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Scotland is unlikely to meet its 2030 pledge to reduce emissions by 75%, government climate advisers have said.
In a report, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) blamed “continued delays” in implementing previously promised policies designed to tackle the issue.
The Scottish Government pushed back its draft Climate Change Plan last year, despite the 2030 target only being six years away – leaving a significant period without sufficient actions or policies being undertaken to reach the target.
Professor Piers Forster, interim chair of the CCC, said: “Scotland has laudable ambitions to decarbonise, but it isn’t enough to set a target; the government must act. There are risks in all reviewed areas, including those with significant policy powers devolved to the Scottish government.
“Scotland’s Climate Change Plan needs to be published urgently so we can assess it. We need to see actions that will deliver on its future targets.”
The CCC added that to meet the target, the required acceleration in emissions is now “beyond what is credible”.
Scotland missed its annual target for 2021 for the eighth time in the previous 12 years. The only sectors to reduce emissions in 2021 were electricity supply and industry. Most key indicators of progress, such as tree planting, peatland restoration rates and heat pump installations, are off-track.
The CCC said that the transport and buildings sectors will require a particularly rapid increase in the rate of emissions reduction to meet the targets set out in the last Climate Change Plan update in 2020.
The plan requires emissions from heating buildings to decrease by 71% by 2030 – this would require a near tenfold increase on the current level of carbon reduction to achieve. Meanwhile, transport emissions need to decrease by 44% by 2030, meaning the annual emissions reduction rate must increase by almost a factor of four.
A further target to reduce car kilometres by 20% on 2019 levels by 2030 is also in place, but a clear strategy on how this will be achieved is still missing. The CCC called for improvements to the deployment of electric car charging infrastructure and a plan to reduce aviation emissions.
Meanwhile, the report finds that Scotland needs to double the rate of woodland creation and triple the restoration of peatlands.
In November, the operator of Scotland's last remaining oil refinery at a site in Grangemouth announced plans to cease operations as soon as 2025 following an 18-month process to transition to a fuel import terminal. This sparked the ire of Scotland’s industrial base, trade unions and local politicians as it threatened the job security of more than 500 people directly employed at the site. The CCC warned that such moves require “meaningful dialogue” between communities, industry and government to ensure a “just transition” to net zero.
Scottish net zero secretary Màiri McAllan said that Scotland remains “fully committed to meeting our target of net zero emissions by 2045. We are under no illusion that the hardest part of this journey is ahead of us.”
