Scotland's Government Collapses Over Missed Climate Change Goals

The first minister has ended the SNP's power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party.

The chaos unfolded last week after the first minister admitted Scotland won’t meet its climate targets, which had called for a 75% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions compared to 1990 by 2030 as a milepost on the way to net zero by 2045. The government is all but giving up, abandoning concrete annual emissions goals in favor of vaguer multiyear emissions “budgets.”

A recent report from the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee, a quasi-governmental body that supports climate action, highlighted the steep cost of rushing to meet the 2030 goal. Emissions from building heating were supposed to fall 71% by 2030 compared to 2020.

That would require installing more than 80,000 heat pumps each year to replace natural-gas-fired boilers for home heating and hot water. In 2023 Scots installed 6,000 heat pumps.

To reduce road emissions, Scotland would need to install roughly 24,000 charging points for electric vehicles by 2030, the committee estimates. Installations as of 2022: 4,000.

Scotland missed its emissions-reductions targets for eight of the last 12 years.