Scottish greenhouse gas emissions annual target report: 2016

Part 1: Annual and Domestic Effort Targets

Requirements of the Act

Section 33 of the Act requires that:

• The Scottish Ministers must lay before the Scottish Parliament a report in respect of each year in the period 2010-2050 for which an annual target has been set (a “target year”) (subsection (1)). The report under this section must be laid before the Parliament no later than 31 October in the second year after the target year (subsection (7)).
• The report must state whether the annual target for the target year has been met (subsection (2)).
• If the annual target has not been met, the report must explain why (subsection (3)).
• The report must also state whether the domestic effort target has been met in the target year to which the report relates (subsection (4)).
• If the domestic effort target has not been met, the report must explain why (subsection (5)).
• The report must contain information mentioned in section 34 of the Act (subsection (6)). This is covered in parts 2, 3 and 4 of this report.

Annual target

The annual target for 2016 was met

Achievement of Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions annual targets is measured against the level of the net Scottish emissions account (NSEA). The NSEA accounts for the greenhouse gas emissions from sources in Scotland, Scotland's share of emissions from international aviation and international shipping, the effect of any relevant emissions sequestration (e.g. "carbon sinks" such as woodland) and the effect of the sale and purchase of relevant carbon units (tradable emissions allowances). Part 3 of this report contains information on the NSEA, including the total amount of carbon units that have been credited to or debited from the NSEA.

In 2016, the amount of the NSEA was 41,481,022 tCO₂e. The fixed annual target for 2016 is to reduce emissions to 44,933,000 tCO₂e^[8]. This means that the fixed annual target for 2016 was met by 3,451,978 tCO₂e.

Table 1: Margin between the annual emissions target and the net Scottish Emissions Account (NSEA) in 2016 (tCO₂e)

Domestic Effort Target

The domestic effort target for 2016 was met

Section 8 of the Act places a duty on the Scottish Ministers to ensure that reductions in net Scottish emissions of greenhouse gases, account for at least 80 per cent of the reduction in the net Scottish emissions account in any target year – the “domestic effort target”. For the specific purpose of ascertaining whether this target has been met, the Act stipulates that the use of carbon units through the operation of the EU ETS is treated as though it is a reduction in “net Scottish emissions”.

Table 5 in Part 3 of this report shows the change in net Scottish emissions (including the operation of the EU ETS) between 2015 and 2016 as a proportion of the change in the NSEA between 2015 and 2016. It shows that 100 per cent of the change in the NSEA is accounted for by changes in net Scottish emissions and for the purposes of this report, the domestic effort target has been met.