Scottish Greenhouse Gas Statistics 2020

7th June 2022

SOURCE EMISSIONS
A measure of the actual emissions or removals of greenhouse gases in Scotland, including international aviation and shipping. Source emissions were 40.0 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020; falling by 51.0 per cent between 1990 and 2020 and falling by 12.0 per cent between 2019 and 2020. In the latest year, emissions from transport fell sharply due to the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions in place during 2020.

EMISSIONS FOR REPORTING AGAINST TARGETS
The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019 implements the Climate Change Committee (CCC)'s recommended method of reporting emissions for the purposes of assessing progress against targets. This method, which acts to remove the impact of technical data revisions to the historical time-series, is known as the GHG Account and the calculation is detailed in section C of the statistics release.

On this basis, the GHG account reduced by 58.7 per cent between the baseline period and 2020.

The Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019 specifies a target of a 56.0 per cent reduction over the same period.

Therefore the interim target for 2020 was met.