The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service has been busy developing our offer, analysing and sharing our continually expanding data insights, delivering workshops and capacity building across Scotland. Here are the latest updates, highlights and a look at what we've got coming up over the coming months:
1. Fresh Starts
Our four new Improvement Service colleagues — Kathryn, Lucy, Sara and Ru — are settling into their roles nicely. John is already making great progress in his new role as Climate Equity Lead, to more deeply embed Equity and Just Transition into our SCIS programme activity and support. Morgan and Sarah are making great strides in responding to programme demand for stronger alignment of local, national and partner collaboration, in their new National Delivery Lead roles.
You can find out more about our new team members and capacity in the upcoming SCIS Bulletin.
2. PBCCDR Alignment: Addressing Duplication of Effort for Councils
The interventions dataset held in ClimateView is a leading indicator of Scottish climate delivery and SCIS want to ensure we maximise the relevance and use of this data, particularly in the context of local authority reporting burdens.
Public Bodies Climate Change Duties Reporting is a key statutory duty that requires data which also holds significant value for monitoring and tracking climate progress, particularly when harnessed intentionally by local authorities. In response to local authority feedback, SCIS have explored overlaps between ClimateView and PBCCDR, which focus on area-wide and organisational emissions respectively.
In July, we hosted a drop-in for 51 attendees from 26 local authorities centred on aligning these two reporting structures. We were thrilled with the depth of engagement in this session and have produced relevant resources to support council climate change teams.
SCIS recognises the need for ongoing support to reduce duplicative reporting burdens on councils. We will continue to work closely with Sustainable Scotland Network (SSN) and feed into the consultation on the planned PBCCDR Amendment Order.
3. Transition Pathways Workshop Demos for Scottish Government and National Partners
In August, SCIS delivered a workshop for national government stakeholders detailing the methodology we are using to help local governments set targets for decarbonising domestic heat. And in September, SCIS delivered a complementary workshop to debut our novel mobility methodology for Transition Pathways which will be used to help local authorities set mode-specific transport targets, as well as electrification targets.
There was real excitement to see how many local authorities had taken part and appreciation for the methodologies SCIS has developed. With attendees from Transport Scotland and Scottish Government on the mobility side, there was meaningful representation across transport modes and widespread agreement across both with SCIS’s method of developing initial modal targets to begin conversations with local authorities.
SCIS looks forward to rolling out this methodology nationwide with all our local authorities before receiving tailored sessions to set targets according to local priorities.
4. What's coming up?
SCIS continues to ramp-up delivery. Over the coming months, we'll continue our dedicated one-to-one support for all Scottish local authorities, update our Scottish Area-Wide Emissions Inventory to reflect new data, and continue our ongoing collaboration with Scottish Government to improve multi-level climate delivery.
At the start of September, SCIS hosted one of our regular ‘Focus’ sessions, giving local authority officers a dedicated time and space to upload and refine their interventions, the leading indicator of climate action in Scotland. It was great to have officers from 11 local authorities in attendance, working on their council’s intervention data while engaging in fruitful discussions around Transition Pathways, dashboard publication and more!
SCIS is currently collating and analysing a second national dataset of local government interventions to share with national delivery partners, supporting the streamlining of multi-level climate governance across Scotland.
Key upcoming sessions for SCIS service users include:
- In October, two Spotlight Sessions. The first Spotlight is a deep dive into Indicator Dashboards and the second one focuses on Nationally Collated Analysis.
- In November, we will be delivering our new Mobility Transition Pathways workshop for all users.
Alongside these sessions, we will be publishing additional guidance on the co-benefits of climate action for climate officers, in addition to the final of our Insight briefing series on the additional benefits of climate action: this time, Public Transport. You can find out more.
If you would like to find out more about the SCIS programme, you can visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn. You can also contact the team at info@climateintelligenceservice.scot.