Climate Change Committee Casts Doubt on Another Scottish Net Zero Target

Bank holiday traffic near Rylstone in North Yorkshire on March 29, 2024. Danny Lawson/PA Wire

Another key Scottish net zero commitment has come under scrutiny, with a climate change specialist saying he is “dubious” Scotland can reduce the number of kilometres travelled by car by 20 percent by 2030.

Climate Change Committee (CCC) Chief Executive Chris Stark told the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Energy, and Transport Committee on Tuesday that he was “dubious about any plan being successful in delivering the 20 percent reduction” because “the actual requirements are pretty big to pull that off.”

Mr. Stark cited London’s congestion charge as a strategy that had reduced car travel, but advised, “You would need to see, every year between now and 2030, the success of the first year of the London congestion charge in reducing traffic to believe that that target can be hit.”

“Maybe they have a plan to do that in the Scottish Government. I would love to see it. But that took absolutely years of planning for London to introduce that. We haven’t had that kind of planning in cities across Scotland,” he said.

Mr. Stark issued the warning less than a week after the Scottish Government confirmed it was abandoning a key net zero target, admitting that reducing carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030 was now “out of reach.”

The decision came one month after the CCC had determined that the target was “beyond what is credible” to be achieved.

‘Difficult Target’ to Hit in Scotland

Mr. Stark pointed out a practical reason why the reduction would be “difficult” goal to reach.

“One of the other challenges in Scotland is that we travel further distances because we are more rural. So it is an extraordinarily difficult target to hit,” the CCC chief executive explained to the Scottish committee.

“If the goal is to reduce emissions from transport, the quickest way to do that is to switch the vehicles that are on the road from high carbon [petrol and diesel] to low carbon [electric],” he advised.

“Traveling less has an impact, but it is marginal in comparison with that switch from petrol or diesel to electric,” Mr. Stark said, suggesting the Scottish Government should rethink that target in favour of focusing more attention on making electric cars and vans “as appealing as possible as a prospect to deliver the emissions reduction necessary in the surface transport sector.”

The Scottish Conservatives’ net zero spokesman Douglas Lumsden said: “This frank warning fully exposes the abject failure of the SNP-Green government to meet their previous climate change targets.

“They were repeatedly warned by the Climate Change Committee that their targets were not going to be achieved, especially when they missed annual emission targets in eight out of the last 12 years.”

Adopting ‘Sustainable Travel Behaviours’

The pledge to reduce the number of kilometres travelled by car by 20 percent—against a 2019 baseline—forms part of the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Plan.

Transport Scotland’s strategy to achieving this reduction makes use of “behavioural change theory” with “behaviours” the agency hopes Scots will consider each time they plan a journey, including making use of “online options” rather than travelling, switching to public transport, and car-sharing.

The agency also recommends “interventions” to encourage “sustainable travel behaviours” such as a workplace parking levy, which would give local authorities “a further tool to disincentivise private car use” by discouraging staff from parking for free at their places of work.

Undated handout file photo issued by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) of chief executive Chris Stark. Climate Change Committee/PA Wire

A Scottish Government spokesperson said the government’s route map to reducing car usage by 20 percent will be published later this year.

“This will incentivise people to switch to electric vehicles where this is possible for them. Other measures include more than quadrupling the number of Electric Vehicle charging points by 2030 and developing an integrated ticketing system which can be used across public transport.

“Scotland already has the most comprehensive network of EV chargers per capita anywhere in the UK outside of London; we provide the most generous concessionary bus travel scheme in the UK and co-developed Low Emission Zones in four cities,” the spokesperson said.

Scotland Abandons 2030 Net Zero Target

On April 19, Mairi McAllan, Scotland’s net zero secretary, confirmed that the target to reduce carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030, which was enshrined in Scottish law in 2019, had been dropped.

Ms. McAllan told MSPs in Holyrood that ministers will introduce legislation to ensure that the environmental target “better reflects the reality of long-term climate policymaking.”

The Scottish Government also dropped its legally binding annual targets, which the country has missed for eight out of 12 years. Scotland’s target to reach net zero by 2045 will remain.

Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing, Economy, Net Zero and Energy Mairi McAllan at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh on April 18, 2024. Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

Last month, the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) analysed the financial implications of Scotland’s climate change targets, saying that the 2030 interim target was a “fiscal risk” that could be difficult to manage within the budget.

To achieve net zero, the SFC estimated the Scottish Government would have to spend an average of £1.1 billion a year by 2050, around 18 percent of its capital budget, a report has said.

PA Media contributed to this report.