Stop Climate Chaos Scotland's Climate (SCCS) emissions policy proposals review: FOI release

Information requested

Details of analysis of the emissions reductions and costs associated with the policy proposals in Stop Climate Chaos Scotland's Climate Manifesto?

Response

The Scottish Government as part of its consideration of the SCCS manifesto, did an initial review of the emissions impact from the policy proposals included within SCCS's climate manifesto. This review was primarily focused on the impact on domestic source emissions, that would occur if the Scottish Government were to adopt the proposals, over and above the existing commitments from SG. This means that a number of proposals were identified as not having additional emissions impact as they overlapped with other Scottish Government commitments, because they had an international impact, or because they impacted consumption emissions but not source emissions.

The outcome of this initial review found that the policy proposals would result in a net change of between -1.2Mt and 1.6Mt by 2030 and between -6Mt and 2.3Mt by 2040. This was an initial estimate and is being kept under review as thinking develops further on how individual proposals might be progressed towards implementation. Also, as set out below not all proposals were assessed at this stage.

The assessment of policies from the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland manifesto can be classified into 3 major categories:

• Policies that were assessed as being additional to existing SG policies and deliver additional direct emissions impact – These policies were reviewed against current SG policies and were determined to be further reaching or not overlapping with existing SG policies. These were reviewed by SG analysts to provide an initial emissions impact figure. The assessment of these policies is still subject to uncertainty given this was a review and not an in-depth analysis of each policy.
• Policies that were assessed as not having additional direct emissions impact relative to existing SG policies – These policies were identified as either overlapping with SG policies or targets, not impacting domestic emissions, or only impacting on consumption basis. These proposals may help to deliver on SG targets, indirectly generated emissions reductions, delivered on international commitments or wider Climate change objectives but would not result in any additional direct emissions abatement over and above what SG has already committed to.
• Policies that were unable to be assessed – A number of policies were identified as being too complex or too uncertain to provide an assessment. These policies may have some potential impact but would require defining the exact form that they would take, or require more extensive assessment due to the number of interdependent factors that they influence.

The breakdown of evaluation is set out below:

Classification	Number of proposals
Total identified SCCS policy proposals	118
Number of proposals with identified additional direct impact	9
Number of proposals with no identified additional direct impact	57
Number of proposals that were unable to be assessed	52

Provided alongside this response is a spreadsheet that collates the emissions assessment made for each policy identified from the SCCS manifesto.

The Scottish Government at this stage does not have any assessment of the costs from the SCCS policy proposals.

The Scottish Government is happy to set up further engagement to talk through the analysis of these policies with SCCS and will reach out following issuing of this response.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400414598 - Information Released - Spreadsheet

File type

Excel document

File size

19.6 kB