HOWZAT

He believes the tougher the target, the more jobs will be created and was delighted MSPs chose to raise it from a 36% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. “Think of the target as an incentive for investment as well as common sense. Private investors take their signals from such targets.”

Gary Davis, operations director of the Edinburgh-based environmental consultancy Ecometrica, agreed that the bill would be a catalyst for change and sustainable growth. “It’s a very ambitious target. It means that things will actually start to happen rather than there being endless further consultation,” he said.

The Scotch whisky industry has been quick off the mark. It came up with an industry-wide environmental strategy on June 3, three weeks before the bill was ratified. This includes a commitment to slash its use of fossil fuels by 80% by 2050. Other targets adopted by firms including Diageo and Pernod Ricard were reducing packaging and the sourcing of casks only from sustainable oak forests.

However, some business leaders, including David Watt, executive director of the Institute of Directors Scotland, questioned whether the Scottish government’s targets were achievable without replacing the country’s ageing nuclear power stations at Hunterston and Torness. The stations are due to be decommissioned in 2016 and 2023 respectively. The minority government of Alex Salmond, though, has said it has no intention of replacing them when they close. Watt said: “We’ve made it very clear that we believe nuclear will have to be part of the energy mix, with new stations coming on stream in 2015-2020 in order to avoid an energy gap.”

He said that, despite all the hype, reliable generation from wave power was “at best 10 years away”.

He also believes there needs to be a much stronger commitment to upgrading Scotland’s electricity grid and, particularly, building a new offshore grid if renewable energy is to fulfil its potential.

Keith Anderson, director of Scottish Power Renewables, a subsidiary of Iberdrola, said: “We need to ensure that the grid network in Scotland is fit for purpose to support the growth in renewables.”

However, Ecometrica’s Davis warns that investment in new nuclear plants would divert resources away from renewables — and from the offshore grid.

He said: “I think it will be possible to meet the Scottish government’s targets without nuclear. If the government were to give nuclear the level of financial support that it needs, then wave, tidal and offshore wind energy would be starved of resources.”

Not everyone in Scotland was ecstatic about the pollution-busting measures ushered in last week.

Patrick Harvie, a Green MSP, was incensed about a loophole that would enable the Scottish government to lower its targets if the UK government’s advisory panel on climate change were to deem them unrealistic or if the UN conference failed to come up with a replacement for Kyoto in December.

Professor Jan Bebbington, vice chairman of the Scottish Sustainable Development Commission, believes that the government must push for a radical shift in consumer behaviour and not simply rely on technology. “We need a root-and-branch review of everyday life in Scotland in order to become a truly sustainable society,” she said.

Some business people are disappointed that the bill will probably put the brakes on road-building programmes, with the planned dualling of the A9 between Perth and Inverness a likely casualty.