McAllan said: “In this challenging context of cuts and U.K. backtracking [on green policies], we accept the CCC’s recent rearticulation that this parliament’s interim 2030 target is out of reach.”
The Scottish government will also scrap its annual emissions reduction targets, which ministers have missed eight times in the last 12 years. They will be replaced by “carbon budgets,” blocks of five-year emission reduction targets, which governments in the rest of the U.K. currently use to stay on track to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Scottish ministers recently delayed the publication of a draft climate change plan setting out how climate targets would be met.
The government has pledged to retain a more ambitious target of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2045. McAllan said this goal still had her “unwavering commitment,” and outlined a range of climate-friendly plans including quadrupling the number of electric vehicle charge points.
Hitting that goal will become more challenging if ministers do not urgently lay out a draft climate plan. McAllan told MSPs that the plan will be published “this summer.”
The decision to drop the target is likely to rock Holyrood, where the Scottish Greens are junior partners to the Scottish National Party in a power-sharing agreement. One prominent Green Party activist in Scotland, Niall Christie, warned that the decision may result in supporters of left-wing Scottish Greens turning against the coalition agreement.
