Emphasise public support for climate measures, Friends urged
‘There is a real and growing risk that Scotland will not meet its ambition to be carbon neutral by 2045.'
Scotland is not doing enough to meet its climate targets, Andrew Tomlinson, parliamentary engagement officer for Quakers in Scotland, has said.
Writing on the Quakers in Britain website, he shares some of the challenges of meeting Scotland’s climate goals, lamenting ‘a gap between targets and delivery’ that repeatedly emerges during meetings with ministers and civil servants.
While acknowledging that the targets are ‘ambitious’, he says: ‘Good targets will not meet themselves.’
‘There is a real and growing risk that Scotland will not meet its ambition to be carbon neutral by 2045, while its target of a 75% reduction in emissions by 2030 seems increasingly unlikely.’
In order to meet these targets, Scotland should decarbonise its domestic heating by seeing around 64,000 heat pumps installed per year by 2025, peaking at around 200,000 a year in the late 2020s, he says. ‘Currently we are only managing between 3,000 and 4,000 a year.’
Andrew Tomlinson also points to the fact that there are currently new houses being built in Scotland which rely on fossil fuels for heat, and a lack of qualified tradespeople who can install new low-carbon systems. ‘If we are to meet our targets we should be seeing the number of people trained in these professions significantly ramping up already, with bespoke college courses and an increase in apprenticeships.’
Bridging this gap will not be straightforward for the government, he writes, and comes with ‘considerable political risk’. Emphasising public support for these ‘serious, if difficult’ measures then is key, he says, urging Friends to write to their MSPs.
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