al. 2022; Feber et al. 2015) while impacts on more mobile web building species were neutral (Boeraeve et al. 2022; Feber et al. 2015). Organic farms, particularly if conservation tillage is adopted and/or grass leys are included in the rotation, are likely to provide greater opportunities for less mobile spiders to overwinter in field. Mobile species, such as money spiders, are less impacted by infield disturbances as they quickly disperse from surrounding habitats by ballooning. Due to their presence in fields early in the season, ground beetles were found to be sensitive to spring cultivation which is more frequent in organic systems (Chemlik et al. 2019).

Studies exploring the impacts of organic farming on bird communities typically report positive (Marja et al. 2014) or neutral (Hardman et al. 2016) impacts. Most species had similar abundances in organic and conventional systems (Moorcroft et al. 2002; Henderson, et al. 2012). Positive impacts of organic farming were found for lapwing and woodpigeon with both species showing a strong association with pulses, common in organic rotation. Lapwings were also associated with grasslands and spring cereals, while woodpigeons were favoured by the higher area of uncropped land (Henderson, et al. 2012). Skylarks were also favoured by the presence of uncropped land, potentially due to a greater availability of insects during the breeding season (Henderson, et al. 2012). Only one study found negative impacts of organic farming on birds (Moorcroft et al. 2002). Skylarks were found to prefer conventional barley stubble over undersown organic wheat and the more open structure of barley increased seed accessibility and supported a higher abundance of broad-leaved weeds increasing the diversity of forage (Moorcroft et al. 2002). The experimental design, however, made it difficult to tease apart impacts of crop type, undersowing and organic farming.

Organic systems typically increase the diversity of weeds (Madsen et al. 2020). However, the abundance of weeds is influenced by the choice of crop, cover crop, cropping sequence and the application of farm-yard manure (Kuht et al. 2016; Madsen et al. 2016; Madsen et al. 2020).

Soil carbon

Long-term studies indicate that the soil carbon in organic systems is higher than in conventional systems (Leifield and Fuhrer 2010; Gattinger et al. 2012; Colombi et al. 2019). There is conflicting evidence as to the cause of the increase in soil carbon in organic systems. In the meta-analyses by Leifield and Fuhrer (2010) and Gattinger et al. (2012), the increase in soil carbon was attributed to the increased level carbon in the organic material added to organic systems. The composition of the rotation is also influential, although the incorporation of forage legumes in the rotation was not a contributing factor (Gattinger et al. 2012). However, a recent study showed that the differences were not due to the quantity of carbon returned as manures or crop residues but were influenced by improved soil structure (Colombi et al. 2019). Nevertheless, the organic conventionally ploughed soils had higher soil carbon contents than either the conventionally ploughed or reduced till farmland. In organic systems, the inclusion of green manures, farm-yard manure, residue management and the inclusion of cover crops in the rotation all potentially contribute to the enhancement of soil carbon stocks (Gattinger et al. 2012; Hu et al. 2020). Their inclusion is crucial for maintaining the fertility of organic systems (Córdoba et al. 2018).

Greenhouse gas emissions

Agriculture has a significant impact on climate change through the emission of GHGs in the form of nitrous oxide, methane and carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide results from the use of organic and synthetic fertilisers, crop residue management, and manure management. Methane emissions are also affected by manure management and by livestock production efficiency which is influenced by animal genetics, animal feeding practices and animal health and welfare status. The energy use on-farm is the primary cause of the emissions of carbon dioxide. Emissions arise from the transportation of inputs and outputs and those embedded in the production of inputs.

Nitrous oxide emissions were generally lower in organic treatments than conventional ones when based on output per unit land area (Autret et al. 2019; Biernat et al. 2020). However, the emissions on a yield-scaled basis tend to be similar or higher for organic systems (Pugesgaard et al. 2017; Skinner et al. 2019). Methane emissions from livestock were increased by converting to an organic system, but these were offset by the reduction in emissions from feed production (Gross et al. 2022).

The impact of the energy use on GHGs from organic systems compared to conventional systems was a function of the enterprise type (Smith et al. 2015). Arable crops were either negative or neutral, and livestock enterprises had positive, neutral, and negative responses. At the farm level, the energy use for mechanical weeding is higher for organic systems though this is offset by the reduction in energy use associated with the application and production of agrochemicals (Mäder et al. 2002; Aggestam and Buick 2017). The off-farm energy use was also a function of the enterprise type (Smith et al. 2015). Thus, the GHGs per unit of product for organic systems may be lower or higher than observed in conventional system depending on both the specific management practices and the type of product produced (e.g. Haas et al. 2001; Bos et al. 2007). However, because organic systems are lower yielding, the total global emissions may increase due to increased food production elsewhere (Smith et al. 2019).

Adaptability

The soil organic carbon and the water holding capacity of soils that were managed organically but were conventionally ploughed tended to be greater than conventionally managed soils that were either ploughed or were not tilled (Colombi et al. 2019).

Stakeholder views

The view that organic farming is a holistic approach was supported by the stakeholders. There were strong views that organic farming is an holistic approach and should not be decomposed into individual practices, as this conflicts with the ethos of organic farming. Unlike regenerative agriculture, organic farming is defined by specified standards.

The stakeholders reported that the current carbon calculators do not take account of the holistic approach, and in particular the role of legume-based grasslands on soil carbon. Stakeholders considered that organic farms are less intensive than conventional farms which makes them more resilient to environmental shocks, e.g. weather extremes.

Specific management practices

This section will examine the evidence for benefits and disbenefits of individual farm management practices on biodiversity, soil carbon, GHGs and adaptability. Where the stakeholders have expressed views on the specific management practices, these have also been included in each sub-section.

Rotation management

A crop rotation is the sequence of different crops that are grown over a number of years. Typically, in organic systems, the rotation is more diverse than conventional farming and contains plants from different families, e.g. cereals, oilseeds, legumes. The organic rotation design is fundamental to maintaining soil fertility, and controlling pests, diseases and weeds (Watson et al. 2006). The rotation will typically include legumes to build soil nitrogen, and the application of livestock manures and crop residues will be carefully managed to recycle nutrients within the system.

Biodiversity

The simplification of landscape structure (e.g. loss of hedges and walls, and simplification of crop rotations) is a key driver of declines in farmland biodiversity (Benton et al. 2003). Crop rotations support a patchwork of different infield landcovers (e.g. oilseed rape, field beans), and creates temporal diversity (e.g. spring sown and winter sown crops), thus enhancing landscape diversity. Diverse landscapes, with a range of different habitats provide a variety of different resources (diverse food resources, nesting habitat, overwintering sites) which not only support different species, but also help ensure that individuals can meet their resource requirements through their lifespan. New evidence has found that crop rotation diversity is higher in organic farming particularly in more productive land (Reumaux et al. 2023). The wider research indicates that more diverse crop rotations are likely to have positive impacts on biodiversity, however, research in this area is lacking (Dicks et al. 2020).

Soil carbon

There is evidence from an international meta-analysis that suggests that diverse rotations result in a small but significant increase in the soil carbon relative to a cereal monoculture (McDaniel et al. 2014, cited in Smith et al. 2018). The inclusions of leys in an arable rotation also increases the soil carbon stocks (Jordon et al. 2022).

Greenhouse gas emissions

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Adaptability

Organic crop rotations are frequently more diverse which builds resilience into the system by reducing the overall impact of crop failures due to abiotic and biotic factors. Such crop losses can have dire consequences for systems reliant on the yields of a few crop species. Organic systems also provide more niches for weeds than conventional rotations which reduces the chance of single weed species dominating (Ulber et al. 2009; Benaragama et al. 2019; Seipel et al. 2022). The combination of less diverse rotations and herbicides results in conventional rotations having lower weed species diversity and richness when compared to organic crop rotations (Ulber et al. 2009; Schumacher et al. 2018). Including species (e.g. plantain or chicory) with tap roots in the rotation can help to alleviate compaction and improve the drainage (Lynch and Wojciechowski 2015 cited in Smith et al. 2018).

Reliance on legumes

Organic systems are heavily reliant on legumes within the crop rotation or incorporated into grass leys. This is because legumes can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, and hence they build fertility and provide nitrogen to the other crops in the rotation. Legumes typically used in Scottish organic systems include clovers, vetches, peas and beans.

Most of the organic land in Scotland is grassland. White clover is the most common legume incorporated into grassland seed mixtures alongside grasses and herbs and is used for both grazing and silage. For silage production red clover/ryegrass leys are also used. Grass/legume leys are typically established by undersowing the seed into a preceding arable crop (e.g. oats).

In stockless organic systems, legume based green manures (a crop which is grown to incorporate into the soil) are typically included in the rotation, while in stocked systems, grass-legume leys (generally multi-species including one or more clovers but sometimes other forage legumes too) are part of the rotation, which are grazed by ruminant livestock.

Biodiversity

The use of legumes in both grassland and arable systems will enhance heterogeneity at the micro-habitat and farm scale which is likely to have positive implications for biodiversity (Benton et al. 2003). Legumes provide profitable sources of nectar and pollen, and the loss of legume-rich habitats is linked to pollinator declines (Goulson et al. 2008; Kleijn and Raemakers 2008). The wider research exploring the inclusion of grass clover leys in arable systems has found lower levels of pest and positive benefits to spider but not ground beetles (Dicks et al. 2020).

Soil carbon

Increasing the proportion of legumes in the rotation has a positive impact on soil carbon, with perennial legumes having a larger effect than annual legumes (Feiziene et al. 2015).

Greenhouse gas emissions

The nitrous oxide released by legumes is lower than crops receiving synthetic fertiliser (Stagnari et al. 2017 as cited by Smith et al. 2018). There is also a reduction in GHGs associated with the transport and the production of synthetic fertiliser.

Adaptability

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Stakeholder views

The benefits of legumes for both above and belowground biodiversity was supported by the stakeholders. The inclusion of legumes in organic systems reduces GHGs due to the reduction in the requirement for synthetic fertilisers, providing soil cover, and by reducing the need for bought in feed for livestock. The stakeholders also identified that forage legumes enhance the soil organic matter content, which will improve the ability of the soil to retain water in drought conditions. Grain legumes, and in particular peas can be difficult to grow in Scottish conditions. There is a need to develop cultivars and mixtures that are appropriate to Scottish conditions, this is particularly important for grain legumes. This constraint is coupled with a limited market for the product.

Increasing in-field crop diversity (e.g. intercropping, varietal mixes)

Field crop diversity means that more than one variety or species are grown together in the same field. In some cases, they may be mixed together, in other cases they may be sown separately in strips. In organic systems, undersowing an arable crop with clover or grass-clover is a standard practice. A form of field crop diversity is intercropping (e.g. growing a legume and a cereal together which may be harvested as a whole crop for feed or harvested and separated for the grain). Varietal mixes, where multiple varieties of the same species (e.g. barley) are sown in combination in a field is also a form of increasing field crop diversity. However, there may issues about the acceptability of mixtures by the food and drink industries.

Biodiversity

Increasing crop genetic diversity through intercropping or varietal mixes is likely to increase the diversity of food resources for above and below ground biota. Intercropping is also likely to enhance the structural diversity of a field, resulting in a broader array of microhabitats with positive implications to biodiversity. A study exploring varietal mixes found no impacts on wild plant diversity but did find positive impacts on above (spiders and carabids) and below ground (Collembola) arthropods (Chateil et al. 2013). These findings support wider research which illustrates positive impacts of intercropping and under-sowing cereals across a range of organisms (taxa) (Dicks et al. 2020). There is, however, evidence that while undersown and conventional stubble fields have similar seed densities, that the more open structure of conventional stubble increases the accessibility of seeds for granivorous birds (Moorcroft et al. 2002). The experimental design, however, made it difficult to tease apart impacts of crop type, undersowing and organic practices indicating a potential area for future research.

Soil carbon

From the REA, there was no evidence of increasing in-field crop diversity impacting on soil carbon. Wider research has found a reduction in soil carbon in intercropped systems, and this was attributed to a higher diversity of below ground activity stimulating soil processes such as the decomposition of organic matter (Brooker et al. 2023).

Greenhouse gas emissions

From the REA, no relevant papers were found. Nevertheless, in varietal mixes, the risk of disease is reduced and therefore the need for the application of synthetic pesticides is reduced. In addition, for legume-based intercrops, the requirement for synthetic fertiliser is reduced. The reduction in application of synthetic inputs will reduce GHG emissions.

Adaptability

Productivity and stability of the yield between years often increases with diversity, due to the increased resilience of the system (Johnson et al. 1996) which is vital in adapting to future climate conditions. Broader research has highlighted that in Scotland that the benefits of intercropping compared to sole crops might increase if summers become warmer and drier as predicted by climate models (Brooker et al. 2023). Genetically diverse plant material (e.g. composite cross populations or varietal mixtures) often perform best under organic systems whereas genetically uniform material (e.g. varieties) often do best under conventional farm management systems for which they have been bred (Legzdiņa et al. 2022). Conventional crop varieties are genetic monocultures bred for high input conventional systems in which synthetic inputs (fertiliser and pesticides) are used to maintain the growing environment. Without access to such inputs organic cropping materials must be diverse in character to suit the more diverse growing environment (Legzdiņa et al. 2022). Trials for new varieties are typically conducted in conventional systems with high levels of synthetic inputs. As a result, varietal selection focuses solely on yield optimisation and disease resistance. Additional focus to determine varieties that perform well in low input systems would help advance efficiency in organic, and other low input, systems.

Stakeholder views

Companion cropping are alternatives to the application of synthetic pesticides as these reduce the risk of a reduction in yield due to plant diseases. This is because of the genetic variation associated with the different species and varieties sown.

Cover crops

Cover crops are grown seasonally between the main arable crops and are not normally used to produce a product for sale. The inclusion of cover crops in the rotation avoids bare soil being exposed, and reduces the risk of soil erosion, and nutrient losses. In organic systems the cover crop may be grazed off by livestock before the residues (roots and stubble) are incorporated into soil as the ground is prepared for the next crop. This practice also occurs on conventional farms growing spring crops, although it is more commonly found on organic systems. In conventional systems, cover crops are often destroyed with herbicide prior to sowing of the following crop.

Biodiversity

Research exploring the impact of cover crops on biodiversity in organic systems was lacking, although the wider literature indicates positive impacts on earthworms (Pelosi 2009). Cover crops will reduce soil erosion, and therefore, they are likely to improve the ecological status of waterbodies. The impact of cover crops is likely to be dependent on both the method of destruction (e.g. cultivation versus grazing it bare and overseeding, or application of glyphosate to kill off the cover by conventional farmers) and the alternative land use. For example, winter stubble benefits a wide range of groups of organisms (taxa) (Dicks et al. 2020), and its destruction to establish cover crops could adversely impact on some species (e.g. seed eating birds). Comparing potential trade-offs across taxa provides an interesting area for future research. Cover crops tend to reduce weed growth (Madsen et al. 2016), although the weeds and weedbank are affected by the species included in the cover crop mixtures (Madsen et al. 2017).

Soil carbon

The result from a European meta-analysis of long-term studies indicates that the inclusion of cover crops do not lead to an increase in the soil carbon stocks (Jordon et al. 2021). The results of three long-term experiments in Denmark support this observation (Hu et al. 2018). In contrast, the results from a long-term organic trial in Estonia showed variability in the response of the soil carbon to the inclusion of cover crops in the rotation (Eremeev et al. 2020; Are et al. 2021; Kauer et al. 2021). This was influenced by the phase(s) in the rotation assessed.

Greenhouse gas emissions

There is limited evidence that indicates that the inclusion of a cover crop does not affect the nitrous oxide emission, although the choice of cover crop can influence the emissions, and the subsequent nitrogen benefit to the following crop (Li et al. 2015). Although the total emissions were not affected, the distribution of the emissions during the season were affected by whether the crop was harvested in the autumn or ploughed in just before sowing the following crop (Li et al. 2015).

Adaptability

Bare ground is more exposed to abiotic stresses such as wind erosion and rain compaction. Climatic changes may result in greater, and less predictable, changes and levels of abiotic stresses related to temperature, solar radiation and rainfall patterns. Cover crops offer protection from these stressors, but they also offer refuge for pathogens (e.g. clubroot), pests (e.g. slugs), and natural enemies (e.g. predatory beetles (Sereda et al. 2015). The challenge is achieving the right balance of crop species included in the cover crop and the timing of the operation to minimise pest damage. The choice of species included in the cover crop mix will also influence both the weed abundance and the diversity of weeds (Madsen et al. 2017). The inclusion of cover crops in the rotation may also reduce the water holding capacity of the soil (Are et al. 2021), putting the main crop at greater risk of drought. However, this is mitigated by the inclusion of bulky organic materials in the rotation (Are et al. 2021).

Crop residues

In organic farming, the crop residues (stubble) are typically left on the field after the crop has been harvested. The residues include straw that is chopped and returned but excludes straw which is harvested and used for bedding. Crop residues reduce the risk of erosion and are typically incorporated into the soil before planting the following crop. Their return supports the fertility of the organic system. In stockless organic systems, green manures (which contain legumes to build fertility) are typically included in the rotation. During the growing season, they will be cut several times with the residue left on the field. They will be incorporated before planting the following crop.

Biodiversity

The wider literature indicates that winter stubble provides a variety of resources for a range of organisms (taxa) including plants, insects, spiders, mammals and farmland birds (Dicks et al. 2020). Perhaps most notable is the potential for stubble to provide winter forage for seed eating birds such as yellowhammer and skylarks. Undersowing, a practice common in organic systems, however, can reduce the accessibility and diversity of seeds (Moorcroft et al. 2002). Although research exploring the impact of incorporating crop residues is limited, benefits on natural predators (natural enemies), specifically spiders and carabids, have been found (Sereda et al. 2015). It is likely that through benefitting soil health, the retention of residues will also benefit soil biodiversity.

Soil carbon

The inclusion of a cut and mulched green manure tends to increase the soil carbon stocks (Hu et al. 2018). Global meta-analysis indicate that the addition of crop residues enhances soil carbon stocks (Poeplau & Don 2014; Mcclelland et al. 2020). Nevertheless, the stability of the carbon will be dependent on the management practices adopted.

Greenhouse gas emissions

Crop residue nitrogen content is a major driver of nitrous oxide emissions (Pugesgaard et al. 2017).

Adaptability

Similarly to cover crops, crop residues offer protection from erosion and soil compaction. Crop residues such as straw/litter from previous crops help protect the soil from such stresses. They also offer refuge for pests, such as slugs, and predators, such as beetles (Sereda et al. 2015).

Use of bulky organic materials

Bulky organic materials include farmyard manure, compost, digestate and green waste. Farmyard manure might be produced on stocked farms and redistributed within the farm to crops or grassland destined for silage. Those without their own stock might import manures, or other bulky materials such as digestate or green waste compost (e.g. the manure from organic poultry units must be returned to organic land). As well as providing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, bulky manures also provide micronutrients to the crop. The nutrient content of the bulky organic material is a function of manure type (including livestock species), and the treatment of the bulky organic material. Again, these practices are not exclusive to organic farms. However, these approaches to nutrient and soil organic (carbon) management are predominant on organic farms where many conventional systems will combine bulky organic manures and synthetic fertilisers. Sewage sludge application is not permitted in organic production.

Biodiversity

The use of bulky organic materials is thought to enhance soil invertebrates that feed on dead and decaying material which in turn increases food supply for predatory arthropods in organic systems (Pfiffner and Luka 2003). The impact also varied with group of organisms (taxa), with wolf spiders and carabids typically having higher densities in organically fertilised plots, while money spiders and rove beetles had higher densities in plots receiving inorganic fertilisers, impacts however varied with crop type and year (Eyre et al. 2009). Exploration of the wider literature comparing inorganic fertilisers with organic materials, found organic fertilisers typically benefitted a range of organisms (taxa) including plants, collembola, earthworms, and predatory beetles (Dicks et al. 2020). Impacts, however, varied between taxa and effects were not always consistent with impacts on ground beetles, ranging from positive (Hance and Gregoirewibo 1987) to neutral (Birkhofer, et al. 2008). Animal dung can be contaminated with veterinary medicines and residues of wormers (i.e. ivermectin) can retain toxic effects to terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates (Sands and Noll 2022). Research comparing nutrient run-off from organic and inorganic fertilisers is inconclusive with some studies finding no impact, while another found greater runoff in plots receiving organic fertilisers (Dicks et al. 2020).

Soil carbon

The modelled estimates of the inclusion of bulky organic material in the rotations suggests that soil carbon will increase (Knudsen et al. 2014). The application of farmyard manure almost always improved soil carbon (e.g. Fließbach et al. 2007; Heinze et al. 2010; Are et al. 2021; Kauer et al. 2021; Alvarez 2022; Krause et al. 2022; Sosulski et al. 2023). The change in the soil carbon pools is influenced by the type of organic bulky material applied (Boldrini et al. 2007). For example, composting the manure before application is likely to have a greater impact on the soil carbon than uncomposted manure (Fließbach and Mäder 2000, cited in Smith et al. 2018). In addition, the crop may also influence the impact (e.g. there was no difference in the soil carbon for potatoes receiving either farm-yard manure or fertilisers (Eremeev et al. 2020)).

Greenhouse gas emissions

Replacing fertiliser inputs with organic manures had no significant effect on the on-farm emissions of nitrous oxide and methane in conventional systems (Skinner et al. 2019). Nevertheless, although the N inputs in the organic systems were approximately half of those applied in a similar conventional system, there was no impact on the yield-scaled emission (Skinner et al. 2019). As bulky manures have high concentrations of carbon and nitrogen there is an increased risk of nitrous oxide emissions when they are applied in wet conditions (Rodrigues 2006, cited in Smith et al. 2018).

Adaptability

From the REA, there was no evidence of bulky organic material on adaptability. However, treatment of manure can influence adaptability. The high temperatures achieved when manure is composted are known to kill plant disease and weed seeds (Litterick et al. 2003) and thus this practice is encouraged in organic farming.

Stakeholder views

The types of bulky organic manures and composted waste (e.g. sewage sludge) that can be used on organic farms are restricted. The addition of bulky manures has benefits for soil biodiversity, which provides feed for the birds. However, applying bulky manures which contain veterinary medicines can also have negative consequences for biodiversity, and their use has to be carefully managed to avoid pollution. Their application improves the soil structure, increases the soil organic matter, improves drainage and increases the water holding capacity of the soil. Consequently, the soil is more resilient to both drought and extreme rainfall events. With climate change, the risk of pests and diseases is likely to increase, and the use of bulky organic manures may reduce the risk. However, there is a huge knowledge gap in the interplay between crop nutrition and crop health.

No synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides

In organic systems the application of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides is prohibited. Natural compounds can be used when there is a specific threat to the crop. Records which demonstrate the need for such an application must be kept.

Biodiversity

The use of inorganic fertilisers can result in nutrient leaching and run-off adversely impacting on freshwater biodiversity. A reduction in inorganic inputs can also benefit plant diversity (Koch and Meister 2000; Rotchés‐Ribalta et al. 2020; Fonderflick et al. 2020; Dobben, et al. 2019) with positive implications to invertebrates. For example, unfertilised grasslands have been found to support more rare specialist moths (larvae associated with a limited number of plant species) (Mangels et al. 2017).

Reduction/or avoidance of herbicide applications results in richer, more abundant, plant assemblages (Fonderflick et al. 2020). Studies comparing plant communities in organic and conventional systems, typically identify that the lack of herbicides has a positive impact on biodiversity (Carrié et al. 2022; Sidemo‐Holm et al. 2021) with effects most prevalent in arable fields. The positive impacts often extended to field margins due to lack of spray drift (Happe et al. 2018; Marja et al. 2018).

A reduction of pesticide use was found to have a positive impact on bats (Barré et al. 2018) and earthworm populations (Pélosi et al. 2013). Earthworms closest to the surface were particularly vulnerable to the application of synthetic products and impacts of insecticides were greater than either herbicides or fungicides (Pélosi et al. 2013). Impacts of plant protection products on ground beetles varied depending on diet and size (Eyre et al. 2012) and while the removal of insecticides did not impact on the density of natural predators of pests (e.g. ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies), it increased the predator prey ratio suggesting that natural pest control is more effective in the absence of insecticides. Drawing from the wider literature, there is strong evidence that a reduction in synthetic fungicides, herbicides and insecticides benefits a range of groups of organisms (taxa) including invertebrates, plants and birds, although neutral and negative impacts are sometimes detected (Dicks et al. 2020).

Soil carbon

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Greenhouse gas emissions

The reduction in GHGs is due to the reduction in the number of tractor operations and the amount of agrochemicals and fertilisers applied as well as emissions associated with their manufacture. However, this reduction in emissions can be offset by an increased requirement for mechanical weeding and / or the application of bulk organic materials.

Adaptability

Resistant crop varieties and crop protection products currently form a significant component of crop protection programmes. However, crop breeding and the development of new pesticidal active ingredients takes many years. Although modelled projections of yield are expected to increase under climate change in high latitudes (Chaloner et al. 2021), the relative pressure from pests, weeds and disease could increase at such a rate that plant breeding and pesticidal development will not be able to keep pace (Chaloner et al. 2021; Steinberg and Gurr 2020). Biological approaches to crop protection confer adaptation to future pest and disease threats. Invertebrate pests are often more prevalent in organic systems (Krey et al. 2019) as is biological control through natural process such as predation and parasitism (Birkhofer et al. 2016; Caballero-López et al. 2012; Chabert and Sarthou 2020; Inclán et al. 2015; Sereda et al. 2015; Muneret et al. 2018; Sidauruk and Sipayung 2018). Reasons for this include a lack of synthetic insecticides which would kill beneficial insects and prey, and the greater food and habitat provision through the increased plant diversity in organic systems, which is achieved through more diverse rotations and the omission of herbicides. System (conventional, new and old organic fields) and landscape complexity (amount of pasture and the area of field borders, wild flower strips) affect pests, natural predators for the control of pests (natural enemies), and biological control services (Birkhofer et al. 2016; Török et al. 2021).

Stakeholder views

This is fundamental to organic farming as it supports biodiversity. The restrictions on synthetic products are defined. However, this is not the case for agroecological or regenerative systems. The restrictions imposed by the organic standards limit the ability of farmers to deal with weeds and pests, and therefore alternative methods are required. There was a view that additional research and sharing of good practice would help support farmers in dealing with these challenges. The lack of synthetic inputs helps to maintain healthy farm ecosystems which has benefits for the soil, and soil carbon storage as well as for above and belowground biodiversity. Healthy ecosystems also help buffer against unexpected fluctuations in weather and pest and disease pressures. However, although organic farmers cannot apply synthetic pesticides, they are able to apply a limited range of products in specific situations (e.g. copper oxychloride for blight control) that are damaging to nature. Application of these products are restricted in amount and only allowed where there is no successful alternative control mechanism (e.g. in the case of potato blight).

Tillage

Minimum till or zero till systems reduces the degree to which the soil is disturbed when the crop is sown. Stocked organic systems generally contain a ley phase established by undersowing the main crop with a grass-clover ley which reduces the amount of tillage compared with an all arable system. This ley is then left following harvest. Many arable crops can also be established by minimum till or zero till methods. Nevertheless, because of the need to control pests and weeds in organic systems through cultivation, minimum till or zero till systems are more often observed in non-organic systems.

Biodiversity

Research exploring the impact of reduced tillage (e.g. direct drill, and methods to reduce the depth of cultivations) on biodiversity in organic systems was inconclusive and dependant on the group of organisms (taxa) and context. Positive impacts were detected for bats (Barré et al. 2018). Effects on earthworms varied with crop type and tillage practice and ranged from negative to neutral (Metzke et al. 2007). The population of predators such as ladybirds and carabid beetles are often influenced by tillage frequency, whereas the population of parasitoids are rarely affected (Puech et al. 2014). Impacts of tillage on soil invertebrates may take years to develop, and short-term studies are unlikely to accurately reflect impacts. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that nematodes are increased in reduced tillage systems (Schmidt et al. 2017, cited in Junge et al. 2020). The wider literature indicates that reduced tillage is likely to be beneficial with positive effects found for invertebrates, weeds and farmland birds. Effects however varied with taxa, crop type and tillage practice (Dicks et al. 2022).

In organic systems reduced tillage has been found to increase weed abundance (Armengot et al. 2015; Gronle et al. 2015; Benaragama et al. 2019; Seipel et al. 2022) with a particular increase in perennial weeds thus shifting the community composition of perennial and arable species, although not impacting species diversity itself (Armengot et al. 2015). Reduced/no till land often experiences more grass weed issues (typically low levels of dormancy) and sometimes less broad leaf weed problems as those seeds remain deep within the soil profile.

Soil carbon

Reduced tillage increases the soil carbon in the topsoil (Jordon et al. 2022; Szostek et al. 2022; Fotana et al. 2015). However, the effect is moderated by the soil texture (Fotana et al. 2015, Krauss et al. 2022), and the inclusion of green manures (Emmerling 2007) or composted manures (Krauss et al. 2017) in the rotation. Although the effect is reduced with soil depth (Jordon et al. 2022), the soil carbon in the total soil profile tends to increase (Krauss et al. 2022).

Greenhouse gas emissions

Tillage did not significantly affect either nitrous oxide or methane emissions (Krauss et al. 2017). The reduction in GHGs associated with organic production is due to the reduction in the number of tractor operations.

Adaptability

In reduced tillage systems, the organic matter in the topsoil increases, and hence increases the water holding capacity of the soil (Gronle et al. 2015). Drought, flooding and elevated temperatures have less effect on the soil microbial communities and plant health in reduced tillage systems (Kaurin et al. 2018).

Stakeholder views

Reduced tillage improves the soil structure and the soil biodiversity. However, the views of the viability of reduced tillage as a practice differed. They ranged from introducing tillage as a compulsory practice in organic systems to the requirement of organic farmers to use the plough at some points in the rotation to control the weeds. There were also concerns raised that promoting reduced tillage with conventional farmers would increase the use of glyphosate, which is used to kill the weeds, and therefore have negative consequences for biodiversity. It was also raised that there is evidence that pesticide and fertiliser use has increased in reduced tillage systems in the US. Some stakeholders held the view that the applicability of using reduced tillage methods was dependent on the soil type, weather conditions and the crop to be planted (e.g. it was also stated that spring barley is a difficult crop to establish using reduced tillage methods).

The benefits for GHGs are due to the reduced fuel use, and potentially a reduction in soil related GHGs which the stakeholders attributed to reduced leaching. It was also highlighted that the soil carbon sequestration may be short-term, and only affect the topsoil.

Grazing practices

The grazing practices adopted by the organic farmer are not just about maximising production. It is also imperative that the organic farmers consider the nutrient status of the soil, the botanical composition of the sward or forage and animal health and welfare is maintained. Organic certification in the UK requires that at least 60% of livestock diet is produced on farm, and there is a strong push towards pasture grazing. Consequently, organic systems often involve lower stocking densities, and/or more regenerative grazing management to optimise pasture use (e.g. rotational and mob grazing strategies). Mob grazing means that the field or part of the field is grazed very heavily for a short space of time (1-few days) till the grass height is approximately 10-20 cm. After grazing, the field is left for a considerable time to allow the field to recover (e.g. 60-80 days) meaning that the livestock are grazing tall, mature grass when they do return to the field (i.e. 30-60 cm). Short term leys are typically incorporated into organic systems, which improve soil fertility. Rotational grazing also involves moving animals from field to field, but typically the animals remain longer in each field (e.g. 3 – 7 days), and graze the grass sward down to a lower level (e.g. 5 cm). Rotational grazing involves a much shorter rest period (e.g. 15-30 days) and the grass is shorter when livestock re-enter (e.g. 8-10 cm). In addition to the traditional grazing of grasslands, farmers are also utilising cover crops, winter cereals and other forage crops to provide feed for ruminant livestock. Silvopastoralism (where trees and grazing systems are combined) is not commonly practised in Scotland.

Biodiversity

Grazing management influences the structure and composition of vegetation with both overgrazing and under-grazing having deleterious impacts on biodiversity (Pulungan et al. 2019). Site conditions (e.g. soil type, hydrology and topography) alongside management actions (i.e. timing, frequency, intensity and species of livestock) all have a role to play in determining impacts. When compared to continually grazed organic pastures, extensively mown meadows (i.e. two cuts annually), and to a lesser extent rotationally grazed pastures, supported higher densities of butterflies and more plant species indicative of species-rich grasslands (Kruse, et al. 2016). Mowing, however, is contrary to the push to prolong the grazing period to reduce the need for supplementary feeding and rotational grazing may provide a suitable compromise. The wider literature indicates positive impacts of agroecological grazing regimes (e.g. mob grazing, adaptive multi-paddock grazing) on micro and macro arthropod communities. Impacts on plants were found to vary with grasses tending to be favoured at the expense of shrubs and forbs (Morris 2021). Mob grazing regimes will enhance the structural diversity at the farm level such that flowers and seeds are more present at any one point in time, and this is likely to favour a range of species including seed eating birds and insect pollinators.

Soil carbon

The inclusion of short-term leys into the crop rotation increases the soil stocks with the impact increasing with the length of the ley (Jordon et al. 2022).

Greenhouse gas emissions

Animal growth can be promoted by providing access to good quality pasture (Pottier 2009; Keifer et al. 2014). There is some evidence that giving animals access to pasture when the grass is in a strong growth phase benefits animal growth (Novak and Fiorelli 2011). Grazing parasite-naïve animals on clean pasture reduces parasite loads, promoting animal health and therefore efficiency of growth (Cabaret et al. 2002). Factors that promote efficient growth will reduce GHGs/kg product.

Adaptability

Productivity and stability often increase with diversity, resulting in increased resilience of the system (Johnson et al. 1996). This is vital for adapting to future climate conditions. Weed communities from no-tillage and grazed/reduced-till organic systems are often distinct from the tilled organic community, underscoring the effect that tillage has on the assembly of weed communities (Seipel et al. 2022). Higher weed biomass is often observed in grazed/reduced-till organic systems (Seipel et al. 2022).

Stakeholder views

The ethos of organic ruminant livestock systems is the use of home-grown grazed and conserved forage with a minimum use of purchased concentrates. This reduces the GHGs associated with the transport and production of purchased concentrates.

Rotational or mob grazing of grasslands helps supports soil health and protects the soil from erosion, particularly during periods of heavy rain. This type of grazing contributes to plant diversity due to the rest periods. However, heavy stocking can have benefits as it allows the sward to open-up, permitting the dormant native species to re-emerge. This needs to be very carefully managed to be successful.

Innovative farmers are practicing these alternative grazing practices and believe there are benefits to soil carbon. Nevertheless, the conclusive evidence for the benefits was questioned by some stakeholders, and they identified that there is a need for scientific evidence of the benefits, disbenefits and unintended consequences of these practices.

Financial pressures on farms in 1980s led to specialisation and a reduction in the traditional mixed systems. There is increasing interest among specialist arable farmers to reintroduce some ruminant livestock back into their systems. For example, grazing of autumn sown arable crops (e.g. winter wheat). This reduces the risk of a yield loss that can result from frost damage over winter. There is also the potential to include herbal leys, which are more resilient to extreme weather and enhance above and belowground biodiversity. The introduction of grazing ruminant livestock into arable systems can improve the soil carbon due to the incorporation of a ley, the return of excreta and trampling of the ground. Nevertheless, there is a need to investigate the long-term consequences of reintegration of livestock on the environment.

Veterinary products

The use of veterinary products is restricted in organic farms. Organic farmers aim to treat their animals as little as possible without impacts on animal welfare. The impact of veterinary products on the environment is due to both the application of and the disposal of the product.

Biodiversity

Research into the use of veterinary products focusses on the adverse effects that wormer residues (e.g. avermectin) can have on dung communities (e.g. flies, dung beetles). Organic farms had higher abundances and richer communities of dung beetles and this was attributed to both a reduction in the use of avermectin and differences in landscape structure (Hutton and Giller 2003). Adverse impacts of wormer residues on invertebrates, are likely to have knock on effects for birds that feed on dung insects (e.g. starlings and choughs) (McCracken 1993).

Soil carbon

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Greenhouse gas emissions

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Adaptability

From the REA, no relevant papers were found.

Stakeholder views

This management practice reduces the antibiotics found in food.

Animal health

The principle of organic farming is that good care, housing and management of animals results in animals that are less susceptible to disease. Under IFOAM regulations, there are no limitations on the use of medicines (other than a longer withdrawal period for sale of milk/meat) so antibiotics can be used to treat disease and thus safeguard animal welfare. However, the use of alternative remedies is actively encouraged. Therefore, organic farming has the potential to reduce anti-microbial resistance in the human population (Mendes Costa et al. 2023). Housing and management practices such as the use of lower stocking densities and the use of feed-faces designed to allow all animals good access to feed, water and comfortable lying areas during housing periods is promoted. An extended period of grazing is also encouraged. While there is a great deal of variation between farms in the standards of animal welfare, studies have typically shown that these regulations will improve animal experience. Typically, also, the use of breeds and strains of animals that are somewhat less productive, but more ‘robust’ to environmental and other stressors is encouraged.

Biodiversity

From the REA, there was no evidence of better animal health impacting on biodiversity although the relationship has not been directly explored. However, yield reductions could result in offshoring biodiversity impacts.

Soil carbon

From the REA, there was no evidence of animal health impacting on soil carbon.

Greenhouse gas emissions

When animals are healthy, they are more likely to be more productive in terms of growth in beef or sheep and in milk yield for dairy cattle. While good animal health is equally possible on conventional farms, the lower intensity of management systems, such as the use of more ‘robust’ breeds, and the use of lower stocking densities and more dietary forage, means that animals in organic systems may be less susceptible to disease than animals on conventional farms (Bareille et al. 2022 commenting on studies on extensive ruminant systems in France). As episodes of disease or ill health reduce growth in beef and sheep animals, animals that have experienced disease will be at an older age when they reach slaughter weight than non-diseased counterparts. Given that the daily GHGs/animal/day is roughly the same irrespective of disease status, a higher age at slaughter means higher emissions per kg of output (Novak and Fiorelli 2011). Similarly, disease in dairy cattle is associated with reductions in milk yield, which equates to a higher emissions per kg of milk across the animal’s lactation and lifetime.

Adaptability

From the REA, there was no evidence of animal health impacting on adaptability, but this relationship has not been formally addressed. A study considering extensive and intensive systems suggested that grazing animals may be more susceptible to parasitic infestations (Skuce et al. 2013).

Stakeholder views

The use of herd/flock health plans which incorporate herd / flock breeding objectives and management of the livestock has improved animal health, a principle which applies to organic farming as well as conventional systems. However, the restrictions on buying non-organic breeding stock and the ban on embryo transfer in organic farming has limited the opportunity to improve the genetic potential of the herds/flocks.

Additional relevant information raised by the stakeholders.

Buffer strips, field margins, hedges and trees were practices that were identified as having key benefits on organic farms for biodiversity, protecting watercourses, and providing wildlife corridors. Hedges and trees also provide shelter from extreme weather conditions for livestock.

There is a need for better engagement between science, practice and policy. The stakeholders also raised concerns about the feasibility of organic systems being part of the “less but better meat movement” due to the scalability and costs of production.

Gaps

The REA has illustrated that there is a body of work that assess the holistic nature of the benefits and disbenefits of organic farm management. However, the literature identified in the REA does not assess the trade-offs between the individual organic management practices and the ecosystem services delivered.

Although there is clear evidence that there are biodiversity benefits associated with organic farming, much of this has focussed on insect pollinators, predatory arthropods (particularly spiders and carabid beetles) and plants. Research on soil micro-arthropods, parasitoids, and mammals is comparatively scarce. This is most likely due to lack of expertise in taxonomy (e.g. parasitoids, springtails and soil mites) and difficulty in surveying (e.g. small mammals). Advancements in technology (e.g. soundscape analyses, metabarcoding and eDNA) may help to alleviate this bias.

Although there is evidence of organic management practices benefitting soil carbon, there is a need to have better quantification of the potential for these practices to sequester carbon. The influence of the practices needs to be studied on a long-term basis to ensure that the carbon added is not transient. There is also a lack of good studies that provide solid evidence of the impact of organic management practices on GHGs. It is also important that carbon calculators are further developed to fully account for the adoption of organic management practices.

In terms of the wider promotion of organic farming, there is a need to change the focus of plant breeding to produce varieties that will yield well under varied and less nutrient rich conditions, while also considering pest and disease resistance. There also needs to be more focus on breeding for novel and minor crops. This would help improve yields in organic farming and reduce losses due to weeds, pests and diseases. Improved yields would improve nutrient use efficiency and reduce nutrient losses as well as reduce GHGs per tonne of product.

Although there is evidence for the positive impact of organic management practices on the ability of Scottish agriculture to cope with projected climate change, the evidence is weak. Thus, there needs to be an increased focus on identifying the likely pressures on agriculture, and systems that have the resilience to cope with these stressors.

Limitations of the approach

Any REA or other type of review is limited by the date on which it is carried out. While in the review no evidence was found to indicate that crop diversity is higher in organic farming, a recent paper by Reumaux et al. (2023) indicates that crop rotation diversity is higher in organic farming particularly in more productive land. This is because conventional farming can utilise simpler crop sequences on good land due to the use of fertilisers and pesticides where organic production still requires diversity in the crop sequence to provide fertility via legumes and using crops with different susceptibilities to weeds, pests and diseases to manage crop health.

Undoubtedly the REA approach will not pick up all relevant literature because it uses title and keywords. If the authors do not use the term “organic farming” in the title and keywords, valuable literature can be missed. An example of this is the paper by Beillouin et al. (2021) entitled Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services.

A further limitation is that much evidence on, for example, the soil carbon benefits of grass/legumes leys has not been done in a specifically organic context although in reality the management of such leys is likely to be very similar whether organic or conventional.

PESTLE and SWOT Analysis

The PESTLE summary (Table 2) is informed by the current business and political environment. The SWOT (Table 3) summary is based on the literature review and the stakeholder engagement informed and has been informed by the PESTLE summary.

Table 2. PESTLE summary on the wider adoption of organic farm management practices

Table 3. SWOT summary on the wider adoption of organic farm management practices

Discussion

Organic farming is an holistic system, and this was emphasised through the stakeholder workshops. There was a strong view that it can be hard to disentangle the known and documented benefits of organic systems and attributes that impact on biodiversity and emissions to a specific management practice. This makes it challenging to adopt recommendations on specific practices at farm-scale. The holistic nature of organic systems was also evident from the REA.

Nevertheless, the REA and stakeholders identified that individual practices tend to be beneficial for the environment in their own right. The adoption of these practices will help to support the Biodiversity Strategy and contribute to net zero. There is concrete evidence to support the reduction in off-farm emissions. Due to the high variability in soil derived emissions, the evidence for a reduction in nitrous oxide emissions is less certain. Equally, at the systems level for ruminants, there are trade-offs in emissions due to an increased reliance on forage versus improved animal health.

Taking a more holistic approach, it is important to consider that while organic farming tends to positively impact on biodiversity, that yields are typically lower due to the restrictions in the use of synthetic agrochemicals. Based on European data, and assuming existing patterns of food production and food waste, it is estimated that the organic yield gap is 35%, which would require 50% more land to produce the same yields as obtained from a conventional system (Kirchmann 2019). The widespread conversion to organic farming is likely to result in the conversion of semi-natural habitats to agricultural land. An alternative approach could involve measures that can be implemented without significant impact on yield for example the diversification of productive habitats, reduction in field size, integration of semi-natural habitats within farmed landscapes and the use of precision agriculture techniques to improve efficiency of agrochemical use (Tscharntke et al. 2021).

The adoption of organic farming practices by the wider farming community will require support for the industry for the transition, and maintenance of the systems. In addition, advice and training will be required to ensure the successful implementation of the practices.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr Sarah Govan for valuable advice throughout the project. The team thank members of the Steering Group for comments on the report. The team also wish to thank the participants of the stakeholder events for their valuable contributions and insights.

Annex

Methodology

Rapid Evidence Assessment

A Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) approach was adopted to assess the current state of the evidence of the benefits and disbenefits of organic farming practices on GHGs, biodiversity, and the potential of these practices to help farmers to adapt to the projected changes in weather that are likely to be experienced in 2045. While a REA is not as comprehensive as a systematic review, the REA is designed to be rigorous, transparent and minimise bias (Barends et al. 2017).

The search used to identify the literature was constrained to post 1999, and was:

(TITLE-ABS-KEY((organic* OR biodynamic* OR regenerativ* OR biologisch* OR oekologic*) W/0 (farm* OR field* OR agricultur* OR horticult*)) AND

TITLE-ABS-KEY(biodiversity OR “climate change” OR mitigat* OR adaptation OR “nitrous oxide” OR n2o OR “methane” OR ch4 OR sequestr* OR drought OR waterlog* OR flood* OR “heat stress” OR “cold stress” OR “greenhouse gas*” OR “soil carb” OR “soil organic carb*” OR soc OR “soil C” OR “soil organic c”) AND

TITLE-ABS-KEY(rotation* OR variet* OR “species mix*” OR variet* OR “cultivar mix*” OR “fixing ley” OR tillage OR “soil cultiv*” OR “cover crop*” OR “living mulch” OR intercrop* OR undersow* OR “companion crop” OR “break crop*” OR manure* OR compost* OR biofert* OR irrigation OR pollinat* OR “crop resid*” OR “soil health” OR “soil fertilit*” OR “conservation area*” OR biostimulant OR “bio stimulant” OR “pre crop” OR precrop OR “soil amend*” OR IPM OR ICW OR IWM OR IDM OR “integrated pest” OR “integrated crop” OR “integrated weed” OR “integrated disease” OR fungicid* OR pesticid* OR herbicid* OR insecticid* OR molluscicid* OR nematicid* OR biofungicid* OR biopesticid* OR bioherbicid* OR bioinsecticid* OR biocontrol OR bioprotect* OR biofumig* OR “natural enem*” OR “plant protection product*” OR ppp OR graz* OR cattle OR sheep OR “veterinary treatment” OR “additives aid” OR “bioactive forage” OR “animal health”) AND NOT

TITLE-ABS-KEY(chin* OR asia* OR africa OR brazil OR “south america” OR india* OR mediterran* OR subtropi* OR tropi* OR Thailand OR agroforestry OR “ecological status” OR model* OR lab* OR “sewage sludge*” OR biochar OR fish* OR aqua* OR viticul* OR rice OR vine* OR olive*)) AND

(EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1975) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1987) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1990) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1991) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1995) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1996) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1997) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1998) OR EXCLUDE ( PUBYEAR,1999) )

The search was conducted on 18 May 2023 in two online databases; Web of Science (1885 hits) and Scopus (1190 hits). The searches were combined using mergeDBSources function in the bibliometrix package (Aria and Cuccurulllo 2017), giving a total of 1544 hits. It was subsequently noted that the keyword legume* had been excluded from the search. This was then added to the search string. By re-running the original string and using AND NOT those paper which specified legume* were added. After combining the WOK and the Scopus searches, this added 20 references. Sources were screened firstly on the basis of title and abstract, then secondly by scanning the full text. At each stage, sources were progressed unless it was apparent that an objective reason existed for it to be excluded from the study (exclusion rule). Sources were subsequently assessed for suitability. A total of 145 papers were assessed as sufficiently relevant for data extraction and inclusion in the review.

As a funder of organic projects, the Defra Research databases was searched for relevant projects. This added Smith et al 2018 to the information assessed. Organic Eprints – Welcome to Organic Eprints (orgprints.org) is a repository for results from Organic Projects. The results in OrgPrints for the QLIF and FertilCrop were extracted and assessed for relevance. This gave a total of nine and eleven papers respectively. In addition, relevant papers known to the authors that met the scope were also used to compile the review.

The REA has focused on assessing the direction of change and has not quantified absolute values.

Stakeholder Engagement

Aim

The aim of the stakeholder engagement was to gauge the level of knowledge and understanding across Scotland’s agricultural industry stakeholders of the management practices commonly found on organic farms with reference to their impact on GHG emissions, both beneficial and not, and also their contribution to augmenting biodiversity on the land managed by farm businesses that undertake them.

To reach as wide a representation as possible of stakeholders in Scottish agriculture

To gather their opinions and views, evidence led or otherwise.

Approach

To ensure we were able to engage with farmers and the wider agricultural industry we held two stakeholder meetings.

• July 27th 2023, 12.30-2pm
• August 2nd 2023, 5-6.30pm

We compiled an internal list of industry representatives from our inventory of previous research studies performed for CXC and other organisations allied to Scotland’s agriculture industry. This was augmented by crosschecking with the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) stakeholder group run by Scottish Government and stakeholder representatives were added as appropriate.

We augmented this list of industry representatives with commercial stakeholders across the supply chain including red meat processors, food service, auctioneers, large retailers, and small independent retailers.

We also drew upon our internal network of SRUC researchers, and SAC Consulting agricultural advisors with a range of experience of farming scenarios.

Both organic and conventional farmers were contacted through SOPA, and through the NFUS.  In addition, we contacted all 8500+ subscribers to SAC Consulting’s advisory service which is a direct reach to many farmers in Scotland.

Method of contact

The invitations to a choice of 2 x Zoom meetings were sent out 3 weeks prior to the first stakeholder engagement meeting in the following places:

• NFUS weekly newsletters for 2 weeks reaching all NFUS farming members and stakeholders.
• Social Media via SAC Consulting channels Twitter / FB.
• Direct mailing list of licensors of Scottish Organic Producers Association (SOPA).
• Direct invitation via internal mailing list of industry representatives, and SRUC / SAC personnel as outlined above.
• Included in SAC Consulting’s subscriber publication Unearthed that reaches over 8500 farming businesses.

Method of engagement

We started the stakeholder engagement session with a brief overview of the project and an explicit explanation of what we wish attendees to do.

We used padlet boards and asked for comments on the benefits or disbenefits or each of 6 management practices for climate and biodiversity outcomes. We interspersed the time allowed for attendees to note comments with overarching discussion, without guiding their views, but adding information where appropriate.

We then picked up on gaps in commentary and asked attendees their views on why that was.

Management practices

• Reliance on legumes
• Using organic manures/bulky organic material
• Reduced synthetic inputs
• Integrating grazing in arable system
• Rotational/Mob grazing
• Minimum tillage
• Other

We asked for comments on the impact of organic farming using each particular practice on the following climate and nature outcomes. It was stressed that this was not a call to support organic farming more a call to unpick the impacts both good and bad on these outcomes.

• Reducing GHG emissions
• Soil Carbon storage
• Biodiversity
• Ability to deal with weather conditions, pests and diseases in 2045 .

Summary of the stakeholders involved in the online workshops

• 5 organic farmers
• 1 farmer with no organic land
• 4 advisors
• 8 industry representatives
• 1 charity representative
• 2 academics
• 4 “other”

REA results

Table A1 summarises the results of the REA. Based on the literature, the scores of 1, 0, -1 represent whether the organic management practices have a positive, neutral, or negative impact on the categories of GHGs, soil carbon, adaptation, and biodiversity. The confidence indicator gives an indication whether the body of the literature examined has a low, medium or high confidence of the likely outcome.

Table A1 Summarised results for organic management practices relative to conventional management practices for GHGs, soil carbon, adaptation potential and biodiversity

Glossary of Terms

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Applying interlinked practices to enhance the effectiveness of net zero policymaking in Scotland

Rhona Pringle, Lucy Harbor and Louise Marix Evans, CAG Consultants

March 2023

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/3774

Executive summary

Aims

The concept of interlinked practices (Black and Eiseman 2019) views lifestyles as a network of interrelated practices consisting of competencies (knowledge, skills), materials (objects, infrastructure) and meaning (expectations, shared meaning). The authors suggested that these practices could provide the targets of interventions aiming to change unsustainable behaviours or parts of them.

The aim of this research was to explore how the Scottish Government can apply the concept of interlinked practices to improve net zero policy development and enact societal change. The ultimate aim of interlinked practices is to identify some critical shared elements that can be changed to catalyse greater societal change across a range of behaviours.

Findings

During the early stages of this study, we found that the interlinked practices concept (Black and Eisemann, 2019) is untested and theoretical in terms of policy development and implementation. Therefore, this project focused on research with Scottish Government staff and external stakeholders, including a literature and evidence review, interviews, exploratory and testing workshops, and a mapping exercise.

• We have identified policy interdependencies and interlinked practices in the following sectors: Transport, Agriculture and Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), Waste and Circular Economy, and Buildings. These are key pillars of the Climate Change Plan (CCP) and have significant powers devolved to the Scottish Government. These sectors have practice-based elements, and are crucial in making progress towards net zero targets in key areas.
• Interlinked practices can help to reframe a behaviour problem and help policymakers and practitioners work towards positive societal shift. However, the end point of using social practice related tools is to identify the factors influencing behaviours or practices rather than to prescribe a policy or intervention.
• Of the three social practice elements, material and competencies were often considered in policy development, but meaning was not.
• An interlinked practices approach could be beneficial, but policymakers would need support with developing and implementing it.

Recommendations for implementation

• Using existing tools: A low-cost gateway for Scottish Government policy teams to consider how practices are interlinked across sectors and other organisations could be using tools such as the individual, social and material (ISM) tool, Place Standard with a climate lens, or 20-minute neighbourhoods concept.
• Early adopters: CCP sectors that could be early adopters of an interlinked practices approach to net zero policy development are Transport and Waste and Circular Economy. These have significant powers devolved to the Scottish Government, have practice-based elements that need to make progress towards net zero targets in key areas (Scottish Government, 2022; Climate Change Committee, 2022) and already have interlinked practices.
• Other sectors, such as Agriculture and LULUCF and Buildings, have all of these elements, but we did not find interlinked practices. These other sectors could consider interlinked practices after the mapping work in recommendation 4.
• Local level: Apply a place-based lens to consider how practices interlink at a local level. This could be done as part of place-based engagement and testing, as interlinked practices are likely to vary depending on place (eg trip chaining in an urban setting is likely to differ from that in a rural setting).
• Mapping from the start: Research with expert practitioners, citizens, communities, regulators, policymakers and businesses can help identify and map how practices interlink at the start of a policymaking process in each of the CCP sectors, and which of these should be prioritised in terms of delivering significant emission reductions.
• Time and resources: Using, monitoring, evaluating and promoting the tools mentioned here requires time and resources from the team responsible for supporting sector teams, eg the Behaviours team, and from the sector staff.
• Case studies: Case studies to share learning across the Scottish Government could be developed of policies/strategies that have used social practice theory and considered interlinked practices, such as the ‘Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030’ (Transport Scotland, 2022) and Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (Scottish Government, 2019) or provided a framework for consideration of these, such as 20-minute neighbourhoods and the Place Principle (Scottish Government, 2019).
• Guide: A facilitator could use the flowchart in figure 5 as part of a suite of support measures for policymakers, to help understand how and when to use interlinked practices.
• Plain English: Social practice theory can be challenging to comprehend. Plain English needs to be used when discussing these.

This report was co-produced with the Scottish Government and ClimateXChange client steering group.

Contents

1 Executive summary 2

1.1 Aims 2

1.2 Findings 2

1.3 Recommendations for implementation 3

2 Introduction 5

2.1 Theories informing the research 5

3 Methodology 9

3.1 Approach 9

3.2 Limitations 11

4 Mapping policy interdependencies and interlinked practices 12

4.1 Policy interdependencies and interlinked practices of particular relevance to the Climate Change Plan 12

5 Applying an interlinked practices approach to net zero 16

5.1 Tools 16

5.2 Policy examples that build on, or make use of, interlinked and/or social practices theory 19

5.3 Benefits and challenges of applying an interlinked practices approach 21

6 Conclusions and recommendations 25

6.1 Conclusions 25

6.2 Recommendations 27

7 References 29

8 Appendix 1: Literature and evidence review 31

8.1 Introduction 31

8.2 Social practice theory 32

8.3 Tools and concepts 36

8.4 Policy literature review 47

8.5 Summary of findings 53

8.6 Key findings regarding the opportunities 54

8.7 Literature review references 54

9 Appendix 2: Methodology 57

9.1 Scoping stage 57

10 Appendix 3 Mapping summary 61

Introduction

Previous research for ClimateXChange has introduced the concept of interlinked practices (Black and Eiseman 2019). This views lifestyles as a network of interrelated practices consisting of competencies (knowledge, skills), materials (objects, infrastructure) and meaning (expectations, shared meaning). The authors suggested that these practices could provide the targets of interventions aiming to change unsustainable practices (or parts of them).

An interlinked practices lens could therefore be more effective at guiding the interventions required to achieve Scotland’s net zero target than an individual behaviour change approach.

The aim of this research by CAG Consultants is to answer the question: ‘How can the Scottish Government apply the concept of interlinked practices to improve net zero policy development and enact societal change?’

There were three main objectives of the research:

• To identify the interlinked practices of most relevance for the Scottish Government’s next Climate Change Plan, including any policy interdependencies with the greatest positive influence on the societal shift to net zero.
• To assess the feasibility of translating the concept of interlinked practices into a practical approach able to inform the development of the Climate Change Plan.
• Evaluate the benefits and limitations of applying the interlinked practices lens to the next Climate Change Plan.

According to the Climate Change Committee (2020) over 60% of the emissions reductions needed to meet net zero require societal change. These emissions cannot be achieved solely through supply-side policy such as decarbonising the electricity grid or improving energy efficiency standards of items we purchase and use.

Individuals, households, communities and organisations will have to replace or substitute the high emission ways they perform practices in their lives with low/zero emission practices. This is a significant and transformative shift that society needs to make at pace and as affordably and inclusively as possible. It requires a new way of making policy and of engaging with people. The research examines if interlinked practices could play a role in this in a Scottish policy context.

Theories informing the research

Social practice theory

It is acknowledged that if we focus purely on individual behaviour, the wider societal change required to achieve net zero will not happen. To get transformative change, the focus needs to be on social practice change and technological change (Environment and Climate Change Committee, 2022).

Social practice theory is a well-developed research field. The theory moves beyond traditional framings of behaviour change as primarily a product of individual choice or rational decision-making, by suggesting that our daily lives are better understood as the performance of a series of social practices. Social practices are performed and reinforced in society through the combination of three elements, shown in figure 1:

• Material: the materials needed are accessible (eg having a bike and safe cycle routes)
• Competence: the person is able to engage in the behaviour (eg they know how to ride a bike safely)
• Meaning: it fits within social norms and within the person’s schedule (eg riding is an acceptable way to commute to work and I can get there on time).

Figure 1: The three elements that compose social practices

Social practice theory also recognises people’s agency; that the collective performance of practices alters social structures, social norms and effects change through infrastructure improvements or demand for services. Similarly, social and physical structures can reinforce practices. This is how to achieve societal change (Shove et al. 2012) and is illustrated in figure 2.

Figure 2: Social practice (image based on Conquer Imagination, 2020)

While social practice theory has been written about extensively in academic papers, it should be noted that there are few real-world examples of social practice being used in policy development.

Interlinked practices

Interlinked practices is a concept developed by Black and Eiseman (2019) in a report for ClimateXChange. This concept was informed by social practice theory, including Shove et al (2012) who explore how practices link to and shape each other, and Spurling et al (2013) who explore interlocking practices and the role that infrastructure plays in this.

An interlinked practices approach recognises the complexity of our lifestyles and requires greater consideration of multiple practices. Black and Eiseman (2019) argue that, because many practices are carried out in sequence in people’s lives, when trying to change how one activity is performed, other linked practices need to be considered. For instance, when trying to transition from commuting by car to commuting by bicycle or bus, a person considers how that affects picking up children after school, or doing the shopping on the way home. They ask if: it is safe to cycle with the children; there is time; the bus goes near the school and workplace; the bus service is reliable; it is possible to carry all the shopping.

An interlinked practices approach is intended to move away from a behaviour change approach with the onus on the individual to change their behaviour almost regardless of how easy or difficult this is to do.

The approach aims to map out how complex sets of interrelated actions can be addressed holistically by identifying the common elements that link practices. For this, it uses categories of material, meaning and competence, to then identify changes that need to be made to these elements (eg in structures, institutions, regulations, services) to enable people to live lower emissions lives. The ultimate aim of interlinked practices is to identify some critical shared elements that can be changed to catalyse greater societal change across a range of behaviours.

A nine-step guide was developed by Black and Eiseman (2019), outlining how interlinked practice concepts might be implemented in a checklist/workshop approach. However, it is untested to date, and there is just one incomplete example provided in their report.

Reframing behaviour change

Reflecting on how practices are interlinked enables identification of opportunities or constraints that can impact uptake of net zero practices. There is evidence of limitations with interventions targeted solely at motivating the individual to act, as there are many barriers that block intention to act from being converted into action (Black and Eiseman, 2019). These barriers include social norms (eg not cycling to work because you do not think it is acceptable to turn up to work sweaty) as well as lack of available infrastructure (eg lack of safe routes for cycling and secure bike parking). Furthermore, the interlinkages with other daily practices may also pose some challenges (eg taking children to nursery on the way to work) (ibid).

By adopting a traditional behaviour change approach, climate change policy has often focussed on individuals and their choices, and often involves using campaigns to raise awareness and change attitudes (United Nations, 2022; Shove, 2011), so that people might make more sustainable choices. Social practice theory moves beyond focusing on influencing individual decision-making by suggesting that the right combination of elements (shown in Figure 1 above) must be in place for a person to engage in certain practices.

With daily social practices, people rarely choose to consume resources such as water or energy, nor do they often consider the consequences of this everyday action. Rather, the resources are used within these practices, such as cleaning, showering or cooking to achieve certain ends, for example feeding the family or getting ready for work (Hoolohan et al., 2018).

Many unsustainable routines remain unaffected by interventions that seek to change them, perhaps as a result of lock-in. The more people participate in unsustainable practices and the more regularly they do so, the stronger the lock-in (ibid.). An example of this lock-in is car reliance, whereby our norms of car use mean we may live far from places of work or education for example, meaning it is normal to expect people to drive to work and school. Or we may undertake many interlinked practices in our day, such as picking up the shopping on the way back from work, and so our car use becomes locked-in.

According to Black and Eiseman (2019), the rationale for an interlinked practices approach is that lifestyles are complex and achieving the more ambitious changes needed to reach net zero will require greater consideration of both behaviours and practices. This needs to include greater consideration of social and material influences on behaviour, not just a focus on the aspects of an individual’s behaviour.

Methodology

Approach

The research used a mixed methodology approach, summarised in table 1. The process has been an iterative one, co-produced with the project steering group. Findings from each stage of the research informed the subsequent stages. The detailed methodology is in Appendix 1.

Table 1: Summary of research methodology

Limitations

There was a lack of evidence and case studies on the effectiveness of a social practice theory and interlinked practice approach being used in policy-making. Research findings are therefore heavily based on primary research through workshops with sector policy staff.

Not all Climate Change Plan sector leads were available for interview or involvement in the workshops. It was therefore not possible to gather contributions on developing an interlinked practices approach for the Climate Change Plan from all sector teams.

The number of participants contributing to the research through interviews and workshops is relatively small, so contributions provided may not reflect all views across the Scottish Government or stakeholder organisations.

Mapping policy interdependencies and interlinked practices

The mapping work identified some policy interdependencies, as described in section 4.1, but analysis top-down, starting with national policies, was not able to identify interlinked practices. Reasons for this are described below.

However, mapping policies, initiatives, outcomes, enablers, policy and contextual factors, as well as progress data from within and across the sectors did enable identification of potential cross-sectoral approaches and considerations.

We highlighted in the mapping where the three social practice elements (materials, competencies and meanings) appeared to be present in current policies and initiatives for the Climate Change Plan sectors. This indicated which sectors and potential policy areas might have the underpinning elements in place necessary for low-carbon practices.

Policy interdependencies and interlinked practices of particular relevance to the Climate Change Plan

Our analysis assessed policy areas or sectors where the Scottish Government has power in relation to the application of interlinked practices for a net zero transition. Policy interdependencies were identified in sectors with significant powers devolved to the Scottish Government, which have more practice-based elements and which need to make more progress towards net zero targets in key areas (Scottish Government, 2022; Climate Change Committee, 2022). These sectors are Transport, Waste and Circular Economy, Agriculture and Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), and Buildings.

It has not been possible to identify a comprehensive list of interlinked practices across the Climate Change Plan sectors to inform net zero policy development through the mapping work. Further detailed work, informed by sector experts and a wide range of practitioner stakeholders (i.e. people doing the practices), would be required to understand how daily practices interlink, as it is likely to differ depending on many factors, such as people’s age and where they live.

The interlinked practices of relevance to the Climate Change Plan were identified through the scoping stage and testing workshops and were based on work already undertaken (see below). These are in the Transport, and Waste and Circular Economy Climate Change Plan sectors, and are set out below.

Transport

Policy interdependencies

There are a number of policy interdependencies aiming to reduce the need to travel by car and addressing car trip linkages. These include:

• Location: Planning policy – both local plans and the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) – on the location of facilities/services, such as employment, education, leisure and retail centres, and how these can be accessed through active travel and public transport infrastructure. This can be informed by consideration of trip-chaining (linked trips for different purposes, or, in other words, interlinked practices) to understand individual travel patterns and the reasons for these.
• Broadband coverage: The provision of 100% superfast broadband coverage to facilitate good digital connectivity will help reduce car use by enabling increased digital access to services, such as employment, health and education. This also links to the Industry sector, which will have a key role in delivering 100% broadband coverage.
• Sustainable transport: Modal transport shifts will be required and these link to other policy areas. For example, increased uptake of active travel links to health improvements through increased exercise, and reductions in air pollution and road traffic accidents. The modal shift to electric vehicles has links to policies in the electricity sector, such as location, type and scale of low carbon electricity generation/distribution and infrastructure, including local energy systems and community energy.
• Aviation pricing and flexibility: Flying is often much cheaper than train travel and when combined with school holiday dates and employment limits on annual leave, flying is often preferred. This is an example of where material conditions need to be considered, as well as meaning and social norms.

Interlinked practices

We have identified the following interlinked practices related to transport:

• Reducing car use: The Transport Scotland Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030 (Transport Scotland, 2022) identified some system-level interventions needed to enable this reduction. Interlinked practices that were identified and link to this include commuting to work and undertaking work functions, accessing goods and services (such as shopping and medical facilities), accessing leisure facilities/pursuits (such as sports centres), and accessing schools and education facilities.
• High-carbon practices, including flying: There are some social shifts in attitudes to flying, including frequent flying, which may help support reductions in flights (Gössling et al, 2020). There are also moves by progressive employers to provide extra holiday days to enable staff to travel without flying^[1], providing a material contribution to the matter, whilst still getting the norm or meaning of a full week in the destination. So, notwithstanding that half of people in the UK do not fly, the way we are employed is an example of interlocking practices, where the institutions that employ us, plus the social norm that travelling to go on holiday is not part of the holiday fun itself, lock us into high-carbon practices.

Waste and Circular Economy

Policy interdependencies

The policy interdependencies for waste, particularly food waste, are complex and multiple.

• Legislation: spans waste legislation and food labelling, new initiatives like the Deposit Return Scheme^[2] and Extended Produce Responsibility^[3], investment in waste and recycling collections and disposal, as well as linking into standards and industry and manufacturing practices, which further link out to global markets.
• Retail and food management: links through supermarket and retailer-related policies such as pricing, portion sizes, packaging material choices, as well as linking further down national and global food supply chains. Indeed, food waste links to education and training policies covering competencies around personal, household and food management, as well as cooking skills.
• Planning: Circular Economy policy interdependencies regarding buildings raised concerns in one of the workshops about whether a drive towards low-carbon heating would result in boiler scrappage. This highlighted the point that considering interlinkages may highlight where progress towards net zero in one sector (in this case reducing building emissions) may have a negative impact on another (waste and circular economy) and so may avoid any unintended consequences.

Interlinked practices

We have identified interlinked practices for the Waste and Circular Economy sector related to food waste.

• Food waste at home: According to WRAP^[4], 70% of the food that is wasted in the UK is wasted by citizens in their own homes. That’s 4.5 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten being thrown away every year. Households and consumers are responsible for 61% of food waste in Scotland^[5]. While not linked in a sequential manner, evidence suggests that there are links between food practices such as managing and buying food (eg planning meals, checking the fridge, making a list, buying food eg vegetable and fruit boxes, ready-made food kits), preparing food (eg cooking meals, portion sizes, batch cooking, freezing and defrosting, using up leftovers), and practices such as disposing of food waste (eg disposing of food that has passed its ‘best before date’, leftovers, take away meals)^[6].

These practices vary according to the age profile of households, with younger people and people with children wasting higher quantities of food. They also depend on the wider context including time pressure, which in turn links to work, commuting, leisure, caring duties and cooking skills.

Agriculture and LULUCF

Policy interdependencies

A number of policy interdependencies were identified for Agriculture and LULUCF, but for the reasons given above, it was not possible within the research to identify interlinked practices. Policy interdependencies include:

• Biomass: An interdependency between agriculture and Net Zero Emissions Technologies (NETS) for agriculture and LULUCF policies to ensure the availability of home-grown sustainable biomass to supply large-scale power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.
• Business models: This in turn links to practices in agriculture and land use sectors, with farmers and landowners integrating biomass crops into their business models, having the competence and know-how as well as equipment and financial incentives to grow such crops and, critically, for the meaning of such a crop to align with the meaning of what it is to farm, or be a landowner.
• Timber production: An interdependency between LULUCF and the buildings sector target to increase Scottish-grown timber to support the construction industry in using more sustainably-sourced wood fibre to increase its use of wood products. As above, this would link back into understanding the practices of farmers and landowners in producing more timber.

Buildings

Policy interdependencies

As with agriculture and LULUCF, a number of policy interdependencies, but not interlinked practices, were identified relating to retrofitting buildings. These include:

• Construction: An increase in the use of sustainably-sourced wood fibre to reduce emissions by encouraging the construction industry to increase its use of wood products where appropriate (as mentioned above).
• Bioenergy: The availability of home-grown sustainable biomass to supply large-scale power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.

This highlights the need for multiple stakeholders to tackle the challenge of retrofit and decarbonising heating, which may require a different type of systems thinking that brings in all actors. There are a number of organisations already addressing this, including Carbon Co-op^[7], Dark Matter Labs^[8] and 3Ci^[9].

Use of buildings, for example increased homeworking, may increase energy use due to increased electricity use to power IT equipment and lighting, increased requirement for heating to warm the home while working and more cooking in the home^[10]. This has a policy interdependency with low carbon generation and supply by the electricity sector.

Applying an interlinked practices approach to net zero

Tools

In the course of the research we identified a number of tools that could facilitate consideration of interlinked practices.

ISM tool

The first of these is the ISM tool^[11], which was developed in 2013 for the Scottish Government (Darnton and Horne, 2013) and was identified through our scoping work as a potentially important basis for policymakers and practitioners in the development of thinking on interlinked practices.

The ISM tool was developed to design policy interventions in the context of sustainability. Taking insights from social psychology, behavioural economics as well as sociology theories of practice, ISM is based on moving beyond the individual to consider all the contexts that shape people’s behaviours – the Individual, the Social and the Material (ISM). In 2013, the ISM tool was adopted by the Scottish Government and a subsequent user guide was written (Scottish Government, 2013).

The tool enables stakeholders to consider a shared behavioural challenge and work together to map the factors influencing that behaviour onto the ISM model. Through the process, stakeholders develop a shared understanding of the behaviour and identify their respective roles in bringing about change.

Given that the factors on the model span multiple levels of influence and that multiple stakeholders convene around the model to co-design solutions, it offers an approach to behaviour change that begins to address the system (or ‘causal web’) within which the behaviour sits.

As such, ISM offers a way to bring about behaviour change that is durable and far reaching, being grounded in system change. This means it can address complex policy challenges.

The ten steps of the ISM tool are shown in figure 3 below and include:

• Target behaviour: specify in advance which behaviour you are targeting
• Good mix of people: invite a diverse group, with depth and breadth of understanding
• Introduce or recap ISM tool
• Existing content: briefly outline the existing policy and practice context
• ISM behaviour mapping: start mapping the target behaviour using the ISM tool
• Cover all ISM factors
• Immediate observations: note priority factors, key insights and initial ideas
• Policy mapping: chart existing policies and interventions against ISM
• Identify gaps and ideas: generate ideas where ISM factors are not addressed by existing work
• Take action: develop a coherent package of interventions spanning I, S and M

Figure 3: Step-by-step approach to using the ISM tool (Darnton and Horne 2013, p. 12)

Place Standard tool with a climate lens

The Place Standard tool with a climate lens^[12] (Our Place Scotland, 2022) is a tool that was developed to help people understand how climate change might play out in a local area and support them to design their future place with climate in mind.

It builds on the core Place Standard (Our Place Scotland, 2022a) and takes a cross-sectoral approach to considering issues across 14 place-based themes.

It includes a suite of tools for facilitators to help develop productive conversations focused on the important relationship between climate and place, and it can enable consideration of interlinked practices at the local level.

Workshop participants suggested that the Place Standard can be a useful tool to get cross-sectoral conversations going about climate change, and can also be used at the city, town, village or street level. Given that some interlinked practices are likely to vary depending on place, this tool will help to identify interlinked practices of relevance to the residents of a particular place.

Change Points

Change Points^[13] is a toolkit developed by a team led by Claire Hoolohan from the Tyndall Centre and the University of Manchester, and Alison Browne from the University of Manchester (Hoolohan et al. 2018). It was developed with Defra and other industry and policy stakeholders, particularly on the issues of water and food, and was informed by the ISM tool.

The toolkit is a six-step consensus-based workshop for multi-stakeholders to facilitate consideration of day-to-day practices and how these relate to a key problem. The aim is to design interventions that unlock unsustainable practices. For instance, with regard to food waste, the tool looks at different types of people who are carrying out high waste or high emissions actions and works through potential forms of intervention that consider social and material dimensions in their lives. This includes systems mapping.

Change Points is described by one of the Change Points team members in interview as “a workshop process designed to get beyond individual action to achieve social change. Insights from the workshop allow diversity to inform design, so that interventions work for different people. It also allows the connections between what people do in their homes and all the other things they do in the course of their everyday life. In these ways, Change Points helps re-think responsibility and agency for unsustainable consumption, catch stereotypes, resist passing on the burden of action to future generations and get beyond messaging.”

It can also be used to explore how to increase the uptake and impact of technological interventions (e.g. increase the uptake of water or energy efficient devices and encourage the switch to smart meters) and to consider the wider influences on technological uptake and the routines in which technologies are embroiled.

This workshop takes a whole day to implement or can be carried out in modules. The toolkit is designed to be easy to use by a facilitator and has pre-designed worksheets.

It is currently in use by a wide circle of academics, but the results of its application are yet to be seen.

COM-B model

The COM-B model^[14] identifies three components to any behaviour (B): Capability (C), Opportunity (O) and Motivation (M). It sets out that for an individual to undertake a particular behaviour, they must have: the psychological and physical capability to do so (C), the social and physical opportunity for the behaviour (O), and be motivated to carry out a particular behaviour more than other competing behaviours (M).

The model proposes that in order to deliver and maintain effective behaviour change, interventions must target one or more of these interacting components. It can help policy makers and anyone interested in facilitating behaviour change understand drivers of behaviours and how decisions are made.

Policy examples that build on, or make use of, interlinked and/or social practices theory

A number of examples were found of Scottish policy and/or strategy that demonstrated some elements of an interlinked practices approach.

Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030

Transport Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) used a number of tools to inform the development of their ‘Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030’ (Transport Scotland, 2022), including the COM-B model and the Scottish Government’s ISM Tool (Darnton and Horne, 2013).

In developing the policy on car use reduction, a cause-and-effect fish-bone diagram similar to Figure 4 was developed, which illustrates the process of theorising the root causes of a car-dependent transport system. The diagram categorises the causes by individual, socioeconomic, cultural, community and environmental themes. This is similar to describing the individual, social and material contexts in which people are behaving when using their cars, following the ISM model depicted in the bottom left of the figure 4. This includes the following factors:

• Individual: values, beliefs, attitudes, costs and benefits, emotions, agency skills and habit
• Social: opinion leaders, institutions, norms, roles and identity, tastes, meanings, networks and relationships
• Material: rules and regulations, technologies, infrastructure, objects, time and schedules

Figure 4: Example of a fishbone cause-and-effect diagram using the ISM tool in the development of the ‘Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030’ (Transport Scotland, 2022). Diagram extracted from the University of Edinburgh Master of Public Health’s dissertation and reproduced with the authorisation of Abigail Johnston.

20-minute neighbourhood

Another policy example relevant to interlinked practices is the 20-minute neighbourhood concept, which aims for residents to meet their day-to-day needs within a 20-minute walk of their home. Research for ClimateXChange on 20-minute neighbourhoods in a Scottish context (O’Gorman and Dillon-Robinson, 2021) identifies 14 categories needed for a thriving 20-minute neighbourhood. This requires consideration of how practices are interlinked and cross-sectoral working at a local and potentially wider level to achieve the aim of a 20-minute neighbourhood. Some local authorities in Scotland have already started work on developing 20-minute neighbourhoods.^[15]

Both the ‘Place Standard tool with a Climate Lens’ (Our Place Scotland, 2022) and the 20-minute neighbourhoods concept align with the Scottish Government’s Place Principle (Scottish Government, 2019). Applying the Place Principle and delivering 20-minute-neighbourhoods are both included in the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) as having important roles to play in improving local living. The Place Principle requires that ‘all those responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place need to work and plan together and with local communities, to improve the lives of people, support inclusive and sustainable economic growth and create more successful places’. It promotes a collaborative, place-based approach to deliver better outcomes for people and, as with the Place Standard tool and 20-minute-neighborhood concept, it can facilitate consideration of how practices can interlink to deliver benefits for the local population.

Home Energy Efficiency Programme Scotland

The Home Energy Efficiency Programme Scotland (HEEPS) is an end-to-end support programme to enable householders to make their homes more energy efficient and to install renewable or low carbon energy and heat (Scottish Government, 2019a).

It has a service design that tackles the social practice theory materials, meaning and competences elements to support the system to enable actions by homeowners, landlords and contractors (Atkinson et al., 2019). The HEEPS programme development was supported by a Community Analysis Team.

Benefits and challenges of applying an interlinked practices approach

Potential benefits

There was recognition in workshops and interviews of the need for the Scottish Government to try different approaches to policymaking in order to increase the pace and scale of emission reductions. The potential for an interlinked practices approach to be applied to the development of the Climate Change Plan was discussed in workshops with Scottish Government staff and external stakeholders.

Part of the interlinked practices approach is that materials, meaning and competencies all need to be considered for practices to become more sustainable.

Potential benefits identified include:

• Increasing engagement by highlighting positive meaning: They identified that consideration of meaning was often missing in policymaking and it could perhaps transform the way policymakers think; rather than focussing on how to reduce an unwanted behaviour (eg reduce driving), they could perhaps work towards positive societal shift (eg more active travel, cleaner air, healthier population). In other words, it can help to reframe the problem. A workshop participant commented that, for many people, driving means freedom, and that perhaps consideration of meaning may allow us to reframe the problem as thinking about how we can shift perceptions towards an idea that active travel is freedom.
• Understanding social and material context: The ‘Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030’ (Transport Scotland, 2022) example showed that using tools that incorporate elements of social practice theory can help identify the social and material factors that influence individual behaviours. The resulting routemap sets out the interventions that will enable people to adopt better ways of living by creating a social and material context where reduced car use is a normal, easy, attractive and routine behaviour to adopt.
• Capitalising on societal shifts: These approaches can enable governments to capitalise on societal shifts. An example of this was the increase in cycling in cities during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The recent Climate Change Committee report to the Scottish Parliament (Climate Change Committee, 2022) identified that the emission reduction targets achieved in Scotland in 2020 were due in a large part to changes in practice as a result of the pandemic.
• Research into why there was a significant increase in cycling in cities during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that material elements that facilitated this increase were the rapid introduction of cycle lanes in 2020 (material), for example London expanded the length of bike lanes/paths by 100km in 2020. A meaning element that facilitated people taking up cycling was that they could achieve the purpose of their desire to travel (eg travel for leisure or work) and by cycling this enabled them to maintain social distancing to reduce the risk of Covid-19 contagion (Beuhler and Pucher, 2021), and also follow advice to avoid using public transport where possible.
• This demonstrates that there can sometimes be opportunities to rapidly capitalise on societal shifts, using an interlinked practices approach to contribute to net zero targets, although individuals can revert to ‘old way’, despite an expressed desire to continue a new practice, such as cycling (Mulholland et al., 2022).
• Cross-sectoral/departmental approach: Workshop participants identified that there is currently a lack of cross-sectoral/departmental working and this is a potential obstacle to achieving the Scottish Government’s emission targets. Adopting an interlinked practices approach could help identification of opportunities for policymakers if a cross-sectoral/departmental approach was introduced in the early stages of policymaking.

Potential challenges

One of the biggest challenges is that the interlinked practices concept is untested and therefore not proven to be effective. Therefore there is a risk that applying this untested theory to the development of the Climate Change Plan may not necessarily result in lower carbon behaviours.

Time and resources would be required to support staff in implementing an interlinked practices approach in policymaking. Lessons should be learned from the ISM tool, which saw a reduction in use over time as the resource available to support staff with using ISM reduced.

It was also identified in our workshops that the Scottish Government approach of providing individual sectors with an emissions envelope^[16],[17] poses a challenge to implementing an interlinked practices approach, which requires a cross-sector approach.

Feedback from participants in the scoping workshops was that social practice and interlinked practices theories are complex and challenging to understand. Many of the workshop participants did not have previous knowledge of social practice theory or interlinked practices, however, many had ‘lightbulb’ moments in terms of their understanding of what interlinked practices is when this was explained in the workshops.

Overcoming challenges

In response to this, and recognising that support would be needed to aid understanding of interlinked practices, a flowchart was created by the project team (see figure 5), which shows what needs to be considered and when, acting as a prompt for consideration of interlinked practices in Climate Change Plan policy development. This includes identifying current high emissions practices, the alternative net zero practices, how these practices link to other things people do to identify opportunities for shared outcomes; and identify linked policies impacting the practices.

Use of the flowchart to aid understanding of interlinked practices and social practice theory was explored in the testing workshops. Feedback from the workshops was that the flowchart aided participants’ understanding of how interlinked practices could be considered in a policy context. A facilitator could use the flowchart in workshops, as part of a suite of support measures for policymakers in developing an interlinked practices approach to net zero policymaking.

Figure 5: Flowchart to guide implementation of an interlinked practices approach for policymaking

Conclusions and recommendations

Conclusions

Our research found that the Black and Eisemann (2019) interlinked practices concept and guide is an untested, theoretical concept in terms of policy development and implementation. However, when we explained the concept to Scottish Government policy staff in workshops, the group agreed that it made sense as a concept and identified potential benefits and challenges of applying this approach.

The research also found that there is no silver bullet that is guaranteed to increase the pace and scale of emission reductions through applying an interlinked practices approach to the Climate Change Plan.

Interdependencies and interlinked practices of relevance for the Climate Change Plan

We have identified policy interdependencies and interlinked practices in the following sectors: Transport, Agriculture and Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), Waste and Circular Economy, and Buildings. These are key pillars of the Climate Change Plan and have significant powers devolved to the Scottish Government. These sectors have more practice-based elements, and are crucial in making progress towards net zero targets in key areas (Climate Scottish Government, 2022; Climate Change Committee, 2022).

It was not possible, within the scope of this research, to identify all interlinked practices and potential policy interdependencies that may be relevant to the Climate Change Plan. Further work is needed to do this and would require the input of expert practitioners and policymakers. For example, farmers could help identify and map the detailed practices that are interlinked and which of these should be prioritised in terms of delivering significant carbon emission reductions related to food and agriculture.

Whilst interlinked practices and policy interdependencies were not explored in detail for the Electricity, Industry and Negative Emissions Technologies sectors, they do form a key aspect of the supply side actions to help deliver the material shared elements underpinning our practices. For example, initiatives taken by Industry can support wider societal change through product labelling; design and manufacture of reusable, repairable and recyclable products and technologies; innovations for products and services that affect the material elements of home energy efficiency and, to an extent, transport innovations. Supply side actions in the food and drink industry are relevant to our daily practices around eating, food waste and disposal of food packaging. Therefore, consideration could be given to how sectors and cross-cutting teams could contribute to underpinning material, meaning and competencies elements.

Interlinked practices are also likely to depend on where people live and work. A local, place-based approach may be a more effective way to start an interlinked practices approach, rather than at the national level. The first stage of such approach would be to engage with people and understand how their practices interlink.

Benefits and challenges of an interlinked practices approach for policymakers

Benefits of applying an interlinked practice approach include the following:

• Where policymakers are struggling to change unsustainable behaviours, it can help to reframe the behaviour problem and help policymakers and practitioners work towards positive societal shift.
• It can help identify the social and material environments in which people live that influence individual behaviour change.
• It can enable governments to capitalise on societal shifts to introduce measures that lead to sustained lower carbon practices (eg extending bike paths during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people were encouraged to not drive or use public transportation, led to an increase in the number of people cycling^[18]).

The following challenges would need to be considered:

• The need to build monitoring and evaluation systems in from the start, to gather data to provide evidence of impact of an interlinked practices approach.
• Use of tools and models, such as the ISM tool, will not identify a particular lever to deliver an outcome; they can help identify factors that influence a behaviour or practice, which can inform development of policies and interventions.
• Scottish Government policymaking may not have direct control over many factors/levers that are identified through use of the ISM or other tools, such as social contexts.
• Using tools such as the ISM tool does not prescribe what the next steps are, i.e. what policy or intervention should be implemented. The end point of using these tools is to identify the factors influencing behaviours or practices.
• A more integrated, cross-sector interlinked practice approach to distribution of emissions envelopes from the TIMES model^[19] should be considered at the start of policy development, as the process of assigning emissions envelopes to individual sectors appears to conflict with cross-sector working.
• Applying interlinked practices to policymaking requires a long-term approach.

The research identified some high-carbon practices and issues emerging from these that were not identified as interlinked practices, but had some elements of social practice theory that are relevant in terms of net zero policy development and societal shifts to lower carbon practices. Consideration of these, such as the flying example provided in section 4.1.1, may help inform work on interlinked practices.

Feasibility of translating the concept of interlinked practices into a practical approach

The research found no studies that have explored the impact of adopting an interlinked practices approach on increasing the pace and scale of emission reductions. However, when reviewing contributions from policymakers and stakeholders, and examples of policies and tools, it is clear that some policymakers think that an interlinked practices approach could be useful in developing a more holistic approach to policymaking. This more holistic approach may assist the Scottish Government in moving towards its net zero target and enact social change. This will require acknowledgement of the limitations and support needed identified in this report.

Support would be needed for implementing an interlinked practices approach, as described below:

• Social practice theory and interlinked practices can be challenging concepts to understand. In order to grasp the interlinked practices concept, an understanding of the underpinning social practice theory is required.
• Research participants recognised that, of the three social practice elements, material and competencies were often considered in policy development. However, they also recognised that consideration of meaning was often missing in policymaking and, if that were considered too, it could perhaps transform the way policymakers think.
• Research participants thought an interlinked practices approach could be beneficial, but they would need support with developing and implementing it. This support could be a facilitator or workshop instruction, as is done with the ISM tool, assistance from the Climate Change Behaviours team and/or worked-up examples of how it could be used in practice with the Climate Change Plan.
• For example, they mentioned they would require meetings with sector and the Climate Change Behaviours teams to discuss issues / interlinked practices and identify which other sector and cross-cutting teams within the Scottish Government they should talk to. The Climate Change Behaviours network, which involves all sector teams, could play an important role in facilitating this more cross-sectoral approach to linking practices.
• The flowchart created for this project (figure 5) was found to be useful for helping Scottish Government policymakers and external stakeholders understand how and when in a policymaking cycle to consider interlinked practices. It could also be applied in part to do the same when using the ISM tool.

Recommendations

Implementing an interlinked practices approach

• Using existing tools: A low-cost gateway for Scottish Government policy teams to consider how practices are interlinked across sectors and other organisations, could be using existing tools, such as the ISM tool, Place Standard with a climate lens, or 20-minute neighbourhoods concept to inform their net zero policy development.
• Early adopters: Climate Change Plan sectors that could be early adopters of an interlinked practices approach to net zero policy development are Transport and Waste and Circular Economy. These are both sectors with significant powers devolved to the Scottish Government, have practice-based elements, need to make progress towards net zero targets in key areas (Scottish Government, 2022; Change Committee, 2022) and where some interlinked practices have been identified in this research.
• There are some other sectors, such as Agriculture and LULUCF and Buildings, that have all of these elements, but where we did not find interlinked practices. They could also consider adopting an interlinked practices approach to net zero policy development once mapping work in recommendation 4 has been undertaken.
• Local level: We recommend applying a place-based lens for considering how practices interlink at a local level. An interlinked practices approach could be implemented at a local level as part of place-based engagement and testing, as interlinked practices are likely to vary depending on place (eg trip chaining in an urban setting is likely to differ from that in a rural setting).
• Mapping from the start: Research with expert practitioners, citizens, communities, regulators, policymakers and businesses should be undertaken to help identify and map how practices interlink at the start of a policymaking process in each of the Climate Change sectors, and which of these should be prioritised in terms of delivering significant carbon emission reductions. This could also be done on a cross-sectoral place basis.

Support for implementing an interlinked practices approach

• Time and resources: Using, monitoring, evaluating and promoting the ISM tool, Place Standard with a climate lens, or 20-minute neighbourhoods concept in the Climate Change Plan and net zero policy development context requires time and resources. This would be both from the team responsible for supporting sector teams, eg the Behaviours team, and from the sector staff to use the tools.
• Case studies: Case studies could be developed of Scottish Government policies/strategies that have used social practice theory and considered interlinked practices, such as the ‘Routemap to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030’ (Transport Scotland, 2022) and HEEPS (Scottish Government, 2019) or provided a framework for consideration of these, such as 20-minute-neighbourhoods and the Place Principle (Scottish Government, 2019). This could help promote and share learning across the Scottish Government of how interlinked practices can be considered in net zero policy development.
• Guide: The flowchart in figure 5 could be used by a facilitator as part of a suite of support measures for policymakers to aid understanding of how and when to use interlinked practices in net zero policymaking.
• Plain English: Social practice theory, which underpins the ISM tool and the interlinked practices concept, can be challenging to comprehend, particularly in the initial stages of exposure to the approach. Plain English terminology needs to be used when discussing these.

Further research

If an interlinked practices approach is to be developed further, more research would be needed on:

• developing a monitoring and evaluation approach for interlinked practices that can be embedded in the early stages of its application in net zero policymaking
• a taxonomy of behaviours and practices.

References

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(2019). People Powered Retrofit: A community led model for owner occupier retrofit – Project Report [Online]. Available at: PPR-Report-June-2019.pdf (cc-site-media.s3.amazonaws.com)  (Accessed 28.09.22)

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Mulholland, C., Millar, C, Gray, E., Whitmarsh, L. (2022) ClimateXChange – Net zero behaviours in the recovery from COVID-19 [Online] Available at: https://www.climatexchange.org.uk/research/projects/net-zero-behaviours-in-the-recovery-from-covid-19/ (Accessed 03.03.23)

O’Gorman, S and Dillon-Robinson, R. 2021) 20-minute neighbourhoods in a Scottish context for ClimateXChange [Online] Available at: https://www.climatexchange.org.uk/research/projects/20-minute-neighbourhoods-in-a-scottish-context/ (Accessed 01.10.22)

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Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How it Changes. p3. Sage Publications.

Shove, E. (2011). How the social sciences can help climate change policy [Online]. Available at: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/shove/exhibits/transcript.pdf (Accessed 03.10.22)

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Appendix 1: Literature and evidence review

Introduction

This appendix includes all elements from the full literature and evidence review that aren’t contained in the main report. The literature and evidence review formed the first stage of research being undertaken by CAG Consultants for ClimateXChange to address the question: ‘How can the Scottish Government apply the concept of interlinked practices to improve net zero policy development and enact social change?’, recognising that a focus on nudging the population to make behaviour changes has not delivered the pace or scale of emissions savings required to achieve the 2045 net zero (NZ) target for Scotland.

It includes a review of social practice theory, case studies and tools and Scottish Government policy documents and has been supplemented by interviews with social practice theory specialists.

Whilst the review finds limited evidence of social practice theory use in policy development, it suggests that it may be possible to develop an interlinked practice approach to NZ policy making in Scotland to deliver the NZ goals and highlights some areas to explore in more detail through the subsequent stages of the research.

This literature and evidence review has been undertaken by CAG Consultants as part of a research project for ClimateXChange. Previous research for ClimateXChange has suggested that an interrelated practice lens would be more effective at guiding the interventions required to achieve the net zero target, as opposed to the current individual behaviour change approach (Black and Eiseman 2019).

The aim of this research by CAG Consultants is to answer the question: ‘How can the Scottish Government apply the concept of interlinked practices to improve net zero policy development and enact social change?’, recognising that nudging the population to make behaviour changes has not delivered the pace or scale of emissions savings required to achieve the 2045 net zero (NZ) target for Scotland.

The research findings will inform the Scottish Government’s approach to developing the next Climate Change Plan to most effectively enable the transformative, socio-cultural change to achieve a just transition to NZ, and ensure policies and interventions help to facilitate the lifestyle transitions required.

This literature review has been undertaken at the start of the research project, and will be updated as the project progresses to include contributions from stakeholders through interviews, which are still in progress at the time of writing.

In the first section of this literature review, social practice theory, case studies and tools are reviewed. Interviews were also conducted with individuals who have been involved in attempting to put the theory into practice.

In the second section, Scottish Government policy documents are reviewed, and our team has identified:

• where behaviour and societal change was described and made up a significant part of policy; where a combination of technology and societal change was identified; and the kind of policies or engagement that were planned to drive down emissions in these two categories
• where social practice and interlinked practices approaches could be applied
• key areas/sectors the Scottish Government is seeking and has power to influence in relation to the application of interlinked practices for a net zero transition in Scotland.

The findings of this literature review will be used to inform the workshops, focus groups and mapping of interlinked processes.

Interlinked practices

An interview was conducted with Iain Black, one of the authors of the segmentation study. He said that the idea behind the ‘interlinked practices’ concept is to move away from an agency-based behaviour change approach, and towards a more interventionist approach by government based on a more human and community-based understanding of how we all perform (and are supported to perform) the many practices that make up daily lives (Iain Black, Interview 2022).

Black (Interview 2022) went on to explain that “The key part is what replaces the idea that consumers can be expected to make better pro-environmental decisions and that the focus should be on infrastructure and institutional change with the consumer citizens brought along with and influencing these changes.”

Iain Black confirmed that there has been no further research or trialling of the concept since the segmentation study was published, due to his research partner moving Institutions and

Social practice theory

How does social practice theory work?

Table 2, adapted from Keller et al. (2016), summarises the differences between different theories: individual behaviour change, behavioural economics (nudge), social practice change, and technological approach.

If the focus is just on individual behaviour, the wider societal change required to achieve net zero will not happen. To get transformative change the focus needs to be on the social practice change and technological change.

Table 2. The differences between theories, adapted from Keller et al. (2016)

How can social practice and interlinked practice theories be used?

The challenge for the policymaker is to try to influence the elements of the practice so that they become more sustainable, whilst also thinking about how many daily practices are interlinked (Shove 2011).

Social practice theory involves looking at Meanings (expectations, shared meaning), Materials (objects, infrastructure) and Competencies (knowledge, skills), with each one being considered as a key thread that connects the practices.

It is suggested that social practice theory and interrelated practices can provide a fresh way of framing problems such as sustainable consumption (Keller et al. 2016) and working from home (Hampton and Adams 2018), in order to acknowledge the complexities and connections between systems of practice.

A social practice theory lens can be used in evaluation to identify key elements to changed and sustained practices. The tip of the iceberg image (adapted from Spurling et al. 2013 by O’Brien, 2019) is helpful in showing the underpinning elements of Materials, Competencies and Meanings for use by evaluators or policy-makers to see below the practice as observable behaviours.

This figure was adapted for further exploration in the workshops stage of the research project as shown in figure 6.

Figure 6. O’Brien 2019. Highlighting that physical activity behaviours are the tip of the iceberg.

Figure 7. Spurling and O’Brien adapted for workshops to demonstrate the conditions for behaviours / practices must be in place in order to achieve wider update.

However, our literature review and interviews have found that social practice theory is very rarely used by policy makers.

In fact, one academic who has written extensively on the subject suggested that they do not believe that social practice theories should be translated into a ‘policy-amenable form’, stating that: “to do so is to ‘miss the point, and to misunderstand what makes practice theories distinctive, and distinctively valuable” (Shove 2015, p.45). There are differences between those conceptualising energy demand or water and food consumption – some (as the Times tool used by the Scottish Government) depict energy demand as an outcome of drivers which can be adjusted using policy levers; while others say that “energy-demanding practices are continually on the move and that intervention is more like… navigating through an also changing environment.” (Cass and Shove, 2017) In fact, policy-makers have to do both these things.

Social practice theory also offers some models for policy intervention:

• Recrafting practices
• Substituting practices
• Changing how practices interlock (Spurling et al. 2013)

First we discuss some of the tools have been created to help put these theories into practice and then we outline the opportunities and challenges with using the theory in practice.

Tools and concepts

The review of tools and guides included a literature review, interviews and desk-based scenario testing of checklists, to assess how applicable they are to key challenges.

Table 2 below provides an overview of the tools that were reviewed. Each tool is then discussed in more detail after the table.

Table 3: Overview of the tools reviewed

The ISM tool

The ISM tool sets out that by understanding the different contexts and the multiple factors within them that influence the way people act every day, more effective policies and interventions are expected to be developed. The factors that influence behaviour are illustrated in figure 5 below.

 Figure 8: Factors that influence behaviour in the individual, social and material contexts (Darnton and Horne 2013, p.4)

“The ability to frame and explore difficult and complex issues dispassionately and systemically can help introduce aspects of a problem that would not normally be considered or even acknowledged. ISM can really help evolve a systemic view of complex issues but it needs to be built in early in the process as it can throw up issues which may be seen as disruptive. This will not be well-received if a plan has already been formulated and there is an urgency to deliver on time.” Clive Mitchell, Programme Office Manager, Strategic Development, Scottish Natural Heritage (SSN, 2016)

Despite early support for the tool, and its use by various public sector organisations across Scotland, its use has waned. This is because resource was provided to support it in the early years, through workshop facilitation and training. This hands-on support is no longer available. June Graham, SSN, was tasked with enabling adoption of ISM by public sector organisations but reported that being perceived as a behaviour change tool rather than a systems change tool hindered its effective application.

The Scottish Government has learned that while ISM is useful for engaging with policy makers and identifying barriers, it has been less effective in helping to develop actions or policy options, and needs to be embedded into the policy making process. The Scottish Net Zero Engagement Strategy states that the Government is committed to embedding the ISM tool into the policy making process.

As for Change Points (see below) the tool works best when decision makers or those with the ability to unblock barriers are participating. If more junior staff are those in the workshop, they can identify barriers, but must go away and address this later. Therefore, as with so many attempts at system change, feedback loops, a culture of trust and willingness to act are key. The tool does not provide the answers, and efforts to tackle the barriers must still be made.

According to June Graham, the ISM tool been used only for fairly simple problems, rather than for the large scale ‘wicked’ systems problems, so has not perhaps demonstrated what it can achieve in terms of transformation. However, June recalled that people who “got it” almost immediately could see the benefits of using it for complex issues.

ISM can not only be used to encourage creative and divergent thinking and to identify the points of blockage, it can also be used to carry out a pre-mortem on policy – to identify and tackle unintended consequences. ISM can also be used as a desk-based tool or mind-set approach by an individual.

There may be potential for ISM to pick up interlinked practices in section 5 of the workshop steps (see Figure 5 above, Behaviour Mapping) and to explore re-branding and re-positioning the tool as a systems change tool in the CCP process, perhaps with facilitation support.

The Change Points Toolkit

Change Points was developed with Defra and multiple other industry and policy stakeholders, particularly on water and food. It is currently in use by a wider circle of academics but the results are yet to be seen.

Change Points faces the same problem as other social practice tools in that it does not fit with contemporary evaluation frameworks – when we think in different ways we need different evaluation (not just attitude surveys).

The Change Points Toolkit is a six-step consensus-based workshop for multi-stakeholders. It takes what we are doing day-to-day and looks at a key problem, e.g. food waste. We are not all busy wasting food; but rather we are working, travelling, going to the gym and carrying out a string of routines.

The tool looks at different types of people who are carrying out high waste or high emissions actions, and works through what they are doing. This includes systems mapping.

The questions the tool was designed to address included:

• How can we reduce domestic demand for energy and water?
• How can we reduce food waste whilst ensuring food safety?
• How can we encourage people to take shorter / fewer showers?
• How can we reduce the volume of fats, oils and grease disposed of down the drain?
• How can we make hair care less water (and energy) intensive?
• How can we tackle invisible waste streams (e.g. plastics from the bathroom)?

This workshop takes a whole day to implement, or can be carried out in modules. The toolkit is designed to be easy to use by a facilitator and has pre-designed worksheets (see Figure 7 below). (Hoolohan et al. 2018)

Figure 9: Problem Scoping (Hoolohan et al. 2018)

In an interview for this project, Claire Hoolohan reported that David Evans (Bristol University) was a co-author of Change Points and was a lead academic on projects that fed into it, including ISM. As such, he may be a useful person to invite to share his insights in a workshop or focus group session.

Insights from the workshop process include how to handle blame, catching stereotypes, challenging ‘resist, pause, transfer’ – when the problem is handed on to future generations and lastly, if participants begin to talk about messaging as the sole solution, then they are steered back towards other interventions.

There is potential for Scottish Government policy-makers and stakeholders working on food waste within the CCP development to explore this tool to see how useful they find it.

Interlinked Practices: Step by Step Guide

The concept of interlinked practices was developed further into a ‘Step by Step Guide) by Black and Eiseman (2019). This is a nine-step guide, provided in a written list on a single page. It builds on the Scottish Government’s four emission themes and the ten Key Behavioural Areas (reportedly this has since changed) to focus on a high carbon behaviour approach. The user identifies the interlinked practices associated with the theme and key behavioural areas and works through the elements (Meanings, Materials and Competencies of social practice theory) and then identifies the shared elements of these practices. It works on where, when, how and why high carbon behaviours are performed and then considers the connections that need to be broken or pulled to alter the lifestyle.

By working through the changes to Materials, Meaning and Competences it begins to generate a bigger picture.

This seems to be a theoretical checklist with no worked examples or additional facilitation guidance or information on participants required. As such it appears to be untested. This was confirmed by Iain Black in his interview with CAG Consultants.

A desk-based trial to apply it was difficult and frustrating and for it to be effectively used it would need a lot of investment and testing to make it into an effective toolkit.

There could be an opportunity to test the guide, or to develop it into a more usable workshop model, however, it seems to focus on ‘campaigns’ as its output perhaps rather than addressing deeper infrastructure or societal issues.

Deep Demonstrations Design Process

A logical progression of social practice theory is systems mapping, which leads into complexity theory. Climate KIC’s Deep Demonstrations Design Process is a workshop series that maps systems, points of ‘convergence’ i.e. points to unblock just as seen in the tools above. See: Deep Demonstrations – Climate-KIC

The Deep Demonstrations Design Process was used to bring the Climate Ready Clyde partners and stakeholders together to produce Glasgow City Region’s first Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan (Climate Ready Clyde, 2021). The tool includes investment – which is important, as often money and finance is not referenced in these approaches and it is vital for policy-making to consider funding and investment.

Initial thoughts on toolkits

It has to be remembered that a toolkit is just that – a set of tools to be used by people with the time, capacity, permission and willingness to use the tools. There can be an expectation amongst busy policy makers that a tool might produce answers for them, when it is simply another way of framing a problem, or checking that all issues are covered. As such, introducing new concepts or tools need clearly explained and offered as a useful activity within the wider process. The same expectation should be applied to the research question about interlinked practices and the extent to which it can help deliver policy making for societal change towards NZ.

The job is not done at the end of the workshop process – it will produce challenging outputs and may need revisiting at different times in the policy cycle.

The ISM and Change Points tools appear to be very useful at the start of the policy making process, providing creative space for divergent thinking and potentially transformational and unexpected ideas. The tools can also, but tend not to, be used to develop more specific policy and programmes. There is not a clear reason for this, and the tools are under-used, wasting their potential.

If societal change, and transformation for NZ is to be delivered, flexing the muscle of these tools is worth a try.

Ideally the toolkits should be used in a workshop setting with a range of people in the room, from different sectors, and these should include people with agency to make changes. They should also include people with cross-cutting and policy-enabling roles such as finance, legal and Just Transition.

ISM does not appear to be used extensively at present; but could be if rebranded/re positioned as a system change tool; and it could absorb the concept of interlinked practices in the mapping stage.

Change Points is easily accessible and could be run in any group with someone skilled in facilitation.

The Deep Demonstration workshop looks like a much bigger undertaking, but it has certainly been successful in a city-region wide partnership and in developing policy and investment plans. A serious, funded commitment that was staffed and supported was in place to deliver this initiative. The Climate Ready Clyde partners who participated in this may be well-placed to replicate the process to address another challenge. Could this be a method to unlock systems change around transport and buildings decarbonisation in a city-region familiar with systems thinking? This could be further investigated with Ben Twist and Kit England.

The Interlinked Practices Step by Step Guide is the least developed of the tools examined (there is only one research paper that proposes it). This could be investigated further through the research, possibly in a focus group, however, it is not workshop-ready without further investment and testing.

Given that time is short and the challenge urgent, re-booting and using existing tools under a Systems Change brand, going beyond behaviour change to systems change would be a sensible idea.

Examples of interlinked and social practice approaches

Even with these tools and their promotion by high profile organisations, there has been minimal practical action. There are several examples of campaigns or initiatives that can be used to illustrate how the practice-based or interlinked approaches could be used. However, it should be noted that, in most of these case studies, practice theory and interlinked practices approaches were not actually used to develop these projects.

Table 3 below provides an overview of the case studies that were reviewed. Each case study is then discussed in more detail after the table.

Table 4: Summary of case studies

Greater Manchester – Manchester Moving and Made to Move

GM Moving: The Plan for Physical Activity and Sport (Greater Manchester, 2017) sets its person-centred, behaviour change approaches firmly within a Whole Systems Approach drawing on Sport England’s social ecological approach (see Figure 8).

Figure 10 Population Level Change Diagram (Greater Manchester 2017, p.60)

This went on to inform the newly appointed GM Mayor’s Cycling and Walking Commissioner, Chris Boardman, in his report Made to Move: 15 steps to transform Greater Manchester by changing the way we get around (Boardman, 2017) – see figure 9. His plan took an interlinked approach to developing a whole active travel system that was suitable for a 12-year-old to use.  It reads as if it is based on practice theory but on investigation, it was found that the authors had not consciously applied the material, competence and meanings of practice theory. It is possible that the GM Moving approach, based on the Sport England Social Ecological approach which covers the main elements of practice theory laid the foundations for the newer plan. The plan is comprehensive and they appear to have ‘thought of everything’. The Bee Network, Greater Manchester’s cycling and walking network is now under development through Transport for Greater Manchester.

Figure 11: Our 15 steps to transform Greater Manchester by changing the way we get around (Boardman 2017, p.2-3)

HEEPS (Home Energy Efficiency Programme Scotland)

The HEEPS programme is an end-to-end support programme to enable householders to make their homes more energy efficient and to install renewable or low carbon energy and heat. It has a service design that is thorough and tackles the Materials, Meaning and Competences to support the system to enable actions by homeowners, landlords and contractors (Atkinson, J. et al. 2019). The HEEPS programme development was supported by a Community Analysis Team, and it has been reported that the ISM tool may have also been used, however this is not clear. This will be investigated further if we can make contact with the original team leader, as it has not been found in our searches for evaluations of the ISM tool’s impact.

London on Tap

This initiative was launched by the Mayor of London and Thames Water, to promote the consumption of tap water as opposed to bottled water in a fine dining situation; ordering tap water was seen by many as being socially unacceptable in this situation (Sahakian and Wilhite 2014).

Rather than targeting individuals with an awareness-raising campaign and providing them with information that would change their behaviour, this initiative sought to change the practice of consuming bottled water alongside an expensive meal by addressing multiple elements simultaneously, by normalising the ordering of tap water in a re-usable carafe. A multi-dimensional campaign was devised to address the materials (water, glass packaging), meanings (conventions around proper behaviour in restaurants), and competences (the performance of fine dining) (Hampton and Adams 2018). A design competition resulted in new material object, ‘the carafe’, which was launched to replace the bottled water.

Bottled water consumption reduced by 8% in the summer of 2008 (Sahakian and Wilhite 2014), however as no evaluation of the project has been published, it is not clear if this reduction was purely the result of the London on Tap project and whether this 8% reduction was sustained long term. However this can be seen as an example of how practice-informed policy could be used to influence more sustainable forms of consumption.

Cool Biz, Japan

In an initiative designed to reduce energy consumption in government buildings in 2005, a policy decision was made to raise the level of acceptable indoor temperature up to 28oC, below which the air-conditioning would not operate (Hampton and Adams 2018).

Through the Cool Biz campaign, the summer thermostats in government offices were set to 28^oC in workplaces and a ‘cool biz summer dress code’ was issued, suggesting wearing looser clothes, short sleeves and breathable fabrics (Sahakian and Wilhite 2014), thus making the warmer office temperatures more bearable. The initiative was supported by clothing store, Uniqlo, which stocked a new range of professional clothing. The initiative was not devised using theories of practice, however it has been widely promoted as an example of multi-elemental policy (Hampton and Adams 2018).

Figure 12: Super CoolBiz poster (Deaver 2016)

Policy literature review

Introduction

As mentioned above, key Scottish Government policies and strategies were reviewed with two things in mind, to identify:

• Where behaviour and societal change was described and made up a significant part of policy; where a combination of technology and societal change was identified; and the kind of policies or engagement that were planned to drive down emissions in these two categories.
• Where social practice and interlinked practices lens could be applied.
• Key areas/sectors the Scottish Government is seeking and has power to influence in relation to the application of interlinked practices for a NZ transition in Scotland.

Climate Change Plan Update

The Scottish Government’s Climate Change Plan Update (Scottish Government 2018) recognises that delivering NZ by 2045 will be an iterative process and will require learning while doing.  It acknowledges uncertainty and that “many of the solutions rely on further technological innovation, market development and wider take-up and adoption as well as action by others.” The plan update sets out policy measures to embed behaviour change in each of the sectors. It also recognises the support individuals and businesses will need to adapt their choices and behaviours. Greater emphasis is placed on behaviour change than wider societal change; mentioning behaviour change 53 times while only referring to societal change seven times (most often in reference to Climate Change Committee recommendations).

The plan update refers to “Positive Behaviour Change”, and that “behaviours are interlinked and context-dependent, and takes account of all the factors that shape people’s lifestyles: the social, material and individual.” It then talks about acceptance and adoption of low carbon technologies and support for policies. There is a frequent change in the framing of behaviour change, referring at times to facilitating it through policy, or influencing it to implement policy.

The actions used in relation to behaviour change are expressed as increasing awareness and understanding” of climate change, of “messages and support”, “promoting use”, “helping to change behaviours through parking regulations or education campaigns” and “encouraging people to shift towards reusable products [through charges]”. The plan’s buildings and transport sector sections address the context for behaviour change for example, referring to material support through Home Energy Scotland and robust quality assurance, and material infrastructure investments, for example improved bus services and priority bus lanes, and material enablers such as discounted bus travel for young people.

Although the plan recognises that what happens in one sector can have a knock-on effect in another, and puts forward a coordinated approach, picked up in a commitment to ‘Place Based Investment’ and ‘20-minute neighbourhoods’, behaviours referred to are still very much about individuals and sectoral emissions, and the information and incentives to change specific behaviours, rather than the people’s routines and lives. However, the section on shared mobility does refer to a plan to further “understanding of how and why people travel” which could be an opportunity to use an interlinked practices lens. The section on 20-minute neighbourhoods refers to better quality of life and health as well as net zero. [Further reading (Thornton, 2022; Scotland RTPI 2021) on 20-minute neighbourhoods does not refer to interlinked practices and rather focuses on a set of services that should be accessible through walking within 20-minutes or 800m. This is problematic because if interlinked practices or multi-task stops are required to move shopping, children or goods, 800m is a long way. This is an opportunity to explore in the workshops.]

Food waste is an area in which ‘everyday behaviours’ are mentioned and reference to helping “make the right choices easier for householders”.

There are also references to corporate behaviour in business and behavioural change in the agricultural industry.

There is a varied tone used to refer to behaviour change throughout the plan which does not reflect the principles outlined in the Net Zero Engagement Strategy (see below) or the ISM tool. Sometimes it seems supportive of helping people to make the ‘right’ choice when they keep making the ‘wrong’ choice; sometimes it is about helping people become aware of climate change and be supported in tackling home energy, transport, waste and food waste emissions. Interlinked practices and daily routines and the things people do regardless of climate change, and the co-benefits that can be realised for them in living a positive net zero life do not come to the fore.

This is something that can be considered in the workshops and perhaps be addressed more coherently in the new plan through a different practice-based approach.

Net Zero Engagement Strategy

The Scottish Government’s Net Zero Engagement Strategy is now moving away from encouraging incremental changes in attitudes and behaviours, and is instead supporting a society-wide transformation (Scottish Government 2020). The strategy acknowledges the Scottish Government will need to create the necessary conditions for action to be taken, which includes ‘material’ changes including legislation and infrastructure, as well as requiring the shifting of social norms and increased ‘climate literacy’ across the population (Scottish Government 2021).

The actions by which this will be achieved are categorised into three objectives:

• Understand – communicating climate change.
• Participate – enabling participation in policy design including through design and delivery at a community level, particularly for those affected by the transition and co-design as well as traditional consultation and deliberative approaches.
• Act – encouraging action which includes championing and funding community-led action and through Arts, Creative and Heritage [sectors?] to inspire and empower.

There is an emphasis on ‘meaningful’ and ‘genuine’ in the language used here.

Although the strategy acknowledges that public engagement “must be supported by policies and programmes that facilitate the required reconfiguration of societies, institutions and infrastructure to create an enabling environment for net zero lifestyles” there is no ‘feedback’ loop mechanism clearly identified here to say how barriers and blocks to action will be identified and how the Scottish Government will address these.  Stating this more explicitly in the document to support the intention to change legislation and infrastructure could be key to avoiding slippage back into putting the onus on people to change their behaviour. This could come up in the engagement but it would be interesting to see who holds the power or levers to assist the required change (see below: Change Points and Deep Demonstrations Design Process).

There is an acknowledgement of the importance of community action ‘as a major driver in bringing about positive change with wide-ranging co benefits’; and a place-based approach including the 20-minute neighbourhood concept where interlinked practices could be used to add value.

And positively there is a change to the evidence being collected for evaluation to include community-led methods and data collection as well as attitudes surveys (see below for why this is important in terms of using a practice-based approach to delivering societal change).

‘Engagement’ is a loose term often used as shorthand by policy-makers for ‘communication’ or ‘consultation’ and it is important to outline the types of engagement that policy-makers can carry out. The Strategy states that it organises its activities and initiatives according to the five categories of participation in the Public Participation Spectrum – Inform; Consult; Involve; Collaborate; Empower. However, it actually does not then do this. It also states that it will use principles for engagement based on the Scottish Government’s Participation Framework (Demsoc 2018; Scottish Government 2021) the implementation of this Framework across government is in progress but it could represent an opportunity to combine using practice-based concepts in engagement on Net Zero. This could be explored in the workshops.

Finally, the Theory of Change for the Strategy offers some opportunities in which practice-based or interlinked practice approaches might be used. For example, where strong stakeholder partnerships are built, action is encouraged through Place Based Approaches and engagement through culture and heritage.

Heat in Buildings Strategy

Buildings account for around a fifth of Scotland’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The Heat in Buildings Strategy (Scottish Government, 2021) recognises that “transforming our homes and workplaces will be immensely challenging, requiring action from all of us, right across society and the economy” and that a fundamental shift for most people and businesses is required.

The strategy maintains a focus on a just transition and on tackling fuel poverty and addressing both capital and running costs of heating our homes. It takes a two-pronged approach to reduce energy demand through improved building energy efficiency and to decarbonise heat through converting fossil fuel heating to zero carbon heat technologies.

The scale of the task is immense: currently 45% of Scottish homes achieve EPC ‘C’ or better and the remaining 55% must achieve this by 2030. By 2030 over 1 million homes and 550,000 buildings must be converted to net zero heat.

The strategy includes a commitment to increase public engagement, building on existing advice services and taking steps to raise awareness and understanding of these new technologies. It plans to establish a National Public Energy Agency to provide leadership and harness the potential of scaled-up programmes to decarbonise heat – with a virtual agency established within the coming year and a dedicated physical agency by September 2025.

Interestingly, for a strategy that relies on people taking decisions about their homes and properties, including considerable expense, disruption and unfamiliar technologies, it only mentions ‘behaviour’ five times. This shows an understanding that the ‘nudge’ or behaviour approach is not a tool to deliver these big decisions; nudge perhaps being used for behaviours where people have agency, such as turning a thermostat down by a degree.

Analysis of the Strategy through a social practice lens shows that the conditions to support people to do something different are being put in place. Material elements such as funding and supply chains are included; Competence elements are present in the form of awareness, education, advice services, and developing skills in supply chains; ‘Meaning’ or social norms is harder to locate – however, developing Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategies developed with communities may be an element of this. The strategy does not suggest reverting to historic norms of the past, when colder homes were socially accepted, which is positive, as these had impacts on health for example.

The social and physical infrastructure is also being changed, with strengthened regulation and standards including an end to installing gas boilers from 2025 and a planned 2024 Zero Emissions Heat Standard for new buildings and the future reform of domestic EPCs; preparing the energy infrastructure for decarbonised heat and putting in place a market framework for decarbonised heat.

There are implications for practices in this transition, including how we budget, our perceptions of heat and cosiness at home and how we cook if moving off gas. The use of practice theory or interlinked practices in assessing the transition from an energy demand-side could help identify barriers and solutions, ensure diverse views are understood and aid engagement and communications plans. This is something to consider in the mapping and workshop stages.

National Transport Strategy

The National Transport Strategy (Scottish Government, 2020) takes a systems approach and clearly picks up practices and interlinked practices, although it refers to behaviours and routines. In its first pages it states that it is a strategy for “the whole transport system (people and freight) and it considers why we travel and how those trips are made, by including walking, wheeling, cycling, and travelling by bus, train, ferry, car, lorry and aeroplane. It is a Strategy for all users: those travelling to, from and within Scotland.”

It has a focus on ‘travel choices’ referring people taking part in the decision-making process and to empowering people and businesses to play a vital part in delivering the strategy. It also places a responsibility on people to deliver the strategy: “We all also need to take responsibility for our actions, ensuring that our travel choices make a positive contribution to delivering the Strategy over the next 20 years.”

Critically the Strategy recognises gender inequality and the need to understand women’s complex travel behaviour which reflects the gendered division of labour meaning women make more multi-stop, multi-purpose trips.

Practices, interlinked practices and travel or transport demand is a strong candidate for exploring how an interlinked practices lens might improve net zero policy and enact social change.

Scotland’s Climate Assembly

In line with its Climate Change Act 2019, Scotland held its citizens assembly in 2020/21 bringing 100 citizens together to hear expert evidence, discuss and deliberate on the question: How should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way? The assembly developed an ambition, 16 goals and 81 recommendations. (Scotland’s Climate Assembly. 2021)

The ambition recognises that ‘urgent cultural change is needed across society – from governments, businesses, communities and individuals’ and that action is needed at all levels of society. It recognises that entire society will have to change and adapt.

It calls for strong leadership to drive ‘fundamental behaviour change across society’ and points to the pandemic as demonstrating that this rapid transformation is possible.

The recommendations cover a range of interventions from the regulatory, material – putting in infrastructure and services – to the personal and collective, with individuals taking responsibility for their emissions, for example, by changing diets. “we all need to take responsibility for reducing the carbon footprint caused by consumption (e.g. eating less meat and dairy, buying fewer new goods, reuse and repair) and become a critical mass of people transforming these changed behaviours into the new normal.”

These ambitions reference the individual and collective actions that can create social shifts towards a lower carbon society. Areas for such change relate to consumption, travel and localised lifestyles.

The recommendations cover a range of issues that reflect elements outlined in social practice theory, without referencing it, such as Carbon Labelling which increases competence and know-how to enable decision-making and Education on Sustainable Transport and a range of education programmes for children and adults on sustainable food, climate change and supporting nature; they explicitly name ‘business practices’, ‘working practices’ and ‘sustainable practices’ and ‘sustainable land management practices’ taking a more systems based approach than focusing on individual behaviour changes. The recommendations also include 20 minute neighbourhoods which put in place the material conditions for localised living.

Overall, Scotland’s Climate Assembly calls for a range of interventions that indicate that it expects the government to act in a wide-ranging, holistic and comprehensive way across the material, competence and meaning elements required to drive social change.

Just Transition Commission

Scotland has an independent Just Transition Commission, established to support the ambition that the transition to a net zero and climate resilient economy takes place in a way that delivers fairness and tackles inequality and injustice.

The Scottish Government has committed to lead the production of key just transition plans, in a way that is co-designed and co-delivered by communities, businesses, unions and workers, and all society. The Just Transition Commission will support the production and monitoring of the plans, providing expert advice on their development.

The Scottish Government has developed a National Just Transition Planning Framework which will go beyond high-emitting industrial sectors to consider all sectors of the economy.

TIMES

The Scottish Government uses an emissions model which provides emissions data to policy-makers. The TIMES (The Integrated MARKAL-EFOM System) model generator is an open-source tool used across the world for policy formulation, and was developed as part of the IEA-ETSAP’s methodology for energy scenarios to conduct in-depth energy and environmental analyses (Loulou et al., 2004). TIMES is used by the Scottish Government as a tool for policy formulation.

According to the Scottish Government team using the tool, it is good at interlinking scenarios, and providing insight to help achieve good policy. The downsides are that it is only as robust as the assumptions put in, and it is not very effective for behaviour change.

Summary of findings

The research suggests that current approaches to behaviour change will not achieve the level of change required to achieve net zero targets, and that more transformative societal change is required. It has been suggested that approaches such as social practice and interlinked practices could enable greater societal change.

Key findings regarding the challenges of using social practice / interlinked practices

• The concept of ‘interlinked practices’ has never been trialled, and social practice theory (from which it is derived) has rarely been used in practice to date, despite the growing interest in this topic.
• There is therefore no evidence that can suggest interlinked practices and social practice theory work in practice. Furthermore, the lack of real-world evidence is seen as a barrier to it being taken up and used by policy makers.
• This situation is perhaps not unique to practice theory; turning desired practices, which make sense in theory, into reality, is acknowledged in the research as a challenge.
• Several tools have been developed with the aim of enabling people to put it into practice, but the literature review has found that the tools have not been fully used or adopted. This is despite Scottish Government support for the ISM tool.
• A social practice approach is demanding for policy professionals and institutions which face resource constraints and where policy-makers have busy workloads and deadlines to meet. It needs to be carried out in a workshop environment and must include the people with power to make the changes needed.

The ISM tool has been used to engage with policy makers and identify barriers, but has been less effective in developing policy options, although it may have been used in the development of HEEPs. It has been suggested that certain case studies exemplify how the social practice approach could be used in future, however those case studies did not actually use the social practice approach in the design of the initiatives.

“We have to do something different, what else have we got?” Ben Twist, Director, Creative Carbon Scotland (2022).

Key findings regarding the opportunities

• Social practice theory and interlinked practices could provide a better approach to achieving societal change through the CCP, as they shift the focus from how an individual’s behaviour can be changed, to how social practices can be altered to become more sustainable.
• An interlinked practice approach provides a greater level of understanding about the interrelated nature of our actions, as opposed to just looking at individual actions.
• It has been suggested that social practice theory, and interlinked practices, can be a useful way of reframing a problem, removing the ‘blame’ and transfer of responsibility onto individual ‘consumers’ who do not do the ‘right’ behaviour.
• In one of the few examples in the literature review of the tools being used, Claire Hoolohan explained that using Change Points led to Defra introducing qualitative research and it helped a water company to have a completely new conversation enabling them to consider actions that were not even thought of before using the tool.
• It has been suggested that, even if social practice theories are not able to be translated into the day-to-day processes of policy-making, they can inform and inspire.

Literature review references

Atkinson, J. et al. (2019). People Powered Retrofit: A community led model for owner occupier retrofit – Project Report [Online]. Available at: PPR-Report-June-2019.pdf (cc-site-media.s3.amazonaws.com)

Black, I. and Eiseman, D. (2019). Climate Change Behaviours – Segmentation study. Available at [Online]: https://www.climatexchange.org.uk/media/3664/climate-change-behaviours-segmentation-study.pdf (Accessed 29.09.22)

Boardman, C., (2017). Made to Move: 15 steps to transform Greater Manchester, by changing the way we get around [Online]. Available at https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/1176/made-to-move.pdf

Cass, N. and Shove, E. (2017). Changing Energy demand: Concepts, metaphors and implications for policy [Online]. Available at: http://www.demand.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Changing-energy-demand.pdf%22%20/t%20%22_blank

Climate Ready Clyde (2021), Sniffer, Deep Demonstration City Regions, Glasgow City Region. Glasgow City Region Climate Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan [Online]. Available at: [Online] http://climatereadyclyde.org.uk/gcr-adaptation-strategy-and-action-plan/

Conquer Imagination, (2020). Social Practice Theory (Praxeology) | Animated Introduction [Online]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPvW98ZXVPU (Accessed 01.10.22)

Darnton, A., and Horne J., (2013). Influencing Behaviours Moving Beyond the Individual: A user guide to the ISM tool [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/influencing-behaviours-moving-beyond-individual-user-guide-ism-tool/ (Accessed 04.10.22)

Darnton, A., and Evans, D., (2013). Influencing Behaviours: A technical guide to the ISM tool [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/advice-and-guidance/2013/06/influencing-behaviours-technical-guide-ism-tool/documents/00423531-pdf/00423531-pdf/govscot%3Adocument/00423531.pdf. (Accessed 04.10.22)

Defra (2018). Water Efficiency and Behaviour Change Rapid Evidence Assessment (2018) [Online]. Available at: https://www.waterwise.org.uk/knowledge-base/water-efficiency-and-behaviour-change-rapid-evidence-assessment-2018/. Accessed (04.10.22)

Demsoc (2018). Scottish Participation Framework: From model to practice [Online]. Available at: https://blogs.gov.scot/open-government-partnership/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2018/08/Demsoc-SPF-Implementation-Options-Paper.pdf

Greater Manchester (2017). Greater Manchester Moving [Online]. Available at: https://issuu.com/greatersport/docs/gm_moving_2017-21 (Accessed 01.10.22)

Hampton, S. and Adams, R. (2018). Behavioural economics vs social practice theory: perspectives from inside the United Kingdom government. Energy Res. Soc. Sci., 46

Hoolohan et al. (2018) Change Points: A toolkit for designing interventions that unlock unsustainable practices. The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK [Online]. Available at: https://changepoints.net/ (Accessed 03.10.22)

Hoolohan, C. and Browne, A. (2020) Design thinking for practice-based intervention: Co-producing the change points toolkit to unlock (un)sustainable practices. The University of Manchester [Online]. Available at: (PDF) Design thinking for practice-based intervention: Co-producing the change points toolkit to unlock (un)sustainable practices (researchgate.net) (Accessed 22.09.22)

Institute for Government (2011). Policy Making in the Real World [Online]. Available at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/Policy%20making%20in%20the%20real%20world.pdf (Accessed 29.09.22)

Keller, M. ,Halkier, B., Wilska, T.-.A.  (2016). Policy and governance for sustainable consumption at the crossroads of theories and concepts. Environ. Policy Gov., 26, 10.1002/eet.1702

Loulou, R., Goldstein, G., Noble, K., 2004. Documentation for the MARKAL Family of Models [Online]. Available at: https://iea-etsap.org/MrklDoc-III_SAGE.pdf (Accessed 29.09.22)

O’Brien, L., 2019. Carrying out Physical Activity as Part of the Active Forests Programme in England: What Encourages, Supports and Sustains Activity?—A Qualitative Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337970568_Carrying_out_Physical_Activity_as_Part_of_the_Active_Forests_Programme_in_England_What_Encourages_Supports_and_Sustains_Activity-A_Qualitative_Study (Accessed 16/11/22)

Sahakian, M., and Wilhite, H., (2014): Making practice theory practicable: Towards more sustainable forms of consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture. 14(1):25-44

Scotland’s Climate Assembly, (2021) Scotland’s Climate Assembly, Recommendations for Action. 620640_SCT0521502140-001_Scotland’s Climate Assembly_Final Report Goals_WEB ONLY VERSION.pdf (nrscotland.gov.uk) (Accessed 21.11.22)

Scottish Government (2022). Open Government Action Plan commitment 2: participation framework [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/open-government-action-plan-commitment-2/ (Accessed 04.10.22)

Scottish Government (2021). Net Zero Nation – Public Engagement Strategy for Climate Change [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/net-zero-nation-public-engagement-strategy-climate-change/ (Accessed 29.09.22)

Scottish Government (2021). Heat in Buildings Strategy – achieving net zero emissions in Scotland’s buildings [Online]. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/heat-buildings-strategy-achieving-net-zero-emissions-scotlands-buildings/ (Accessed 03.10.22)

Scottish Government, (2020). Update to the Climate Change Plan 2018 – 2032. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/securing-green-recovery-path-net-zero-update-climate-change-plan-20182032/ (Accessed 29.09.22)

Scottish Government, (2020). The National Transport Strategy [Online]. Available at: https://www.transport.gov.scot/our-approach/national-transport-strategy/ (Accessed 04.10.22)

Shove, E. (2015) ‘Linking low carbon policy and social practice’ in Strengers, Y. and Maller, C. (Eds), Social Practices, Intervention and Sustainability: Beyond behaviour change, London: Routledge. P31-45.

Shove, E. (2011). How the social sciences can help climate change policy [Online]. Available at: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/shove/exhibits/transcript.pdf (Accessed 3.10.22)

Shove, E., Pantzar, M., & Watson, M. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How it Changes. P3. Sage Publications.

Spurling, N., McMeekin, A., Shove, E., Southerton, D., & Welch, D. (2013). Interventions in practice: re-framing policy approaches to consumer behaviour. University of Manchester, Sustainable Practices Research Group [Online]. Available at: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/32468813/FULL_TEXT.PDF%22%20/t%20%22_blank

Sustainable Scotland Network/Keep Scotland Beautiful, Climate Changing

Behaviours, Climate Changing Behaviours: Behaviours, ISM and the public sector 2015/16 [Online]. Available at: ISM Yr2 climatechanging-behaviours-low-res.pdf (sustainablescotlandnetwork.org) (Accessed 01.10.22)

Transport Scotland, 2020. National Transport Strategy – Protecting our Climate and Improving Lives [Online]. Available at: https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/47052/national-transport-strategy.pdf (Accessed 29.09.22)

UN 2022. Act Now [Online]. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/actnow. (Accessed 04.10.22)

Watson, M., Browne, A., Evans, D., Foden, M., Hoolohan, C., Sharp, L. 2020. Challenges and opportunities for re-framing resource use policy with practice theories: The change points approach. Global Environmental Change, Volume 62, ISSN 0959-3780, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102072.

Welch, D. 2017. Behaviour change and theories of practice: Contributions, limitations and developments. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322097815_Behaviour_change_and_theories_of_practice_Contributions_limitations_and_developments (Accessed 04.10.22)

Appendix 2: Methodology

A mixed methodology approach was used for the data gathering elements of the research, across three stages, described below

Scoping stage

Background research

A literature review was undertaken at the start of the research project, and each stage of the project built on the findings of the previous stage s the project progressed to include contributions from stakeholders through interviews.

Firstly, research was undertaken into the practical application of a practice-based approach to behaviour change policy. Theory, case studies and tools were researched using internet searches and academic journal databases. Relevant papers and reports were reviewed.

Alongside the literature review we undertook semi-structured interviews with the following four social practice theory experts:

• Ben Twist, Director, Creative Carbon Scotland
• Claire Hoolohan, Presidential Research Fellow, Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, University of Manchester
• Iain Black, Professor of Practice at University of Strathclyde
• June Graham, Sustainable Scotland Network, Edinburgh Climate Change Institute

We incorporated their insights into the detailed literature review provided to ClimateXChange and used them to design the workshops.

Search terms

Search terms included terms below plus combinations of the terms:

• Social Practice Theory
• Behaviour and Practice Theory
• Interlinked practices
• Social Theory
• Behaviour Change
• Policy-making

Further searches were made, building on authors and subsequent links:

• Elizabeth Shove
• Matt Watson
• Fiona Spotwood
• Iain Black
• Claire Hoolohan

Some search terms were not particularly successful; combinations were more effective and further searches were made based on references made in academic publications.

Scottish Policy document review

Secondly, Scottish Government policy papers to be reviewed were suggested by ClimateXChange and Scottish Government staff, and further searches were undertaken by the research team Scottish Government policy documents were reviewed in order to identify:

• Where behaviour and societal change was described and made up a significant part of policy; where a combination of technology and societal change was identified; and the kind of policies or engagement that were planned to drive down emissions in these two categories.
• Where social practice and ILP approaches could be applied.
• Key areas/sectors the Scottish Government is seeking and has power to influence in relation to the application of ILP for a NZ transition in Scotland.

Inclusion criteria

• Does it relate to climate change emissions? E.g. transport, buildings, waste, energy, economic development etc
• Is it too detailed? Focus on strategies, what about policy (we don’t want to get right down into policy analysis unless indicated by practice theory analysis)?
• Does Scottish Government/CXC want us to review it? If yes, we review it for interlinks
• Does it relate to ‘behind the line of visibility’? If yes, it’s not relevant to our project because it does not require any behaviours/practices to change
• Does it relate to a combination of tech/behaviour? If yes – that is what we need to test out a practice theory/interlinked practices lens on so include it
• Does it relate just to behaviour change? If yes – it might be more complicated than we think – so we test out the practice theory/interlinked practices lens on it.
• Does it relate to emissions out of Scottish Government control? If yes, note and ‘park’

In order to get an understanding of how the Scottish Government develops its Climate Change Plan, we held meetings with relevant cross-cutting teams at the Scottish Government, including:

• The Climate Change Plan team who explained the steps they follow over the timeframe of its development.
• The TIMES model team who develop the emissions envelopes for each sector.
• The behaviour change and engagement team who lead on the Scottish Government’s NZ public engagement strategy; and
• The Place Outcomes Lead, Planning and Architecture Division, who work on the Place Standard tool with the climate lens.

All sectors were asked to nominate one staff member for an interview with the research team. These interviews gave the research team an insight into how policy is developed within their sector team, including tools and approaches used (e.g. Theory of Change), what expertise was used (e.g. social research expertise), and the role of ministers in setting policy.

The interviews also enabled a discussion about where social policy could fit into their strategy.

Issues emerging from the literature review and interviews relating to an interlinked practice approach in the context of the Climate Change Plan development, were explored in more detail through the workshop with Scottish Governments sector staff and external stakeholders. These included: what practices participants would change to deliver the Scottish Government net zero target, which Climate Change Plan sectors and challenges could be improved using and interlinked practices approach and obstacles and opportunities to doing this.

First set or workshops

We held two online workshops in November 2022 entitled: How can new behaviour change concepts shape the next Climate Change Plan?

• Tuesday 1^st November with seven Scottish Government sector staff; and
• Friday 4^th November with five stakeholders and Scottish Government sector staff.

The workshops aimed to:

• Investigate whether an ILP approach could help design more effective behaviour change interventions, and where it could help to enable the step change required to meet NZ targets.
• Share findings from the literature and policy review into practice-based approaches.
• Facilitate a group discussion about how theories, principles and models can be used in developing the next Scottish Climate Change Plan.
• Unpick the pros and cons of using practice-based approaches.

Mapping Stage

In order to identify which sectors could potentially benefit from an interlinked approach, a mapping exercise was undertaken using an online whiteboard tool. This was a desk-based exercise and looked at each sector in the updated CCP, and categorised and mapped a large range of factors, including:

• Sector policy outcomes from the CCP update and related policies;
• CCC’s Monitoring Framework consisting of outcomes, enablers, policy and contextual factors;
• Progress against policy outcome indicators; and
• Cross cutting themes.

For each emissions sector we identified outcomes and policies that relied on people doing something and then labelled policies as ‘material’, ‘competence’ and ‘meaning’ to assess whether the full conditions for change were being addressed. We also made links within and between sectors where things people do overlap across sectors, for example, within a place.

Testing Stage

Flowchart

We developed a process flowchart or checklist that aimed to test if and how Interlinked Practice could be used in making the new Climate Change Plan. The flowchart was reviewed by the steering group, and then tested out at the second set of workshops.

Workshops

We held four more workshops with government and stakeholder participants, to test whether the interlinked practices concept and the flowchart were useful. Each workshop focused on a different theme as follows:

• The route map to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030
• 20-minute neighbourhoods
• Use of the Change points tool and reducing emissions from livestock production
• Retrofit

Appendix 3 Mapping summary

Mapping Summary: Text version

Agriculture

Opportunities /links for ILP:

Peer learning (see Farm Net Zero below) Competencies

20 minute neighbourhoods Meaning, Materials

NETs: Availability of home grown sustainable biomass to supply large scale power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage Materials

Sources of support/Case studies: Competencies, Meaning

Farm Net Zero: https://farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/farm-net-zero/

LULUCF

Opportunities/links for ILP:

Increasing Scottish Grown timber

Buildings & heat: policy outcome 2 – Construction industry sourcing more sustainably sourced wood fibre to increase its use of wood products where appropriate (Link to industry as well) Materials

NETs: Availability of home grown sustainable biomass to supply large scale power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage Materials

Sources of support/Case studies: Competencies, Meaning

Farm Net Zero: https://farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk/farm-net-zero/

Transport

Opportunities/links for ILP:

20 minute neighbourhood

Links to Electricity: Local communities

Local energy model – one that supports local solutions to meet local need, and links to local generation and use.

Community- led renewables.

Sources of support/case studies: Competencies, Meaning

Transport Scotland/COSLA Routemap:

https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/a-route-map-to-achieve-a-20-per-cent-reduction-in-car-kilometres-by-2030/

Manchester Moving and Made to Move: https://beeactive.tfgm.com/made-to-move/

Waste

Opportunities/links for ILP:

Household Food waste – largest emissions of sector. Link to changing purchase/consumption/storage of food. Potential links to Agriculture and 20 minute neighbourhoods

Sources of support/Case studies: Competencies, Meaning

https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Tackling-food-waste-in-cities-A-policy-and-program-toolkit?language=en_US

Buildings and Heat

Opportunities/Links for ILP:

Link to LULUCF Policy Outcome 2: Increase the use of sustainably sourced wood fibre to reduce emissions by encouraging the construction industry to increase its use of wood products where appropriate. Materials

Decarbonisation of heat linked to LULUCF and NETS

Availability of home grown sustainable biomass to supply large scale power bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Materials

Community energy – district heating, 20 minute

Neighbourhoods. Materials, Meaning

Industry

Opportunities/links for ILP:

Industry emissions linked to hydrogen production which has links to other sectors e.g. heat, transport and electricity.

Link to NETs – CCS

Manufacturing innovation will support delivery of low carbon energy, transport and buildings to society Materials, as well as transition to circular economy.

How industry can change our practices (top down). Materials

But also how our practices (e.g. consumption and demand for green products and services) can influence industry. Consumer demand for low carbon productions and services: investigate opportunities for green labelling to inform purchasing decisions. Competencies, Meaning

Electricity

Opportunities/links for ILP:

Links to buildings and transport decarbonisation.

Potential for NETs to deliver negative emissions from electricity, e.g. through use of bioenergy for electricity generation combined with CCS. Materials

NETs

Opportunities/links for ILP:

Less of a priority for ILP, as is a response to carbon emissions that cannot be completely eliminated, but links to:

Industry: manufacturing innovation. Materials

LULUCF/Agriculture: availability of home grown sustainable biomass for BECCS. Materials

Electricity: use of bioenergy for electricity generation combined with CCS

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While every effort is made to ensure the information in this report is accurate, no legal responsibility is accepted for any errors, omissions or misleading statements. The views expressed represent those of the author(s), and do not necessarily represent those of the host institutions or funders.

1. https://www.naturesave.co.uk/why-we-offer-our-staff-extra-paid-holiday-if-they-dont-fly/ ↑
2. https://www.gov.scot/policies/managing-waste/deposit-return-scheme/ ↑
3. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/packaging-waste-prepare-for-extended-producer-responsibility ↑
4. https://wrap.org.uk/taking-action/citizen-behaviour-change/love-food-hate-waste ↑
5. https://www.gov.scot/publications/food-waste-reduction-action-plan/pages/10/ ↑
6. https://wrap.org.uk/resources/report/food-waste-trends-survey-2021 (accessed 23/02/23) ↑
7. https://carbon.coop/portfolio/people-powered-retrofit/ ↑
8. https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/the-system-challenges-to-retrofit-3913efd718a3 ↑
9. https://www.3ci.org.uk/ ↑
10. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2021/09/21/does-working-from-home-cut-carbon-emissions-not-necessarily-in-fact-it-can-have-the-opposite-effect/ ↑
11. https://www.gov.scot/publications/influencing-behaviours-moving-beyond-individual-user-guide-ism-tool/ ↑
12. https://www.ourplace.scot/Place-Standard-Climate ↑
13. https://socialdesign.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/change-points1-3.pdf ↑
14. COM-B model of behaviour change https://social-change.co.uk/files/02.09.19_COM-B_and_changing_behaviour_.pdf ↑
15. 20-minute neighbourhoods City of Edinburgh Council https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/future-council/need-20-minute-neighbourhoods ↑
16. The Scottish TIMES model provides each policy area with their share of total decarbonisation effort and the changes to existing technologies and processes, which might enable them to meet their share of effort in the most cost-effective way. ↑
17. TIMES teach in presentation to research team September 2022 ↑
18. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62811206 ↑
19. The Climate Change Act (Scotland) mandates the sector split in the Climate Change Plan. The Scottish TIMES model is used to provide each policy area with their emissions envelopes. Information on TIMES provided in presentation to research team September 2022 ↑

December 2023

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/3889

Executive summary

Aims and findings

Scotland is part of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS), the United Kingdom’s carbon emissions trading scheme. The scheme places an overall limit on emissions from large industrial sites and airlines, and facilitates the trading of emissions allowances within this limit.

The Scottish Government would like to understand how emissions from sites subject to the UK ETS are likely to evolve over the transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions and the implications of steadily reducing the number of permits in the emissions trading scheme.

This study introduced a UK ETS accounting mechanism to the Scottish TIMES model, which is a diagnostic tool to help understand the key inter-relationships across the energy system. This will enable the Scottish Government to investigate these questions.

The Scottish TIMES model is being used by the Government to produce a new net zero pathway for Scotland to support its new Climate Change Plan.

Scottish TIMES does not distinguish between ETS and non-ETS emissions. By adding this capability, ETS emissions can be constrained separately to the overall Scottish emissions target.

The proportion of emissions subject to ETS was estimated for each sub-sector of Scottish TIMES and used to calculate ETS emissions in the model. A flexible mechanism was created to try to enable future changes to the UK ETS to be easily implemented. We created example scenarios with emission constraints and taxes for ETS emissions. A series of tests demonstrated that the model was working correctly.

Recommendations

Based on our research, we recommend that the Scottish Government consider:

• reviewing the ETS sites against the Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics to ensure that the data in both are accurate and consistent.
• cross-referencing the ETS site emissions and energy consumption, the Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics and the Scottish energy balance, to ensure that all sites in Scotland that are required to participate in the ETS are registered.
• ensuring the representation of gas networks in Scottish TIMES is consistent across the model and that the emission coefficients reflect all gas system losses.
• reviewing modelled emissions against actual emissions for the year 2020 to identify sectors of the economy where unrealistic decarbonisation pathways might have been created, and constrain those pathways appropriately.

Abbreviations

Introduction

Scotland is part of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS). The Scottish Government wishes to: (i) understand how emissions from sites subject to ETS are likely to evolve over the transition to net zero; and, (ii) understand the implications of steadily reducing the number of permits in the emissions trading scheme on the transition.

The Scottish TIMES model is being used as part of a suite of analyses to inform a new net zero pathway for Scotland to support a new Climate Change Plan. The Scottish TIMES energy system model is built using the TIMES platform, which is developed by an International Energy Agency (IEA) technology collaboration programme and used in 63 countries. It contains a detailed and up-to-date depiction of all Scottish energy flows and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It explores the potential future benefits of a wide range of low-carbon fuels and technologies.

Scottish TIMES currently does not distinguish between ETS and non-ETS emissions. Adding this capability to Scottish TIMES would enable ETS emissions to be constrained separately to the overall Scottish emissions target, or for different targets to be used for ETS and non-ETS emissions.

UK emissions accounting

The United Kingdom (UK) uses a range of approaches to emissions accounting for different applications:

• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) accounting follows UNFCCC guidelines (e.g. moving from Assessment Report 4 (AR4) to Assessment Report 5 (AR5) global warming potentials by the end of 2024; counting F-gases separately).
• UK Climate Change Act 2008: restricts emissions of 6 GHGs/groups of GHGs.^[1] The Scottish emissions budget includes all international aviation and shipping, and the UK Government has agreed to include international aviation and shipping from Carbon Budget 6 (2033–2037).
• The UK ETS applies to regulated activities that result in greenhouse gas emissions, including combustion of fuels on a site where combustion units with a total rated thermal input exceeding 20 megawatts (MW) are operated (except in installations where the primary purpose is the incineration of hazardous or municipal waste) (UK Government, 2023). Sites in Northern Ireland are excluded as these are part of the EU ETS instead. The UK ETS also includes domestic aviation and flights to Gibraltar and the European Economic Area. Other international aviation and all shipping are not included but could be in the future. Scottish participants can trade with the rest of the UK and might be able to trade with other non-UK ETSs in future.
• Some other schemes include non-UK emissions, for example for biomass sustainability.

We aimed to develop an emissions aggregation structure in Scottish TIMES in which all of these applications could be accounted for easily and transparently. We designed the approach to be relatively flexible to changes in these schemes (e.g. for shipping to be added to the ETS in the future).

Scottish UK ETS emissions

The UK ETS replaced the UK’s participation in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on 1 January 2021. It covers emissions from two broad parts of the economy (UK Government, 2023a):

1. Large industrial sites and power stations.
2. Domestic aviation and flights to Gibraltar and the European Economic Area.

Each static site in the UK is treated individually. Regulation is devolved, with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) regulating Scottish sites. There are 72 sites in total in Scotland. Table 1 shows that most emissions are from a small number of power stations and large industrial plants.

All UK offshore oil and gas sites are regulated by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) rather than SEPA. Many of these sites will be in Scottish waters. As Scottish TIMES does not cover offshore emissions, these were not included in this study. Offshore emissions are not part of Scottish territorial emissions and therefore are not included in Scotland’s Climate Change Plan either.

Aviation emissions are regulated in the country in which the operator is registered. Only one airline (Loganair) is registered in Scotland but many more aviation emissions involve Scotland.

Structure of this report

The methodology we used is discussed in Section 4. Section 5 analyses Scottish emissions covered by the ETS and derives ETS fractions for each Scottish TIMES sub-sector. Section 6 describes how we implemented ETS emissions accounting in Scottish TIMES. Section 6 discusses our quality assurance approach.

Method

The analytical approach we used is summarised in Figure 1.

The key challenges were estimating the fraction of emissions from each Scottish TIMES sub-sector that are covered by the UK ETS, or might be covered in future, and then to implement an accounting system for these emissions in Scottish TIMES.

The fraction of emissions covered by the UK ETS was estimated using two approaches. First, all ETS emission stationary sites and each overall emission category was assigned to a Scottish TIMES sub-sector (Sections 5.1 and 5.2). The total emissions in each sub-sector were then compared to estimate the fraction of emissions in the sub-sector covered by the UK ETS. A separate analysis was carried out for international aviation emissions, as only international flights to the EU are included in the UK ETS and only UK-wide statistics on flights were available from ETS statistics. Instead, an analysis of flights from Scottish airports was used to estimate the fraction of fuel use for EU destinations (Section 5.3).

A detailed accounting system for ETS and non-ETS emissions was implemented in the “ets_ucl” branch of Scottish TIMES by sub-sector (Section Error! Reference source not found.). A number of wider model changes were required to implement this accounting system. New example scenarios were created to separately limit ETS emissions from total emissions (Section Error! Reference source not found.) and to apply a carbon tax on ETS emissions (Section Error! Reference source not found.). The revised model was checked carefully to ensure that all emissions were covered (Section Error! Reference source not found.).

Table 1: Summary of Scottish sites subject to the UK ETS and their associated GHG emissions

Figure 1. Analytical approach taken by this project

Analysis of emissions covered by the UK ETS

In Scottish TIMES, emissions accounting could be implemented at the level of sectors (e.g. industry; transport), sub-sectors or individual technologies. Sectors can be quite broad in nature so applying the scheme across a whole sector would be inappropriate as emissions could be cut in areas not subject to the ETS. As individual technologies require a level of detail for the real-world economy that is not available in the model (e.g. categorising all food and drink industries in what is a very diverse sector), this was not a practical option. We therefore estimated fractions by sub-sector and where possible chose our sub-sectors to reflect sites that were likely or not to be part of the ETS.

Table 2 shows the Scottish TIMES sub-sectors that were used to categorise ETS activities and Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics data. Sites with larger emissions such as refineries, upstream oil and gas and chemical plants are in sub-sectors where most emissions are subject to the ETS.

Table 2: Scottish TIMES sectors, sub-sectors, and descriptions

Scottish Emissions Inventory

Scotland publishes Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics annually (hereafter “Emissions Inventory”). For each entry in the Emissions Inventory (Scottish Government, 2023), we added two fields representing the most appropriate Scottish TIMES sector and sub-sector from Table 2. Sectors and sub-sectors were allocated according to the following fields in the Emissions Inventory: Climate Change Plan (CCP) category, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) codes and source name.

Some emissions are not explicitly represented in Scottish TIMES and were categorised as “None”. The sources of these emissions are listed in Table 4 summarises the allocation of Scottish GHG emissions in 2021 to each of the Scottish TIMES sub-sectors. One of the challenges is that the IPCC codes used in the inventory do not map easily onto technologies in the energy system. In some cases, a technology produces emissions that map onto more than one IPCC code. For example, industrial plants with process emissions map to both combustion and process emissions codes. Another challenge is that some IPCC codes aggregate emissions from a diverse set of plants, particularly “Other industrial combustion” (IPCC code 1A2gviii) and “Miscellaneous industrial/commercial combustion” (1A4ai), which together accounted for almost 7% of Scottish emissions in 2021. These codes were both allocated to the “industrial other (IOI)” sub-sector.

It is likely that emissions from some of the other industrial sectors, and possibly also the service sector, are included in these two codes and hence allocated to the IOI sub-sector.

Scottish ETS emissions for stationary sites

The UK ETS publishes a compliance report containing emissions for each site and each airline. We used the 2023 publication (UK Government, 2023b).

We assigned each of the 72 sites in Scotland subject to the ETS individually to a Scottish TIMES sub-sector. One challenge was that the NACE description did not always accurately describe the plant operation. For example, the Sullom Voe Terminal description is extraction of natural gas, but it is primarily an oil terminal. The Shell UK Limited Fife NGL Plant description is manufacture of refined petroleum products, but plant best fits into the chemical industry rather than the oil refining sector.

Matching Scottish ETS emissions to Inventory emissions

We checked this designation and also assigned IPCC codes that were consistent with the Emissions Inventory where possible. This is challenging for oil and gas upstream and downstream sectors in particular as these are broad and complex in Scotland, so a good understanding of the sector is required to properly assign the plants to the Inventory. For example, Grangemouth combined heat and power (CHP) plant is counted under chemicals in the Inventory, while Grangemouth Infrastructure is counted under refineries, despite both being CHP plants at the same site.

One approach we used was to compare site emissions against the NAEI “Large Point Sources” emissions dataset for the year 2021 (UK Government, 2023c). However, there were notable errors and omissions in the version of the data source we consulted, with several sites having CO₂ emissions missing and many sites having incorrect location data (e.g. Scottish sites categorised in other UK countries, and vice versa), so not all sites could be identified in the Inventory.

Table 3. In total, they comprised only 0.5% of Scottish emissions in 2021.

Table 4 summarises the allocation of Scottish GHG emissions in 2021 to each of the Scottish TIMES sub-sectors. One of the challenges is that the IPCC codes used in the inventory do not map easily onto technologies in the energy system. In some cases, a technology produces emissions that map onto more than one IPCC code. For example, industrial plants with process emissions map to both combustion and process emissions codes. Another challenge is that some IPCC codes aggregate emissions from a diverse set of plants, particularly “Other industrial combustion” (IPCC code 1A2gviii) and “Miscellaneous industrial/commercial combustion” (1A4ai), which together accounted for almost 7% of Scottish emissions in 2021. These codes were both allocated to the “industrial other (IOI)” sub-sector.

It is likely that emissions from some of the other industrial sectors, and possibly also the service sector, are included in these two codes and hence allocated to the IOI sub-sector.

Scottish ETS emissions for stationary sites

The UK ETS publishes a compliance report containing emissions for each site and each airline. We used the 2023 publication (UK Government, 2023b).

We assigned each of the 72 sites in Scotland subject to the ETS individually to a Scottish TIMES sub-sector. One challenge was that the NACE^[2] description did not always accurately describe the plant operation. For example, the Sullom Voe Terminal description is extraction of natural gas, but it is primarily an oil terminal. The Shell UK Limited Fife NGL Plant description is manufacture of refined petroleum products, but plant best fits into the chemical industry rather than the oil refining sector.

Matching Scottish ETS emissions to Inventory emissions

We checked this designation and also assigned IPCC codes that were consistent with the Emissions Inventory where possible. This is challenging for oil and gas upstream and downstream sectors in particular as these are broad and complex in Scotland, so a good understanding of the sector is required to properly assign the plants to the Inventory. For example, Grangemouth combined heat and power (CHP) plant is counted under chemicals in the Inventory, while Grangemouth Infrastructure is counted under refineries, despite both being CHP plants at the same site.

One approach we used was to compare site emissions against the NAEI “Large Point Sources” emissions dataset for the year 2021 (UK Government, 2023c). However, there were notable errors and omissions in the version of the data source we consulted, with several sites having CO₂ emissions missing and many sites having incorrect location data (e.g. Scottish sites categorised in other UK countries, and vice versa), so not all sites could be identified in the Inventory.

Table 3: Emission sources in the Scottish Inventory not represented in Scottish TIMES

Table 4. Allocated Scottish GHG emissions in each Scottish TIMES sub-sector in the year 2021. Units: MtCO₂e

We encountered similar challenges as those for the Emissions Inventory described in Section 5.1. For example, glass manufacturers have process emissions (2A3: “glass production”) but most of their emissions are from combustion and are aggregated with many other industries in “Other industrial combustion” (1A2gviii). Some of these sites did not have CO₂ emissions recorded in the NAEI “Large Point Sources” emissions dataset (UK Government, 2023c), perhaps because they are split across IPCC codes. We could not find some other Scottish industrial plants included in the ETS in the NAEI “Large Point Sources” emissions dataset at all.

Recommendation: review the ETS site emissions against the NAEI “Large Point Sources” emissions dataset to ensure that the data in both are accurate and consistent, and investigate causes of any discrepancies.

Only three of eighteen plants^[3] generating electricity using waste as a feedstock in Scotland are included in the ETS. Installations where the primary purpose is the incineration of hazardous or municipal waste are currently excluded from the ETS.

ETS fractions by sub-sector for Scottish TIMES

We added GHG emissions by sub-sector and calculated the fraction of ETS emissions over the total emissions reported in the inventory. For this, we only considered the GHG emissions that are reported in the current ETS – CO2 and F-gases for aluminium production.^[4]

Table 5 shows the fractions for each of the Scottish TIMES sectors/subsectors. In two sub-sectors, ETS emissions exceeded total emissions. For INM (non-metallic minerals), this resulted from combustion emissions from glass production being recorded in “Other industrial combustion”, as discussed above. The discrepancy for waste was for a single plant with negligible emissions.

The ETS fractions used in Scottish TIMES were mostly the same or similar to the fractions calculated from emissions statistics. No fractions exceeded 1 (i.e. total emissions). We reallocated IOI (industrial other) total emissions to other industrial sectors where the emission statistics fraction exceeded 1 as we assumed that the discrepancy was caused by emissions being erroneously recorded in IOI. The lower total emissions caused the IOI fraction to increase slightly. We assumed that all fossil fuel resource extraction is subject to the ETS. Offshore extraction is counted in a special category outside of Scotland in the ETS and is not included in Scottish TIMES.

It was necessary to choose ETS fractions for low-carbon technologies that have not been constructed in Scotland but might be in the future. We assumed:

• All plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be subject to the ETS as we expect them to be large to benefit from economies of scale to capture and sequester CO₂.
• All large hydrogen production plants will be subject to the ETS. Small electrolysers at refuelling stations were excluded.
• All negative emission technologies, including biomass with CCS and direct air capture, are counted using a separate negative emissions category. These could be included in the ETS in future.

Table 5: Fraction of Scottish ETS sites over total reported emissions by Scottish TIMES sector/sub-sector. All emission data have units MtCO2e. * See Section 5.4 for the calculation of the international aviation fraction

Scottish ETS aviation emissions

Aviation ETS emissions are regulated in the UK country in which the operator is registered. Only one operator is registered in Scotland – Loganair – but many operators registered elsewhere operate in Scotland.

All domestic flights are included in the ETS. International flights to EU destinations are also included but flights to other destinations are currently excluded. It was therefore necessary to estimate the proportion of international flight emissions to EU destinations.

Bunker fuel consumption is an appropriate proxy for emissions, but no data are available on fuel use to EU and non-EU destinations. Instead, we used airport passenger statistics from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Table 12.1, which contains the number of passengers flying from each UK airport to each overseas airport (CAA, 2023). One flight from a Scottish airport had destination “Unknown”. It was removed from the statistics as the small number of passengers would have negligible impact on the analysis.

Since non-EU destinations are generally more distant than EU destinations, we used the number of passengers multiplied by the distance to each overseas airport as a proxy for fuel use. This approach implicitly assumed that aeroplanes to EU and non-EU destinations have similar fuel use efficiencies. We calculated each flight distance from the coordinates of the Scottish and overseas airports using the Haversine formula (assuming the Earth is a perfect sphere) with airport location data from openflights.^[5]

We carried out the analysis for the years 2015-2022. Figure 2 shows the fraction of passengers and the fraction of passengers multiplied by distance (proxy fuel use) travelling from Scotland to EU destinations. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, around 68% of proxy fuel use was for EU destinations, with a small upward trend over time. In 2021, when there were many international travel restrictions, EU fuel use increased to more than 80% of the total, but this reduced towards the long-term average in 2022. We therefore assumed a fraction of 68% in Scottish TIMES in line with the average excluding the year 2022.

Figure 2. Fraction of international passengers and fraction of (international passengers x distance) to EU destinations from Scotland. Only EU flights are included in the UK ETS. The graph shows the proportion of passengers flying to the EU each year from 2015–2022, and also the distance-weighted proportion as this is likely a better proxy for fuel consumption and hence emissions.

Scottish TIMES UK ETS implementation

We implemented a new ETS emission accounting scheme in Scottish TIMES. This was designed to count all emissions, including those subject and not subject to the ETS, as a quality assurance step to ensure that all emissions were counted appropriately.

We added nine new emission counters categories to Scottish TIMES to account for the ETS and non-ETS emissions. These are described in Table 6. Five categories cover aviation and shipping, with domestic and international travel counted separately and EU and non-EU aviation counted separately. Emissions from stationary sites covered by the ETS or likely to be covered in the future are in SITE-ETS, while those not covered by the ETS are in NON-ETS. SITE-NEG-EMIS is used for future technology-based negative emissions (i.e. excluding nature-based solutions). Finally, LULUCF counts land-use and forestry emissions, including nature-based negative emissions.

For each of these categories, we defined separate emissions counters for CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O. For example, for AIR-UK, we defined AIR-UK-CO2, AIR-UK-CH4 and AIR-UK-N2O. For SITE-ETS and NON-ETS, we additionally defined counters for HFCs. Defining separate counters enables future changes to the UK ETS in which GHGs other than CO₂ are added to the scheme to be easily represented in Scottish TIMES.

We created two new model scenarios:

• “GHG_Targets_ETS_non-ETS” demonstrates how emissions subject to the ETS could be limited separately from other emissions. The inclusion and role of negative emissions should be considered carefully when setting fixed or upper limits on ETS emissions and choosing the level of those emissions each year.
• “GHG_ETS_tax” demonstrates how a tax could be applied to emissions subject to the ETS. This would be the equivalent of a minimum traded carbon price for the market.

The revised model produces no errors. Our testing concluded that all ETS and non-ETS emissions are accounted for correctly.

Table 6. ETS emission counters added to Scottish TIMES

Quality assurance

Emissions attribution to Scottish TIMES sub-sectors for the ETS and the Scottish Inventory was carried out by Francisca Jalil-Vega and reviewed by Paul Dodds. Issues were discussed with experts from the Scottish Government.

Our testing of the revised Scottish TIMES model identified no implementation issues.

The international aviation analysis and all model analysis spreadsheets were created by Paul Dodds and checked by Francisca Jalil-Vega.

Conclusions and recommendations

The Scottish Government wants to understand how emissions from sites subject to the UK ETS are likely to evolve over the transition to net zero. We added ETS accounting to the Scottish TIMES model and created example scenarios with emission constraints and taxes for ETS emissions. Scottish TIMES is being used to produce a new net zero pathway for Scotland to support its new Climate Change Plan, but did not previously distinguish between ETS and non-ETS emissions.

ETS emissions accounting required an estimate of the proportion of emissions subject to ETS for each sector and sub-sector of the model. We analysed ETS and overall emission data for the year 2021 to assess these proportions. We also estimated the proportion of international aviation fuel used for flights to EU destinations as these are included in the UK ETS while destinations outside the EU are not.

We noted some unusual trends in the statistics and so we recommend that the Scottish Government:

• reviews ETS sites against the Emissions Inventory to ensure that the data in both are accurate and consistent
• cross-references the ETS site emissions and energy consumption, the Scottish emissions inventory and the Scottish energy balance to ensure that all sites in Scotland that are required to participate in the ETS are registered.

We implemented a branched version of the Scottish TIMES model at a sub-sector resolution using a flexible mechanism to try to enable future changes to the UK ETS to be easily implemented. A number of model changes were required to enable ETS accounting to function correctly, particularly to the representation of gas networks, which would benefit from a review to ensure they are modelled consistently across Scottish TIMES and that the assumptions used are reflected in the gas emission intensities.

Our comparison of the outputs identified some unexpected discrepancies between modelled emissions in 2020 and actual emissions in 2021, so we recommend that these are compared to identify sectors of the economy where unrealistic decarbonisation pathways might have been projected, and to constrain those pathways appropriately.

References

CAA (2023) UK airport data. Civil Aviation Authority. https://www.caa.co.uk/data-and-analysis/uk-aviation-market/airports/uk-airport-data/. Accessed 23 August 2023.

Dodds, P. E. (2021) Review of the Scottish TIMES energy system model. http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/793

Scottish Government (2023) Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics 2021. https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-greenhouse-gas-statistics-2021. Accessed 13 August 2023.

UK Government (2023a) Guidance: Participating in the UK ETS. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/participating-in-the-uk-ets/participating-in-the-uk-ets. Accessed 20 July 2023.

UK Government (2023b) UK ETS Recorded Emissions and Surrendered Allowances Data. https://reports.view-emissions-trading-registry.service.gov.uk/ets-reports/section5/20230601_Compliance_Report_Emissions_and_Surrenders.xlsx. Accessed 13 August 2023.

UK Government (2023c) Emissions from NAEI large point sources. https://naei.beis.gov.uk/data/map-large-source. Accessed 20 July 2023.

If you require the report in an alternative format such as a Word document, please contact info@climatexchange.org.uk or 0131 651 4783.

© Produced by UCL Consulting 2023 on behalf of ClimateXChange. All rights reserved.

While every effort is made to ensure the information in this report is accurate, no legal responsibility is accepted for any errors, omissions or misleading statements. The views expressed represent those of the author(s), and do not necessarily represent
those of the host institutions or funders.

1. The Climate Change Act 2008 covers CO2, CH₄, N₂O, HFCs, PFCs, SF₆ and NF₃. NF₃ was added in 2023. The base year for CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O is 1990, and for the other gases it is 1995. ↑
2. NACE is “Nomenclature of Economic Activities”, the European statistical classification of economic activities. ↑
3. List of Scottish Energy from Waste plants from SEPA: https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/waste/energy-from-waste/energy-from-waste-sites/ ↑
4. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2003/87/annex/I ↑
5. https://openflights.org/data.html ↑