Climate Change Plan: monitoring report 2019

Overview 

This monitoring report on the Climate Change Plan is complementary both to the Plan itself and the most recent Official Statistics on Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions^[6].  

The Plan sets out the “policies” and “proposals”, leading to defined “policy outcomes”, by which Scotland’s statutory emissions reduction targets from 2018 to 2032 will be met. The annual emissions statistics, which come with a two-year lag, provide the assessment of whether targets have been met and a breakdown of progress at a sector by sector level. 

This monitoring report provides more detailed information on progress in implementing the Plan. The report is made up of a series of sectoral chapters, containing information on the policy output and implementation indicators set out in the corresponding chapter of the Plan: 

• “Policy output indicators” identify whether we are on track to achieve the policy outcomes for that sector. Information on these indicators is set out within blue boxes (see pdf in supporting files).
• “Policy implementation indicators” report on whether measures are in place to deliver the policy outcomes. Information on these indicators is set out within green boxes (see pdf in supporting files).

The diagram below summarises the links between the indicators upon which information is being reported here, the policies in the Plan and their outcomes.

Updates on the development of the proposals set out in the Plan are also provided in the introduction to each sectoral chapter of this report, where appropriate. 

The chart below provides an overview of progress against the 29 policy output indicators across all chapters of the Plan. A list of these indicators, organised by sector, is also provided in summary table 1. Full details on each indicator may be found in the relevant chapters of this report. 

Summary Figure 1: Overview of progress against policy output indicators. 

When the first monitoring report was published in 2018 it was too early to make an assessment of the majority of the indicators, and a comprehensive assessment of whether the Plan was fully on track was not therefore possible.  While the number of indicators in this position has reduced, it remains the case that it is too early to make an assessment for the majority of the indicators as, in many cases, data is not yet available for the period covered by the indicators.

Of the indicators where “on track” assessments have been possible this year, 7 are assessed as on track (across the electricity, transport and forestry sectors) and 3 are assessed as off track (across waste and peat). Further information on these indicators, and the actions being taken where indicators are off track are set out in the body of the report.

We will continue to develop and improve this monitoring framework as we prepare for statutory reporting in future years. In particular, we will look to learn from experience over these first two years in terms of areas where data availability has proven to be a barrier to effective monitoring. We will also look to explore ways to make the assessment of whether indicators are on track as transparent as possible and to consider where the design of individual indicators can be improved.

Summary Table 1: Progress against policy output indicators.