Scottish Emissions Down 20%

The Scottish Government have released figures today which show that they're halfway to their 42% by 2020 emissions reduction target.

Except, they haven't.

What they've released are figures which show that if you add in carbon trading from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, then Scotland is halfway to its goal.

But a real-life reduction in emissions is something to be proud about, and the new report (for 2007-08) shows that:

Overall emissions for the year dropped 3.0% to 56.1 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO²_e)

This constitutes a (suspiciously round!) 20.0% reduction since 1990.

What went down:

International Aviation -12%
Energy Supply -6%
Business & Industrial Process -4%
Agriculture -3%
Transport (excluding International Aviation & Shipping) -2%

What went up:

Public +7%
International Shipping +5%
Residential +4%
Waste Management +4%

When you compare them to 1990 levels, they're almost all looking good:

Energy Supply -13%
Business & Industrial Process -37%
Agriculture -22%
Transport (excluding International Aviation & Shipping) +7%
Public -23%
International Shipping -17%
International Aviation +157%
Residential -2%
Waste Management -52%

Your eye is immediately drawn to the International Aviation figure. Oh dear.

But there's also a need to do more on the Residential front. Dropping just 2% in 20 years is almost shameful given how much the general public needs to do to get the country where it needs to be. In fact, the Residential figure rises and falls year-on-year seemingly without any influences on it. It's time to insulate every home in the country!

You can read the whole report for yourself here (pdf).