The interim target of reducing emissions by 75 percent by 2030 has been abandoned by the Scottish Government.

Although the final goal of reaching net-zero by 2045 will remain, it is unclear how this will be achieved without the initial milestone being reached, and furthermore as the SNP-Green controlled government has managed to miss eight of the last twelve annual targets it has been mooted that these annual targets could now be scrapped too.

Despite the expectation that Scottish Government will row back, new polling by Focaldata for the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) shows that voters in Scotland still overwhelming support net-zero, with around three-quarters (73 per cent) of Scots supporting the 2045 target.

In March this year the Climate Change Committee rebuked the Scottish Government for failure to update its climate plan and pointed to further slippage in climate policy which meant they did not believe the Scottish Government could meet its 2030 emissions reduction target.

Alasdair Johnstone from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said: “The Scottish Government is pretty much reverting to what the Climate Change Committee recommended in the first place. This looks like incompetence, with common sense policies such as improving insulation rates for homes not properly implemented."

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