Our role is to contribute to the objectives of the Government Economic Strategy for sustainable economic growth; that is a dynamic and growing economy, while ensuring that future generations can enjoy a better quality of life too. The Government’s targets are to reduce carbon emissions over the period to 2011, and by 80 per cent by 2050.
The Stern Review made the economic case that climate change is the greatest market failure ever seen, and that Government intervention is necessary to overcome barriers of lack of information, behavioural and organisational inertia and to promote the business opportunities that will arise from the transformation of the economy.
Learn more about the Stern Review at the HM Treasury website
This policy provides an overview of how we will contribute to, and incorporate the principles of sustainable development through our work to stimulate the Scottish economy building on previous knowledge and action. This policy covers the broad spectrum of sustainable development issues, including climate change.
Read our environmental management policy
Objective
Our objective is to support the Government in its ambition to create a sustainable and low carbon economy. We will do this by helping Scottish key sectors to exploit the opportunities that will arise from tackling the challenges of sustainability and climate change.
Policy
Our focus is on Scotland’s key sectors and our contribution to their growth, and our work to support productivity in the Scottish economy through our themes of enterprise, innovation and investment.
Key Sectors |
We will work with industry leaders to identify key environmental market opportunities, and embed sustainable development into our industry strategies. |
Enterprise |
We will help companies to grow by identifying and promoting company investment in clean technologies and products. We will encourage the companies that we do business with to improve resource efficiency. |
Innovation |
We will promote research and demonstration projects, and support commercialisation of ideas focusing on low carbon products, services and business model. |
Investment |
We will seek to adopt best practice in our physical development projects, including detailing environmental requirements in project specifications. We will market and encourage applications to our financial investment funds from the emerging clean technology sector. |
International |
We will promote international investment opportunities in Scotland by marketing Scotland’s sustainable development strengths and the opportunities arising from the Government’s ambitious targets on climate change, zero waste and renewable energy. |
To achieve these policy objectives, we will embed sustainable development into all of our activities. We will:
- Integrate sustainable development principles and maximise opportunities into all our products, policies, strategies and practices;
- Take account of environmental impact as a factor in our project prioritisation process prior to inclusion of projects in our annual Business Plan;
- Appraise sustainable development options and implications as part of all project and product appraisals prior to any spending decision;
- Promote sustainable development in our activities with the business community, including partnership arrangements, and aim to positively influence our stakeholders;
- Work with our Industry Advisory Groups to assist Scotland’s key sectors to be more resilient to the impacts of climate change; and
- Consider sustainable development in contractual arrangements, and encourage our consultants and contractors to assist us in our environmental Action for 2009/ 2010.
Our priorities for 2009/ 1010 are to:
- Promote and exploit clean technology opportunities including renewable energy;
- Work more closely with SEPA to improve the integration of environmental advice to businesses and to develop the environmental technologies sector;
- Help to identify opportunities and constraints affecting the ability of the Scottish economy to move towards becoming a low carbon economy; and
- Explore the opportunities and implications of adopting a high BREEAM (environmental quality standard) rating for all physical infrastructure projects;
- Ensure ongoing compliance with the Strategic Environmental Assessment process and our statutory duty to promote biodiversity;
Internally, we will raise awareness of this policy to staff and stakeholders; provide training to staff; continue to improve our guidance; and introduce and refine a performance measure to calculate carbon savings.
Given the fast changing knowledge and external policy context, the Equity Team will present a six monthly progress update to the SE Board on the implementation and development of this policy.