Climate Change Plan: monitoring report 2018

Ministerial Foreword

I am very pleased to be publishing the first annual monitoring report on Scotland’s Climate Change Plan.

Scotland’s low carbon transition is well underway. Our emissions have almost halved since 1990 and we have met our statutory targets in each of the past three years. The Climate Change Plan published in February sustains this momentum with a stretching and credible package of measures to ensure we continue meeting our targets over the period to 2032.

The Plan is an important long term Scottish Government strategy. One of its key features is that it includes a monitoring framework for the first time. The monitoring framework, which comprises a suite of 85 policy output and implementation indicators, will help us to keep track of where things are going well and where changes in approach may become necessary.

This first annual monitoring report pilots the new framework, setting out a baseline against which future assessments of progress will be made. It has been less than a year since the Plan itself was published and it is simply too early to make an assessment of whether the Plan as a whole is on track.

As well as providing the baseline for future assessments of progress, this first report also provides a foundation from which to further develop the monitoring framework itself. In particular, our Climate Change Bill proposes to place the framework on a statutory footing, with individual sector by sector monitoring reports being laid before the Scottish Parliament. The Bill will also mean that Scotland has the world’s most ambitious statutory climate targets for 2020, 2030 and 2040 and will be carbon neutral by 2050.

I look forward to continuing to work together with stakeholders across Scotland to ensure robust and effective monitoring of the Climate Change Plan’s implementation.

Roseanna Cunningham
Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform