Last year Scottish ministers’ ditched annual climate targets on the grounds that they were no longer achievable – due to lack of action to meet them, according to Friends of the Earth Scotland. Ministers have
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Dropped a pledge to rapidly decarbonise homes by mandating low-carbon heating systems.
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Cut funding for tree planting.
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Missed targets to restore degraded peatland.
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Ignored calls for a plan to cut meat and dairy consumption, and failed to use their powers to tax air travel more heavily.
Now the Climate Change Committee has called on the Scottish Government to deliver “immediate action, at pace and scale” if it is to reach its net zero target by 2045. To meet that goal, emissions need to fall by 57% over the next five years and by 69% to 2035, when compared with 1990 levels. Rather than setting targets for each year, emissions will now be calculated in carbon budgets across five-year time intervals, as in the rest of the UK.
The CCC’s recommendations include prioritising the switch to electric vehicles and heat pumps, making electricity cheaper, and increasing renewable power generation. However, the required expansion of the power grid is meeting opposition by communites affected by new pylon routes, as on Skye.