What’s going on with attempts to cut emissions north of the border?
The Scottish government has received its fair share of praise for its contribution to the drive toward a low carbon economy as a result of its ambitious renewables targets. But the events of this week don’t look like such good news for Scotland’s attempts to cut carbon emissions.
On Tuesday, the Scottish Conservatives released a new energy policy document. It contains a nominal commitment to cutting emissions, but its plan for achieving this doesn’t seem very convincing. On the same day, the Scottish National Party-led government lost favour with environmentalists by launching what they see as a “weak” climate change strategy.
Scottish Conservatives’ weak commitment to cutting emissions
The Scottish Conservatives’ new energy and climate change position statement strongly criticises the devolved government’s plans to expand onshore wind, proposing instead that subsidies for the technology should be cut in half. This is a more hardline position than its sister party in Westminster – the coalition government in Westminster cut subsidies for onshore wind by just ten per cent last year, backing away from bigger cuts.
Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser told us that the Scottish Tories are “simply advocating a more substantive reduction” than its sister party in the south.
The report says the party supports a shift away from fossil fuels “in the long run”. It also expresses a commitment to the principle of decarbonising of the power sector in Scotland – but avoids setting any timeline. A spokesperson for the party told us:
“We do agree with the process of going towards decarbonisation, though not necessarily the outright decarbonisation, and therefore we don’t have a certain date in mind”.
Fraser also added:
“It is not possible to commit to decarbonising the power sector until we know more about the available technologies. We cannot advocate complete decarbonisation without knowing whether CCS [carbon capture and storage] will be an effective solution to the decarbonisation of our conventional fossil fuels, and we are not in a position to claim we will not need fossil fuels in 17 years’ time.”
Fraser is right that many questions still hang over the future role of CCS in the energy system – and to what extent it will be used to remove emissions from fossil fuel power stations. But it’s hard to see how the decision to reject a timeline tallies with the UK’s legally-binding carbon reduction targets under the Climate Change Act. To meet them, the UK government’s climate adviser, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says the UK power sector must be ” virtually decarbonised” by 2030.
The document supports other renewable technologies and some energy efficiency measures. But many of the technologies are in the early stages of development – so it’s hard to see how the document’s proposal to drastically cut onshore wind subsidies fits in with the Climate Change Act.
The document also says: “unconventional gas reserves, onshore and offshore, should be allowed to flourish as a ‘bridging’ resource'” to an energy system more dominated by renewables. To support its position, it highlights the role that shale gas has played in cutting emissions and consumer energy bills in the USA.
But research from numerous sources – including energy giant BP, the International Energy Agency and Chatham House – countries outside the US are unlikely to be able to replicate the US’s shale gas boom. Experts have raised questions as to whether shale gas in this country really could act as a ‘bridging’ resource or whether it would out-compete renewables – driving emissions up, not down.
The Scottish Conservatives also draw on some rather shaky evidence in support of their opposition to windfarms. For example, the report highlights one research paper which, it claims, provides “clear evidence” that wind farms cause insomnia and mental health problems for local residents. Yet numerous reviews of the literature by medical experts have have found there is no clear medical case that this is true – for more detail see here.
Scottish government plans not that convincing
The Tories are a minority party in Holyrood – they have only fifteen MSPs out of a total of 129 in Holyrood – so the document may have a less significant impact on the political debate in Scotland. But green commentators don’t appear to be that convinced by the SNP-led government’s plans to cut the country’s emissions either.
The second draft of the Scottish government’s climate change plan, also released on Tuesday, contains a commitment to decarbonising the Scottish power sector by 2030. Media outlets and the Green Party criticised the plans, however, because they don’t contain any new funding for measures to reduce emissions. Overall, environmental groups said that the plans are not strong enough to meet the Climate Change Act’s target.
The plan isn’t the only black mark against the Scottish government’s green agenda. It emerged last year. It emerged last year that Scotland had missed its first annual target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Climate Change Act – and Green Party MSP Patrick Harvie argues that the new plan does nothing to show how Scotland will “get back on track”.
The concerns also appears to be more widespread – according to the Scottish newspaper the Herald, four committees of the Scottish Parliament immediately announced a joint inquiry into how effective the measures will be.
This may all just be part of the cut and thrust of the political argument. Green campaigners after all are rarely uncritical of government plans – and it’s perhaps not unexpected that the Scottish Conservatives don’t wholeheartedly embrace onshore wind. But if it is indicative of how the political debate in Scotland is shaping up, cutting emissions north of the border in line with the targets of the Climate Change Act could be a tougher prospect.