Scotland's Climate Change Plan – 2026-2040

Consumption and Lifestyle

The Climate Change Plan focuses primarily on reduction of our territorial emissions (emissions ‘produced’ within a country’s territory or economic sphere); however, in order to make our contribution to limiting global warming, we must also address the emissions associated with the goods and services we consume, regardless of where they are produced.

It is vital that Scotland, as a global climate leader, does what it can to limit the emissions impact of the choices made in Scotland, both at home and abroad. The most recent publication of Scotland’s Carbon Footprint, for 2021, was released in April 2025. It showed that since 1998, Scotland’s carbon footprint has decreased by 19.9% from 73.9 MtCO2e in 1998 to 59.2 MtCO2e in 2021.

Environmental policy is devolved to Scotland, and we are taking action on policy measures that lie within devolved competence. But we recognise that certain powers relating to the circular economy are reserved to the UK Government, and that the production of our products, services and materials involve supply chains that go beyond Scotland, spanning the UK, European Union, and the rest of the world.

Building on this, the Circular Economy and Waste Route Map^[21] established the Scottish Government’s commitment to develop and publish a Product Stewardship plan. This will set out our framework to prioritising products based on their environmental and economic impact, our ambitions for these products to 2030, and the actions we will take on at least three additional priority products over the next five years.

We continue working to improve public understanding about the sources of emissions through our annual, nationwide campaign, ‘Let’s Do Net Zero’. The campaign runs across multiple media platforms, and reaches millions across Scotland. The campaign seeks to contribute some of the knowledge and motivation people need to effectively change how they consume goods and services.^[22]