Scotland’s climate change minister Roseanna Cunningham has confirmed that the Scottish Government will set a net-zero emissions goal if the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) can set out a “pathway” for the nation to achieve carbon neutrality. Speaking during a debate at Holyrood late last week, Cunningham confirmed that the Scottish Government has joined the UK Government in seeking advice from the CCC on how best to bolster its climate targets and achieve net-zero status by 2050. The move comes off the back of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) landmark report, which warns that the global temperature increase will hit 1.5C by 2030, and 3-4C by the end of the century. The debate which Cunningham was speaking at had been held to mark the publication of the first annual monitoring report for Scotland’s climate change framework, which found that the nation met its annual and domestic carbon targets in 2016. Following the release of Government statistics confirming that Scotland had achieved a 49% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions against a 1990 baseline earlier this year, the report reveals that the nation recorded a 10.3% year-on-year reduction in carbon emissions between 2015 and 2016. It additionally notes that the six large-scale renewable generation projects to have been approved in Scotland in 2016 are set to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint by 0.246 MtCO2 annually by 2022.
Edie 5th Nov 2018 read more »
The IPCC makes it very clear that we have at best 12 years before climate change becomes unstoppable and its consequences disastrous for large parts of the planet. In short, if we don’t stop burning hydrocarbons the planet is going to be in real trouble very, very quickly. Even though Scotland’s oil and gas production may be in slow decline we can’t ignore the fact that what’s produced off our coasts is going to have a highly detrimental effect on the climate. We really do need to act responsibly about this and, like it or not, enact some radical changes. We surely owe it to the next generation and beyond to make sure the IPCC’s predictions don’t come true. We must put our thinking caps on to come up with ways of balancing the still-important oil and gas economic activity with our increasingly urgent need to reduce the release of greenhouse gases. In fact the answer is not that complicated but as always requires both public and private investment, neither of which is readily forthcoming in the UK, especially now. For example we could decide to convert most or all of the gas that comes ashore in Scotland to hydrogen, removing the carbon content and reutilising it by turning it into usable products. It would be a good way of providing a buffer as Scotland builds a renewables-powered hydrogen electrolysis based production industry. Hydrogen is being increasingly seen as a transport “fuel” and for domestic uses such as heat and cooking. Work on the latter is already in progress.
Energy Voice 6th Nov 2018 read more »