How quality infrastructure can get Scotland’s climate progress back on track

A new report highlights how quality infrastructure can accelerate progress towards net zero. 

Quality infrastructure (QI) ensures and improves the quality, safety, and environmental soundness of goods, services, and processes. It underpins a well-functioning economy. Despite its importance, it remains largely invisible, with little awareness among many stakeholders, including government, industry, and consumers. 

The report, published by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and commissioned by the British Standards Institution (BSI), highlights several ways quality infrastructure can support innovation and accelerate progress towards net zero.  

By participating in international standards negotiations, Scotland can influence emerging standards, ensuring our economic and industrial interests are reflected.  

Although standards are voluntary, they can be more reflexive and proportionate than regulations, offering a more flexible solution than inertia-prone regulation. This is ideal for a problem as acute as climate change.  

Agile, responsive standards, such as the recently developed ISO Net Zero Guidelines, demonstrate how standards can involve global collaboration and be fast-tracked without foregoing rigour. 

While the benefits of QI are clear, challenges remain in raising awareness and achieving industry consensus. The report identifies potential resistance from well-established industries where new standards could disrupt current business models.  

Good standards benefit businesses, especially in a market where consumers are increasingly savvier about corporate social responsibility. In addition, embodying sustainable practices can be attractive to investors and the government as they come with perceived lower risks.  

The report presents several recommendations to improve the visibility and effectiveness of qualitative infrastructure, including raising awareness, signposting resources, capacity building, and more agile standards. 

As the world strives towards net zero, quality infrastructure has the potential to provide the necessary governance, harmonise global standards, and fast-track technological solutions that are crucial to achieving global climate goals and getting Scotland’s net zero progress back on track.