Decarbonised electricity generation in Scotland: EIR release

Information requested

Evidence to back up John Swinney’s statement of 20 June 2024 at FMQs, "This Government, as a result of its clear policy leadership, has successfully decarbonised electricity generation in Scotland.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. 

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

1. The answer to your question is:

The Climate Change Plan update (2020) set out Scottish Government’s pathway to decarbonising the electricity sector entirely by 2029. The UK Government has set out a commitment to a UK-wide net zero electricity system by 2030 (Clean Power 2030). 

The electricity sector in Scotland has been successfully decarbonised, with emissions falling by 13.0 Mt CO2e between 1990 and 2022 to 1.7 MtCO2 – an 88.1 per cent reduction, the largest reduction of any emissions sector.

About FOI

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