Tough policies required to meet climate-change targets, government told

SCOTLAND’S targets for cutting emissions are “fantastic” but the Government’s current policies mean the country is likely to fall short in achieving them, the UK’S Climate Change Committee (CCC) has warned.

The Scottish Government’s climate-change plan aims for net-zero emissions by 2045, with interim targets that include a 75% reduction from 1990’s emissions levels by the end of this decade.

Giving evidence to Holyrood’s rural economy committee about the strategy, the CCC’S chief executive Chris Stark said the 2030 target would be “very, very difficult to meet” with the current policies.

While he expressed confidence that net-zero could be achieved by 2045, Mr Stark argued the Scottish Government needed more “tough” policies rather than relying on positive incentives to encourage people and businesses to change their behaviour.

Witnesses from the independent advisory group to the UK and devolved governments also bemoaned the lack of an effective strategy within the Scottish Government’s plan to tackle emissions from the agriculture and farming sectors.

Citing the government’s policies for improving infrastructure, such as electric car charging points and the stated ambition of reducing the distances travelled in cars by 20% by 2030, Mr Stark said: “These are the right kinds of targets to drive progress. The question in my mind is whether we have the policies in place to actually meet those new objectives that we see in the climate change plan.”

He said the proposal to reduce car miles by a fifth by 2030 was “the biggest new element of the transport plan”, but suggested that even the CCC’S “very ambitious assessment” does not judge that to be achievable.

He said: “The key thing for me is that will not happen unless there’s a combination of carrots and sticks, and the kind of policies that are being proposed in this pot in this document are mainly carrots.”