No Green SNP

 The UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an official advisory body, said the Scottish government would almost certainly miss its world-leading carbon reduction targets for 2030 by a substantial margin.

In its annual report on Scotland’s climate strategy, the CCC said there were “glaring gaps” between its ambitions to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 and its success in meeting them. It was failing on farming, building emissions, recycling, peatland restoration and on cutting car use.

Lord Deben, the CCC’s chair, indicated growing irritation with the devolved government’s faltering progress, which has been the subject of repeated warnings from the committee.

“In 2019, the Scottish parliament committed the country to some of the most stretching climate goals in the world, but they are increasingly at risk without real progress towards the milestones that Scottish ministers have previously laid out,” Deben said. “One year ago, I called for more clarity and transparency on Scottish climate policy and delivery. That plea remains unanswered.”

Hitting the 2030  target was now “extremely challenging”. Emissions only dropped in 2020 because of the Covid crisis; as things stand, Scotland’s emissions would probably fall by 65% to 67%, leaving the country up to 8 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent short of its legally binding 75% target. It also reported that if the climate impacts of Scotland’s consumption of imported goods and energy was included, the rates were 22% higher a head in Scotland than the UK average, at 13 tCO2e a person in 2018.

It found that:

Despite pledging to stop the sales of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, sales of electric cars in Scotland had fallen behind England.

Scotland’s plans to rapidly decarbonise heating in buildings “were still wholly inadequate” despite recent funding increases.

Scottish ministers were failing to tackle high levels of meat and dairy consumption, key causes of CO2 emissions from farming.

Scotland was meeting only half its target to restore 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of peatland a year.

Scottish ministers were failing to work collaboratively with other UK governments on shared climate strategies.

Sturgeon told Scotland’s climate targets are ‘in danger of being meaningless’ | Scotland | The Guardian