Deliver on current climate plans
The Scottish Government must deliver on the policies in the current climate plan, and over deliver to make up for the failure of negative emissions technologies to become operational during the current plan period.
As of 2024, Scotland missed five of the last six annual emission reduction targets, and the annual targets system was removed and switched to a carbon budget system during autumn of that year. The current Climate Change Plan runs to 2032 and the next one will likely be published in late 2025, following Climate Change Committee advice on carbon budgets.
The Scottish Government’s own monitoring and the analysis by the Climate Change Committee shows that much delivery is off track and we will continue to fail to meet even weaker carbon budgets without urgent action. 15 out of 43 Scottish Government outcome indicators are off track and a further 10 are classified as ‘too early to tell.’ Overall, less than half of all these indicators are definitively on track.
A large part of the failure to meet targets is the admission that carbon capture and storage will not be operational at a meaningful scale until well into the 2030s, if at all, which means that installation of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy capacity must go faster to compensate.
Top priority must be to deliver on the policies in the plan, over delivering on some to compensate for gaps, and ensure that the next Climate Change Plan is a credible, comprehensive and clearly explained set of policies to meet all our future targets, without relying on unproven Negative Emissions Technologies.
For further information:
However carbon emissions are measured is meaningless without action – response to new Scottish Government Emission Reduction Targets Bill, Stop Climate Chaos, 2024 https://www.stopclimatechaos.scot/however-carbon-emissions-are-measured-is-meaningless-without-action-response-to-new-scottish-government-emission-reduction-targets-bill/
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland reaction to the latest greenhouse gas emissions data, June 2024 https://www.stopclimatechaos.scot/stop-climate-chaos-scotland-press-release-response-to-2022-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data/
See also policy ‘Don’t rely on Negative Emissions Technologies for emissions reductions’ in the Energy chapter.
