The next item of business is a ministerial statement by Alasdair Allan on the greenhouse gas emissions statistics 2023. The minster will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
14:55
Scotland’s climate is changing. Severe weather events are becoming more frequent and we can expect future changes in the climate to be far worse than anything that we have seen in the past. Global emissions continue to rise and the locked-in impact of past emissions continues playing out in front of our eyes. We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record and the World Meteorological Organization warns that there is
“no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”
We are seeing the effects on our own doorstep. Flooding, coastal erosion, drought and storms are putting increasing pressures on our economy, society and environment. That is why tackling the climate emergency is a priority for the Government and must remain high on the agenda of the Parliament.
I am here today to update Parliament on Scotland’s latest progress in emissions reduction, as shown in the Scottish greenhouse gas emissions statistics 2023, which were published on 10 June. Those statistics are the first emissions reduction figures published since Scotland moved to a five-year carbon budget approach last year. As part of that, the Scottish Government will continue monitoring our climate progress annually, including reporting on our rate of emissions reduction, but our path towards net zero in 2045 will be expressed in new carbon budgets, which we will set out in due course.
The official statistics, which were published on Tuesday, show that Scottish emissions in 2023 were 51.3 per cent lower than in 1990, which is a further reduction of 1.9 per cent on our position in 2022. By using comparable metrics, we can see that Scotland made the largest reduction in emissions in the United Kingdom between 1990 and 2023, reducing those by 51.3 per cent. Emissions in England in the same period reduced by 50.7 per cent, followed by Wales and Northern Ireland.
The majority of sectors saw reductions in 2023. In particular, there was a very large reduction in emissions in the electricity sector of 0.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emitted. Although electricity was historically the biggest contributor to our emissions, Scotland has made significant progress in decarbonising, outpacing other UK nations with a 93.4 per cent reduction in those emissions since 1990. That reflects the continued shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Over 12 months, renewable electricity capacity increased from 15.4GW to 17.6GW by the end of 2024 and gas-fired electricity generation has fallen. Reductions were also seen in fuel supply, buildings and product uses, domestic transport, industry and waste, which all reduced emissions by 0.1 megatonnes of carbon dioxide when compared to 2022.
Agriculture emissions were essentially unchanged between 2022 and 2023, falling very slightly by 0.1 per cent, but our focus on progress here remains strong. We all agree that Scotland’s agriculture has a critical role in both supporting our climate ambitions and ensuring our future food security and economic prosperity. Indeed, our commitment to rooting our climate ambitions in just transition principles for that sector is undaunted. It underpins a considered, collaborative and clear approach to supporting agriculture’s contribution to Scotland’s economic and social vitality while addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.
Lastly, there was some increase in emissions from international aviation and shipping, which effectively returned to their pre-Covid levels, and in the category of land use, land use change and forestry, due to a reduction in the forestry sink as a result of historical planting reaching maturity.
We are taking decisive action to ensure that we continue to reduce emissions and make meaningful progress towards our goal of net zero by 2045, and we are committed to doing that in a way that is just for workers, communities and businesses across Scotland; that provides a greener, fairer future for all; that puts more money in people’s pockets; and that contributes to our overall health and wellbeing.
It has been a privilege to be an acting minister in the Scottish Government for the past year. I hope that members will permit me to look back for a moment at some of the things that have been achieved in the four years since the previous climate change plan was finalised. We have scrapped peak rail fares for good; extended free bus travel, which now benefits over 2.3 million people; and delivered 6,800 public charge points, with a further 6,000 to come by 2030.
We have brought the new-build heat standard into force; introduced a ban on the supply and manufacture of certain problematic single-use plastic items, including single-use cutlery, food containers and more; and created the landmark Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024, which establishes the legislative framework to support Scotland’s transition to a zero waste and circular economy. That is complemented by our circular economy and waste route map to 2030, which will help us to achieve our sustainable resource and climate goals.
Since 2020-21, an average of 11,000 hectares of new woodland have been created each year, including over 15,000 hectares in 2023-24, which was the highest figure for 34 years. Since 2020-21, we have also restored over 43,000 hectares of degraded peat, including 14,860 hectares in 2024-25 against the programme for government commitment of 10,000 hectares.
We have published the vision for agriculture and created the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024, which provides the powers that are required to deliver the agricultural reform programme.
We have launched a new bidding round that is worth up to £8.5 million for the just transition fund for 2025-26, which will drive forward our transition to net zero in the north-east and Moray and ensure that we continue to create jobs, support innovation and secure the highly skilled workforce of the future. More recently, we have already delivered on our commitment to ban the supply and sale of single-use vapes.
Further commitments will see the extension of our nature restoration fund, the establishment of statutory targets to improve biodiversity, and the introduction of our heat in buildings bill by the end of the current session of Parliament.
Despite the progress that we have made, however, we need others to act, too, on this shared ambition. We rely on the UK Government to act in several important areas to enable our future pathway to reduce emissions in Scotland. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage is vital for a just transition to net zero. The Climate Change Committee has advised that it
“cannot see a route to Net Zero that does not include CCS.”
The UK Government’s spending review that was published yesterday provided some welcome support for the Acorn project. However, a commitment to providing funding is not enough. We urgently need the UK Government to commit to providing a full funding package and timeline so that the project can progress towards reality, creating jobs and investing in our communities.
We will soon set out our proposed emissions trajectory to 2045 based on five-year carbon budgets through secondary legislation. Key to that has been the Climate Change Committee’s advice on Scotland’s pathway to net zero in 2045, which was published on 21 May. We are carefully considering the committee’s advice before producing regulations to set our carbon budgets. That includes consideration of the target-setting criteria under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 and an assessment of whether the pace of decarbonisation is appropriate for people, sectors and businesses across Scotland.
The carbon budgets that we propose will provide an achievable pathway to net zero in 2045 and they will be followed by a new draft climate change plan that outlines our policies and proposals for reducing emissions between 2026 and 2040 for consultation.
In Scotland, our emissions have halved since 1990. The 2023 statistics, which show a reduction since 2022, demonstrate the positive action that we have already taken to reach our goal of net zero by 2045, and the actions to which we have committed show that we are resolutely focused on achieving that.
The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for that, after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if members who wished to ask a question could press their request-to-speak buttons now.
I thank the minister for advance sight of his statement, which is a statement of more failure from this devolved Scottish National Party Government—but, of course, this Scottish Government rewards failure. We need simply look at the promotion of the Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy, who has presided over a long list of failures.
The Government has failed to publish a climate change plan; failed to publish an energy strategy; failed to publish a just transition plan; failed to meet community groups who are concerned about pylons and substations carpeting their communities; failed to publish carbon budget regulations when it said that they would be published; failed to protect thousands of jobs in the North Sea oil and gas industry from being lost; failed to prevent the closure of refining at Grangemouth; failed to back Rosebank, Cambo or Jackdaw; failed to remove the presumption against new oil and gas; and, today, we have heard of its failure to meet its own emissions targets.
I ask the minister: when it comes to the long list of failures, what have I missed?
I will tell the member what he has missed. Apart from missing concepts such as decency and manners, the member has missed out the great issue facing our world today: the need to get to net zero, which he seems to have overlooked. He seems to think—and this will be my parting word to him—that we can somehow get through the next 50 years without attempting to get to net zero. That is what he has missed.
I thank the minister for notice of his statement.
Environmental groups such as WWF say that progress has stalled; the evidence of this Government’s net zero efforts is lacking; and the bold climate targets that the SNP pledged to deliver have all but disappeared. We are seeing those failures again today, but there is no acknowledgement of the need to do way more, and to learn from the failures to deliver the action that this Parliament supported.
What are we going to get for the transformational change that we need? If are to address transport emissions, we will need to do more than dump peak rail fares, however much we campaigned for that. We also need to accelerate electrification; increase the use of rail freight; have buses that people can use their bus passes on; and, indeed, have buses that are built in Scotland by Scottish workers, and which are not imported from China.
Also, should we not be doing more to use our fantastic natural resources to remove, and not emit, carbon? When will we see the right trees in the right places, and the investment to support our peatlands at the scale that is needed?
Finally, will the minister outline specific new actions that the Scottish Government will deliver to ensure that the next set of statistics shows that we are on track to deliver the net zero change that we urgently need?
The member rightly points to the importance of, among other things, tackling carbon emissions in the transport sector. I can point to many areas of activity; indeed, she herself pointed to the abolition of peak fares on trains. The Scottish Government recognises that the transport sector needs to do much more, and to do it in a fair way.
The emissions statistics that the member referred to point to the fact that the car remains the single largest contributor to transport emissions in Scotland. Indeed, it accounts for 5 megatonnes of emissions from domestic transport, including international aviation and shipping.
Those are areas that I am sure that future ministers, and the Parliament as a whole, will want to work together on. We need to invest—and we are investing—in our public transport system.
The Scottish Government has now adopted a carbon budgeting system to measure emission reduction targets alongside the rest of the United Kingdom and international counterparts such as France and Japan. Can the minister say any more about the lessons learned from the use of the carbon budgeting systems in those countries and how they have informed the Scottish Government’s approach?
As we have seen in recent years—not least during Covid—annual emissions targets are highly vulnerable to in-year fluctuations such as cold winters and, indeed, global pandemics. That does not mean that we will not produce annual figures; we are doing that, and I have just outlined them to Parliament.
However, multiyear carbon budgets provide a more reliable framework for sustained progress in emissions reduction by not only smoothing out volatility but allowing us to move to a carbon budget framework, as supported by the Climate Change Committee following its success in the UK and in other countries. It advised that carbon budgets are the most appropriate indicator of underlying progress in emissions reduction.
The most popular option that was chosen during the recent latte levy consultation was “No thanks”. I recognise that some climate change policies will not always be popular, but can the minister tell the chamber what the estimated reduction in emissions would be as a result of the proposed latte levy?
I will write to the member—actually, I will not. Someone else will write to him in due course with the information that he seeks.
The member is right to point to the fact that not every policy will be popular initially. It is important that the Parliament consults meaningfully and listens to people but, ultimately, we must be clear in our message that we have to reduce our carbon emissions in the future. That particular policy might well be part of that work.
The statistics show a substantial reduction in emissions from electricity generation as we realise Scotland’s renewable energy potential. Can the minister provide an update on the Scottish Government’s work to promote and develop green energy projects and supply chains in Scotland?
Our green industrial strategy seeks to ensure that Scotland secures the enormous economic opportunity that the transition presents in areas such as offshore wind, carbon capture, utilisation and storage, and hydrogen. To support that, we are enabling manufacturing to grow and transition through our £75 million investment in the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland.
We are also investing up to £500 million over five years to support a highly productive offshore wind economy and to leverage additional private investment in the infrastructure and manufacturing facilities that are critical to growing the sector. We are also supporting improvements to electricity generation and network asset management, including network charging and access arrangements that will encourage the deployment and viability of renewables projects in Scotland.
Emissions from buildings remain largely unchanged, so the Government must go faster to switch households to clean heating sources and improve the energy efficiency of existing homes. The proposed heat in buildings bill has been delayed and concerns have been raised about its scope and ambition. Does the minister agree with Citizens Advice Scotland that the Government must make provisions in the bill that will contribute to a reduction in fuel poverty and an overall improvement in housing standards, given that environmental justice must go hand in hand with social justice?
The member is quite right that social justice and environmental justice must go hand in hand. Indeed, as the years go by, we will see that they are, to some extent, the same thing.
On the member’s first question, the Government has taken some time to come forward with the proposed heat in buildings bill because, first, our consultation received a large number of responses that we wanted to give due account to and, secondly, we want to get it right to ensure that we introduce a bill that will help decarbonise Scotland but which does not make people poorer.
It is crucial that we continue to support climate innovation, which is supporting new jobs across our rural communities, where employment can be more precarious than elsewhere. For example, there are initiatives that are creating employment in anaerobic digestion and biogas, such as the project at Crofthead farm in Crocketford, which has biogas and carbon removers and which the First Minister visited just before Christmas. Can the minister outline how the Scottish Government is working to support emerging technologies and climate entrepreneurs across Scotland?
Climate innovation and entrepreneurship are not just good for the planet; as other members have talked about, the economic opportunities are enormous, and we want to help Scottish businesses innovate at home and export their solutions to the rest of the world.
We are pleased that we have been able to invest in projects such as the one at Crofthead farm via our Scottish industrial energy transformation fund, and we note the continued entrepreneurial development beyond the initial innovation. Our enterprise agencies provide Scottish businesses with specialist advice, funding and knowledge exchange opportunities to drive up productivity and innovation through net zero initiatives.
Today’s statement shows conclusively that Scotland’s emissions are now flatlining. I am really worried that the Government has no big ideas left. No climate change plan has been presented to Parliament, and we do not know when that is coming. What we got today was a revised car use reduction plan that has no action on road user charging, despite congestion in cities such as Edinburgh crippling the economy and the climate. How will the Government use its remaining few months in office to support councils that want to cut congestion and raise revenue to invest in solutions that can benefit ordinary people as they move around?
The member will not be too surprised to hear that I do not entirely accept the premises of his question. However, to try to answer it, I will say that the Scottish Government remains fully committed to delivering net zero by 2045, and our next climate change plan will set out an approach to delivering on Scotland’s net zero target in a way that is just and fair for everyone but is also ambitious, as the member rightly points out that it needs to be.
The forthcoming climate change plan, which will cover 2026 to 2040, will set out a comprehensive overview and approach not just to mitigating existing climate change but to tackling the underlying problems that we have to fix by 2045.
I thank the minister for early sight of the statement. The statement makes it clear that, although progress is being made, at a point where we need to accelerate, the opposite is happening and progress is slowing down. Scotland’s progress on installing heat pumps is lagging behind that of the rest of the United Kingdom and, on transport, although peak rail fares have been ditched, so too has the commitment to replace diesel trains by 2035. What advice will the minister give to help whoever it is that he committed will write to Maurice Golden step up and accelerate the progress that we need to make if we are to achieve our targets?
I do not think that there is any tradition in the Scottish Government of leaving notes on desks or anything like that.
The member makes important points about transport, which has proved to be a difficult sector to decarbonise. We are right to talk about how Scotland has transformed the way in which we generate electricity, but we are facing up to the fact that other parts of the charts that have been released this week are more challenging, and transport is one of them. The Scottish Government recognises that the transport sector needs to decarbonise in order for us to achieve net zero, and we are committed to doing that in a fair way.
Despite a fall in recent years, agricultural greenhouse gas emissions for beef and dairy production remain high. It is therefore vital that we adopt proven innovations that deliver immediate impact, such as the methane-reducing feed-additive Boevar, which is produced by DSM-Firmenich in Dalry, Ayrshire, following a £300 million-plus investment there.
The impact on global warming of methane is 80 times greater than that of CO2. Given that Boevar cuts methane emissions by up to 45 per cent in beef cattle and 30 per cent in dairy cattle, will the Scottish Government incentivise the low-cost, highly effective roll-out of methane-reducing Scotland-made feed additives, such as Boevar, across Scotland?
The member is right to point to those issues. The Scottish Government recognises the significant impact of methane on global warming and the potential for innovations, including methane-suppressing feed products such as Boevar, to contribute to emissions reductions in the beef and dairy sectors, and we welcome the progress that is being made.
Officials are exploring the development of a pilot scheme to assess the appropriate use of methane-suppressing feed products in Scottish farms. The aim would be to support policy development and inform future decisions on the role that those products might play in reducing emissions.
We continue to monitor progress across the UK and internationally, and we are engaging with other Administrations, research institutes and industry initiatives, such as the UK dairy carbon network, to ensure that our approach remains evidence based and aligned with our net zero ambition.
Last month, the Climate Change Committee advised that nature-based measures such as tree planting and peatland restoration could contribute 13 per cent of emissions reductions by 2045, but that would need the rate of tree planting to more than double in the next two decades. Will the minister admit that—aside from one good year—we are not going to achieve that?
Scotland has 1.5 million hectares of woodland, which covers 19 per cent of our country. The age structure of the forest estate and of the trees that are concerned means that the carbon sink that I referred to earlier will reduce over the 15 years to come. We need to plant more woodland, and we are planting more trees. Scotland is far more effective at planting trees than other nations of the UK. I think that 75 per cent of the tree planting that is presently going on in the UK is happening in Scotland. We are proud of that record and we will continue to work on it.
Despite the restrictions of devolution, Scotland continues to lead the rest of the UK in emissions reductions, with a 50 per cent overall reduction since 1990, as the minister said. Does he agree that Scotland would be in a better position to fight climate change if we had the same powers and financial levers as every other independent country has? Of course, I thank him for his considerable achievements for the people of Scotland during his term in office. [Interruption.]
Despite the muttering from some quarters, we have plenty to learn on such issues from small European countries that have a population of 5 million and are independent, and we seek to do that. The member rightly points out that Scotland continues to lead in emissions reductions across the UK. The reduction that I mentioned earlier—of 51.3 per cent over the period—is higher than that in any other nation of the UK. We do not rest on that laurel but, in the constitutional settlement that we have, we do not have the powers that we need to make some of the choices that we would like to make as a country. The UK Government continues to hold the key policy levers for some policy areas on a net zero future, including critical areas such as Acorn, which I mentioned several times earlier.
The Scottish Government committed £80 million to the Acorn carbon capture project in January 2022 and said that that was contingent on UK Government funding being committed. That commitment has now been made, so when will the Scottish Government spend the £80 million?
As I indicated, we are pleased that the UK Government has made commitments in that area. As the Climate Change Committee has said, Acorn is essential to our reaching net zero. It is also essential to the economy of the north-east, Grangemouth and Scotland as a whole. We are pleased that we took the lead in that area and that the UK Government is following it, but we need a timeline from the UK Government as to when that investment will come.
That concludes the statement on greenhouse gas emissions statistics for 2023. Before we move to the next item of business, there will be a short pause to allow front-bench teams to change position, should they so wish.
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