Scotland to scrap key climate targets

Scotland is expected to announce a significant reduction in its key climate targets tomorrow, Sky News understands.

The Scottish Government will make a ministerial statement in Holyrood after a report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) said the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2030 was unachievable.

Independent experts say Scotland has missed eight of the past 12 annual targets and its wider plans are “beyond credibility”.

Ministers and government officials tonight declined to comment on suggestions that its ambitions would be watered down, but multiple sources widely expected a U-turn.

“The Scottish Government has failed to deliver Scotland’s ambitious climate targets,” the CCC said in a damning report to the Scottish Parliament last month.

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who announced the preliminary climate plan, dismissed suggestions she had “over-exaggerated” the ambitions when asked at the COP26 event in Glasgow in 2021.

Net-zero emissions minister Miley McAllen will give an update in Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon.

Greens climate spokesman Mark Ruskell, who works with the SNP in government, said: “We are absolutely determined to accelerate the urgent and substantive action needed to tackle the climate crisis, as the CCC recently set out and There is every hope that the Scottish Government can rise to the challenge.”

“In the face of the UK government’s complete reversal of climate action, this is a critical moment for us to accelerate meaningful change that will get us to net zero emissions by 2045 at the latest.”