The legacy of last year’s Cop26 “still holds”, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change has said.
Chris Stark spoke last night as the group paid a visit to Dundee’s Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc as part of a tour across eight locations in the UK.
Dundee is the only destination in Scotland to be visited by the committee, which Mr Stark said was part of an effort to “get out from London, out from Edinburgh to try to understand what’s happening on the ground”.
He said focus is now being switched from setting targets on tackling climate change, and more emphasis will be put on “what you actually do to deliver those things”.
He said: “We’re here in Dundee today to meet a whole host of people across nearly two days, and it’s been absolutely amazing to meet people who are actually trying to do some of the things that we’ve been advising on.”
When asked about the message from Cop26 – which was held in Glasgow last November – and whether other events such as the war in Ukraine have impacted the momentum towards fighting climate change, he said the logic of stopping the use of fossil fuels “makes even more sense now”.
Mr Stark added: “Although we are in the midst of this fuel crisis and the cost of living being driven by what’s happening in Ukraine, actually, the logic of getting off fossil fuels makes even more sense now.
“The reason why we are experiencing these high costs is partly at least because we are too exposed to fossil fuels. We’re using too many fossil fuels.
“If we can move more quickly to get ourselves off that, we’ll be more energy secure and we’ll be helping the environment.
“That was basically the message at Cop26, and of course it feels like a long time ago now, but all of that still holds.”
Professor Iain Gillespie, chairman of the Dundee Climate Leadership Group, pointed to Dundee’s climate efforts as being a factor in the city being chosen as the only Scottish location to feature on the tour.
He said: “There’s no city in Europe that’s done as much as we have to roll out electric-powered vehicles, from the council, from the universities, from business, across the board – the charging points, the infrastructure we’ve got in place.
“We do it at a scale which is big enough to be exportable, big enough for the climate change committee to learn from, but still at a manageable scale.
“We’re not a huge metropolitan centre, but we are a centre. We can operate at a scale that we can control. That’s what’s brought them here.”
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