Scotland's Climate Change Plan 2026-2040: strategic environmental assessment

6. Reasons for Introducing the Climate Change Plan as Adopted

6.1.1 The 2005 Act requires that the Environmental Report identify, describe and evaluate the likely significant effects on the environment of any reasonable alternatives to the plan or programme, taking into account its objectives and geographical scope.

6.1.2 Following the comments made by respondents to the draft Climate Change Plan (2026-2040), the Scottish Government has published the final Climate Change Plan (2026-2040).

6.1.3 The CCP as published was considered to have no reasonable alternative given the statutory requirements and as the CCP already provides a broad narrative recognising the crucial importance of a healthy natural environment in supporting Scotland’s resilience to climate change. This expands on the need to build resilience against multiple and cascading risks by managing water and soil health as our primary natural assets. NatureScot advise that the Scottish Government should have considered the alternative of ‘doing more and doing it faster’. The Scottish Government recognises that there is always more that can be done to tackle to twin crises of climate change and nature loss. However, the legislation required us to lay a Plan to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and meet our first three carbon budgets – which were set at levels advised by our independent advisors, the Climate Change Committee – and the emissions reduction pathway that the Plan sets out sufficiently achieves this, in addition to providing a number of wider benefits to Scotland’s environment, economy and population.

6.2. Changes made since the draft Climate Change Plan

6.2.1 The finalised CCP contains an additional annex which summarises the consultation and scrutiny period and illustrate how feedback has helped shape the final Plan.

6.2.2 Cross-cutting changes to the final plan broadly relate to the following areas:

• Accessibility of the Plan: We have reviewed and improved accessibility of this final version.
• Emissions reductions modelling: We have included further detail on the emissions reductions that we expect to achieve from each mitigation policy and the methodological approach that resulted in these figures, including key data inputs and assumptions.
• Monitoring and evaluation: We provided a full list of emissions reduction and just transition indicators for the monitoring and evaluation framework.
• Costs of the actions in the Plan: The final CCP sets out an assessment of the cost and benefits of the policies in the Plan, in line with the requirements of the legislation. These are set out at the overall Plan level, and broken down further by sector and policy grouping.
• Financial benefits of the Plan: We have set out a range of the direct financial benefits for people’s everyday lives from the Plan. This is presented on a per policy level, where possible.
• Wider co-benefits: In the final Plan we increased the prominence of the health and wellbeing benefits of action on climate change and nature loss, including cleaner air, warmer homes and health‑promoting environments. The final Plan strengthens links between our climate and nature ambitions and priorities for health, wellbeing and social care. We also worked with the ECCI to quantify these co‑benefits, including positive impacts for individuals and public finances through reduced pressure on public services.
• Impact assessments: When finalising the Plan we further developed our impact assessments to highlight feedback on the potential positive and negative impacts of the Plan on Scotland’s communities.

6.2.3 A number of sectoral changes were made to the final Plan. Many of the sectoral policy recommendations and feedback received called for delivery to be accelerated, or for already-committed action to be undertaken. These have been accepted, and policy positions were reconsidered based on the importance stakeholders place upon them. Where the Scottish Government has not agreed with suggested changes to the policies or proposals or the approach outlined in the draft Plan, an explanation of why has been provided. The full list of changes made to the final Plan can be found here: Scotland's Climate Change Plan: Annex 4 - Consultation and Scrutiny.

6.2.4 The changes made to the final Plan are likely to have an overall positive effect on the environment by generating cleaner air, and tackling climate change and nature loss, in addition to providing wider additional socio-economic benefits to Scotland.