Scotland to abandon pledge to cut carbon emissions by 75% by 2030

[Emrys]

1. For more context, here's a preview of what Scotland's Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero & Energy

is due to state later today:



The ambition remains, and Scotland has done well, certainly compared to the rest of the UK and particularly England, but the timescale will have to be adjusted to fit reality given the constraints on the Scottish government taking independent action.

This is from the 2022 five-yearly review of the Scottish targets by the UK Climate Change Committee:

The Net Zero target and the 2040 interim target for a 90% reduction on 1990 levels are both consistent with our advice from 2019,3 which was based on a linear reduction in emissions to Net Zero in 2045. The 2030 interim target for a 75% reduction is more ambitious than our recommendation, which was for a 70% reduction. The 2020 target, which has been achieved, was in line with our 2017 advice on the Scottish Climate Bill.

The committee noted changes in the ways carbon emissions were calculated and how this required targets to be revised:

We therefore recommend that the path for annual targets through the 2020s is drawn not based on the 56% target (which was on the old methodology) but on a translation of that 2020 target to the new inventory basis (i.e. 48.5%). This is appropriate, as these targets will be assessed against the new inventory methodology. The new recommended annual targets are given in Table 4.2. These should be updated even if it requires an adjustment to the Act to allow it, as without this change these already
challenging annual targets will be made even more difficult to achieve, simply as an artefact of accounting. We also recommend that future advice on the level of the targets is requested in time to avoid a similar situation occurring again.
...
Our updated analysis indicates that it may be possible to slightly outperform the existing 2040 interim target and 2045 Net Zero target. However, given substantial risks to meeting the 2030 interim target, the anticipated outperformance of targets around 2040 may instead be needed to compensate for underperformance against targets around 2030. There also remains considerable uncertainty in these projections, for example on the extent of GHG removals in Scotland and on the emissions estimation methodology that will be used at the time of later targets.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Scottish-Emissions-Targets-first-five-yearly-review.pdf