After the Scottish Government failed, for the second year in a row, to meet their climate change target for reducing carbon emissions I called for a topical question to ensure the Minister would come to Parliament to explain why.  

The Government had announced on the previous Friday that they had failed to meet their 2011 target, missing it by 0.8 million tonnes. They also failed to meet their 2010 target, blaming it on a cold winter.

The SNP continually herald their climate change targets as world leading, so to fail to meet them for the second year in a row is deeply embarrassing for the Government. Last year they blamed it on a Scottish winter being cold, this time, despite a ‘better’ winter across that period, the target was still missed by almost a million tonnes.

If Scotland is to remain a leader on the world stage in the fight against climate change then it has to take the issue of climate change seriously and consider a significant redraft of their Second Report on Proposals and Policies. Failure to do so and just tinkering around the edges will leave their targets in tatters.

For two years in a row the Government’s actions have failed to take the step change needed, it is now time they listened to the criticism and accelerated their efforts. They can start by bringing the issue of Climate Change into the cabinet. With around 40% of emissions coming from transport and housing then robust discussion must be taking place around the cabinet table.

The Minister, however, in his answer failed to commit to a significant redraft of its second report on proposals and policies despite now having to play catch up. Cosmetic changes will not do, a step change is needed.

You can find below a full transcript of the topical question that I asked the Minister for Environment Paul Wheelhouse. The transcript has been taken from the official report:

Claire Baker (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Lab):
1. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its 2011 climate change target. (S4T-00390)
The Minister for Environment and Climate Change (Paul Wheelhouse): Official statistics on emissions of greenhouse gases in Scotland were published on 7 June 2013. Unadjusted figures show that Scotland’s direct emissions fell by 9.9 per cent between 2010 and 2011, and that that was the largest year-on-year decrease since records began in 1998. However, once the effect of emissions trading is factored in, the net Scottish emissions account fell by only 2.9 per cent. The result is that Scotland’s statutory climate change target for 2011, which is expressed as an absolute figure in tonnes, and which was set based on Parliament’s understanding of Scotland’s baseline emissions at the time, has been missed by 0.848 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

The Scottish ministers plan to publish the finalised second climate change report on proposals and policies, or RPP, later this month. That report will set out how the Scottish Government intends to meet our targets to 2027 and will show how we can compensate for the excess emissions in 2010 and 2011 in the long term.

It is worth bearing in mind that, since 1990, Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 21.59 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent, which equates to more than the total 2011 emissions of Northern Ireland of 20.42 megatonnnes.
Claire Baker: The failure to meet the second emissions target is deeply disappointing but perhaps not surprising. The failure to meet the 2010 target was dismissed as being the result of a cold winter, and the failure to meet the 2011 target is being spun as a complicated data change. The minister says that we are still on target for 2020, but the adjusted baseline from 2010 data makes the target more difficult. We are relying on circumstances rather than firm policy and leadership. Over the past 48 hours, the minister has received a volume of messages calling for improvements to RPP2. Will the revised RPP2 clearly demonstrate which policies have been introduced to compensate for the Government’s annual missed targets?
Paul Wheelhouse: As I explained to the member in my answer, RPP2 will look at how we will address the shortfall in abatement in 2011 and recoup it in the long term. As the member will appreciate, we have had about a week since the data was first notified to the Government and it was published on Friday. The process of preparing RPP2 has been a lengthy one, involving parliamentary consultation. We will do what we can to adopt the figures that were published last Friday in the new document that will be published on 27 June. I hope that that will set out the path that will set Scotland fair for achieving the target.

It is worth pointing out that, as at 2011, we expected to have a fall of 23.9 per cent in emissions to this date but have actually achieved 25.7 per cent. I hope that Claire Baker will recognise that the baseline having moved by 1.2 megatonnes has made the task of achieving a fixed target more difficult.
Claire Baker: In scrutiny of RPP2, the parliamentary committees confirmed Stop Climate Chaos’s analysis that we will meet all our annual targets only if all the policies and proposals are implemented and the European Union increases its emissions reduction target to 30 per cent. Will the revised RPP2 address the reliance on the EU emissions target? Under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, the Scottish Government must give a formal report when an annual target is missed. The report on 2010 was wrapped up into RPP2. Will there be a formal report on the 2011 target or will it just be wrapped up? It is not really good enough to include the formal report in RPP2 when it is due within a week.
Paul Wheelhouse: Claire Baker ought to realise that a separate document was produced that explains why we missed the target in 2010; a similar format will be produced for 2011. For the RPP2 document to which Claire Baker referred, we had the opportunity, given the timescales involved, to look at how to address our emissions targets in the longer term. Claire Baker is incorrect in assuming that it is only in the circumstances of the EU moving to 30 per cent that we can achieve a 42 per cent reduction in our climate emissions. As we have shown, we can achieve 42 per cent in RPP2 if this Government implements its policies and proposals even in the absence of an EU move to 30 per cent. We are making great strides to ensure that we can achieve targets through domestic effort rather than just relying on the EU. Clearly, if the EU moves to 30 per cent, our task will become a lot easier and we will have a substantial overshoot in abatement of the order of 80 megatonnes by the end of 2027.
Patrick Harvie (Glasgow) (Green): I am grateful that the minister has not used the phrase “world leading” so far in this exchange, but I think that it is regrettable that he has also not used the word “sorry”. What actions does he think that he should have taken that would have allowed us to reach the target last year and this year? In which policy areas has the Government not been doing well enough?
Paul Wheelhouse: As the member knows, we are referring to figures in 2011, so in fact we are talking not about last year or the year before but about the year before that. Knowing Patrick Harvie reasonably well, although I have been in the Parliament for only a short time, I am sure that he has looked at the figures in some detail. All sections of the economy are now making progress in emissions reductions. For example, those for transport are lower than they were in 1990, if we exclude international aviation and shipping. Clearly, we want to do more. As I set out in the draft RPP2, we are aware that transport and residential emissions are areas that have further to go. However, the Government is doing all that it can and making substantial investments to achieve the targets.

For the maturity of the debate, it would be nice to have it recognised just how challenging the targets are. They are world-leading targets, and this country has shown greater ambition in that regard than any other nation in the world. It would be nice to see other members in the chamber showing some concern for the fact that we are trying to achieve the most ambitious targets in the world and recognising that we have to do that together.
Tavish Scott (Shetland Islands) (LD): Is the minister aware that the climate change legislation law that the Scottish Parliament passed says that the

“Scottish ministers must … ensure that the net Scottish emissions account for each year in that period does not exceed the target set for that year”?

Given that the law has now been broken for the second year, what is the point of the law and who is taking account of it?
Paul Wheelhouse: I appreciate Tavish Scott’s point that absolute targets have been missed, which I fully recognise, but we need to take some confidence from the fact that percentage changes are happening faster than was originally assumed when the targets were set based on old data and methodology.

With regard to the 2009 act and the targets that came from it, with the benefit of hindsight we can say that there was a misunderstanding of the scale of emissions in Scotland at that time and, indeed, in 1990. We have to take into account that the goalposts have shifted to some extent but we still have to achieve absolute targets. We are striving to achieve those absolute targets, irrespective of the fact that the task has become more difficult. I would hope that the member would join us in trying to achieve that.

I highlight that none of the Opposition parties—with the possible exception of the Greens, who I acknowledge have some policies that have made clear what alternative investments they would make, although I do not agree with them 100 per cent—have come forward with costed plans with alternatives to RPP2. There is a dearth of information from the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats about what they would try to do instead.
Claudia Beamish (South Scotland) (Lab): I beg to differ from the minister about a dearth of policies from Scottish Labour. We have made a range of proposals on transport and energy efficiency in housing.
The Deputy Presiding Officer (Elaine Smith): We need a question.
Claudia Beamish: If we are to meet our future targets, transport is a key area but, with a reduction of only 0.2 per cent between 2010 and 2011, we are not seeing the necessary progress. At the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee’s scrutiny stage, concerns were raised over the wishful thinking of the abatement measures. How will that be addressed in the redraft?
Paul Wheelhouse: Claudia Beamish is incorrect, I believe. I need to look up the figure, but I believe that there was a drop of 2 per cent in transport emissions between 2010 and 2011. She is quite right that the overall decrease between 1990 and 2011 was 0.2 per cent.

In the draft of the RPP2 that we are preparing this month, we hope to demonstrate that we can achieve our long-term target of a 42 per cent reduction by 2020. It is not correct that, as some people assume, 42 per cent needs to be across every sector. In an ideal world, that would be possible, but we can take the economy and the public with us only as fast as they can go in a reasonable timescale.

It is worth bearing in mind that when the Committee on Climate Change set the annual targets, it did so in the context of what it thought was reasonably possible for a country of this size to achieve. In the event, the EU moved to 30 per cent. That we are continuing to press to the 42 per cent target in light of the fact that the EU might not move as far as we would like it to shows this Government’s commitment to achieving our climate change targets.