Scottish Government Improvement Plan – Response to Environmental Standards Scotland Investigation – Climate Change Delivery Improvement Report

Introduction

Part 4^[1], of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 (‘2009 Act’), provides that:

1. Public bodies must, in exercising their functions, act in the way best calculated to contribute to the delivery of the climate change targets; in the best way calculated to deliver the national Adaptation Programme; and act in a way that they consider most sustainable. These are the collectively called the climate change duties and are set out in subsection 44(1) of the 2009 Act.

2. Under subsection 45(1) of the 2009 Act Scottish Ministers’ must provide guidance to relevant public bodies in relation to the climate change duties.

3. Scottish Ministers may appoint monitoring bodies under section 47(1) of the 2009 Act to monitor whether relevant public bodies are complying with their climate change duties and having regard to any guidance produced under section 45 of the Act.

The Climate Change (Duties of Public Bodies: Reporting Requirements) (Scotland) Order 2015 (“the 2015 Order”) requires LAs among others to report on compliance with their climate change duties including on greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to their overall emissions footprint. The 2015 Reporting Order requires bodies to report scope 1 and 2 emissions, and to the extent applicable, selected scope 3 emissions in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard^[2]. Interim non-statutory guidance^[3] published by SG in 2021 reiterated the reporting of scope 3 emissions as best practice rather than mandatory.

Making scope 3 emission reporting mandatory for LAs would require consultation under subsection 44(7) of the 2009 Act and an Amendment Order under subsection 44(3) to enact the change.

Taking data from the latest round of Public Bodies Climate Change Duties Reporting for 2022-23, the following scope 3 emission categories were included by at least some LAs in their annual report:

• Category 1 – Purchased goods and services (9% of LAs).
• Category 5 – Waste generated in operations (94% of LAs, including municipal waste in some cases).
• Category 6 – Business travel (91% of LAs reported emissions from road travel).
• Category 7 – Employee commuting (13%), including homeworking (72%).