21st May 2025
The Climate Change Committee’s pathway for Scotland to achieve net zero emissions sets out the pace of change required across different sectors of society across four five-year intervals from 2026 to 2045.
Developed with the latest evidence, modelling and stakeholder engagement, the CCC says the targets are achievable and would bring multiple benefits for households including cleaner air, lower energy costs, warmer homes, and more nutritional diets.
However, action needs to be taken immediately, at pace and scale, which will require sustained investment but will come with wider economic benefits for Scotland.
Green energy transition
Energy from wind and solar is expected to triple over the next decade, providing 98% of electricity generation in Scotland by 2035. The transition to electrification will require the capacity of transmission and distribution networks to be increased at pace.
While policy in the electricity supply sector is largely reserved, Scotland can play a role in accelerating the transition to renewables. For example, by improving the process to approve large electricity infrastructure projects such as onshore windfarms. The Scottish Government and the UK Government have committed to reform the energy consents system in Scotland, including through measures in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Both governments should ensure that these reforms are now implemented at pace.
The Scottish Government will need to continue working with the UK Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to make progress where powers are shared or remain reserved. Making electricity cheaper, through rebalancing prices to remove policy levies from electricity bills, is a key recommendation the Committee have made to the UK Government and will be essential to delivering Scotland’s targets, in tandem with action by the Scottish Government. The Scottish government should work with the UK government to push for policy costs and levies to be removed from electricity bills in order to bring the cost of electricity down.
The Government must also work with communities, workers and business to develop proactive transition plans that enable access to secure employment and business opportunities that come with net zero transition.
Transport
Transport is the highest emitting sector in Scotland, accounting for 23% of Scotland’s emissions. Transport emissions increased by 8% from 1990 to 2019 and dropped significantly during the covid pandemic. While there was a rebound post-pandemic, some impact of shifts in travel patterns and working from home remained and transport emissions today are 7% below 2019 levels (suggesting an overall 15% drop since pre-pandemic).
Currently EVs only make up 2.2% of cars and a major shift will be needed to achieve the 60% target by 2035 and 94% by 2045 that the CCC says is needed. This will require expansion of EV charging infrastructure across the country combined with reliable information on electric vehicles provided to the public to encourage their uptake.
The Scottish Government recently dropped its target to reduce car kilometres by 20% by 2030, saying it was not achievable. The latest predictions from the Climate Change Committee are that car kilometres are only expected to fall by 6% by 2045. However, they do propose measures the government could take to reduce this further with investment in bus services and further measures to reduce traffic growth following those already established such as the Edinburgh City Centre Transformation project and Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone.
Scotland has already made good progress on electrification of buses. The Scottish ultra-low emission bus scheme introduced in 2020 has supported the introduction of 248 electric buses across the country. This was followed in 2021 by the Scottish Zero Emission Bus Challenge with funding provided to operators and local authorities for vehicles and infrastructure to support the shift. Scotland now has the highest rate of electric buses in the UK (32% compared to 22%). The government has also introduced policies to encourage greater use of public transport, with free bus travel provided to everyone under the age of 22 and over the age of 60, which has seen a significant uptake in bus use.
Scotland can build on this progress by improving public transport services and active travel infrastructure through investment in integrated networks, enhanced services, and dedicated walking and cycling routes supported by long-term funding and powers for local authorities.
Agriculture, diets and biodiversity
Agriculture is the second highest emitting sector in Scotland, accounting for 19% of emissions. Achieving the emission reduction targets needed to achieve the net zero pathway will require the government to provide incentives and address barriers for farmers and estate managers to diversity land use and management. Farmers also need to be given long-term certainty on public funding for farming practices and technologies to reduce emissions from managing crops and livestock.
The CCC says a 20% reduction in meat consumption by 2035 and 30% by 2045 is needed. Achieving this would not require a major dietary shift – currently the average Scottish person consumes about 80g of meat a day (560g a week). Cutting meat from the diet two days a week would achieve the 30% target. Replacing meat and dairy in the diet with whole foods or plant based alternatives would bring nutritional and health benefits without negatively affecting household food costs.
Land-based actions contribute 8% of the emissions reduction required by 2035, increasing to 13% by 2045. The role of carbon sequestration in new woodlands grows substantially in the later years of the pathway, playing an essential role in balancing emissions to meet net zero. This provides opportunities for Scottish farmers and land managers to diversify their income streams away from livestock farming while also bringing a wider range of benefits, including to biodiversity in Scotland. Early action is vital to release land from agriculture and enable its use to grow natural carbon sinks: increased tree planting rates in the 2020s are necessary to deliver the required levels of sequestration by 2045 as trees mature, while higher levels of peatland restoration reduce peatland emissions.
Housing
The majority of homes in Scotland (88%) use fossil fuels for heat. The pathway set by the CCC says that 92% of homes will have low-carbon heating by 2045, and all homes by 2050. This is contrary to the government’s Heat in Buildings Bill which sets a target of all homes decarbonised by 2045.
Here, urgent and rapid action is needed to ramp up low-carbon heat installations with heatpumps playing a key role, reaching nearly 35,000 a year in 2030 and over 120,000 a year by 2035. The CCC makes the point that these targets are consistent with natural replacement cycles with gas boilers being replaced by heatpumps when they are at the end of their life and need to be replaced anyway.
Scotland, and the UK in general, is significantly behind on heat pump installations compared to other European countries, but rapid deployment is achievable based on what other similar sized countries have achieved, such as Ireland where 80,000 homes had heatpumps installed in 2023, compared to only 6,000 in Scotland.
In 2022, 31% of households in Scotland were estimated to be in fuel poverty. This is even greater in the Western Isles where 57% of households are in fuel poverty and 44% are in extreme fuel poverty. One of the main drivers of this is energy inefficient housing stock. Supporting policies to improve home energy efficiency, such as draught-proofing, loft, floor and wall insulation are needed to address this.
Conclusion
The pathway set out by the Climate Change Committee is achievable, but needs rapid action across a number of sectors, particularly in the transition to electric vehicles, more energy efficient homes powered by electricity, and support for farmers to diversity land use management. Delivering this will achieve Scotland’s net zero emission targets along with cleaner air, safer home environments, better diets, and improved transport options.