Scotland Rejects 2030 Climate Target as “out of Reach”

Stay up to date with free updates

Scotland has dismissed its ambitious climate targets as “out of reach” after the UK’s Climate Change Committee said it would be unable to meet them due to poor implementation of emissions reductions.

In an embarrassing step backwards from what former prime minister Nicola Sturgeon described as world-leading targets, the government has shelved its legal target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.

Scotland’s 2030 target exceeded the rest of the UK target of 68 per cent over the same period.

The UK’s pledge is also one that the Climate Change Committee said it had “low confidence” it would be kept after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a series of U-turns on key green measures.

“In this challenging context of UK cuts and disengagement, we accept the CCC’s recent reaffirmation that this Parliament’s 2030 interim target is out of reach,” Mairi McAllan, Scottish Minister for Welfare, Net Zero and Energy, said on Thursday.

McAllan said the government would introduce a new legislative package of climate action to maintain its commitment to the goal of achieving net zero by 2045.

Initiatives include quadrupling the number of electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 and an integrated public transport ticketing system, as the government aims to reduce car use by 20 percent.

She also said there would be a consultation this summer on a carbon land tax on Scotland’s largest estates to incentivize peatland restoration and reforestation.

The admission that Scotland’s promise has failed comes after the hottest year on record. Each of the last 10 months has also been the hottest, unsettling scientists amid evidence that the world is warming faster than expected.

When Glasgow hosted the UN climate summit COP26 in 2021, Sturgeon said Scotland could lead the world into a green revolution.

“Scotland is halfway to net zero. . . But the hard work still lies ahead after years of missed opportunities,” said Mark Ruskell MSP, climate spokesman for the Scottish National Party’s coalition partners, the Scottish Greens.

The CCC described the scrapping of Scotland’s 2030 target as “deeply disappointing” and said interim targets and plans to achieve them make any net zero commitment credible.

The climate plan announced by Sturgeon in 2019 “did not contain a comprehensive implementation strategy,” the CCC said in its report last month.

The Scottish government has missed the legally binding annual emissions target eight times in the past twelve years, it said. A delay in drafting the Scottish Government’s climate action plan last year meant the required acceleration of emissions reductions was “beyond credible”.

Douglas Lumsden, Scottish Conservative shadow minister for net zero, energy and transport, described the move as a “pathetic humiliation” for an SNP-Green government that boasts of its “supposed environmental credentials” but “routinely over-promises and under-delivers “.

A survey of 1,010 adults in Scotland by the nonprofit climate research advocacy group Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and Focaldata found that 73 percent of Scots support the longer-term goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

“Despite all of the Scottish Government’s policies and vision, tangible progress in decarbonising the everyday economy – how we heat our homes, how we get around and the food we eat – has been glacial,” said Dave Hawkey, senior research fellow at IPPR.

Additional reporting from Attracta Mooney in London