THE SNP-Green Scottish government’s 2030 emissions targets are “beyond what is credible,” a damning new report has said today.

In its annual report to Holyrood, the climate change committee bluntly told MSPs: “The Scottish government is failing to achieve Scotland’s ambitious climate goals.”

Annual emission goals, regarded as crucial stepping-stones, have been missed eight times in 12 years, leaving the 2030 target of cutting emissions by 75 per cent requiring most sectors of the economy to increase their rate of reduction by nine times over the remainder of the decade.

“The 2030 target is now beyond what is credible,” the committee concluded.

The report went on to slam the delay in the publication of Scotland’s Climate Change Plan since last year, which the committee argued left the country with “no comprehensive delivery strategy for meeting future emissions targets.”

It noted that “most key indicators of delivery progress are off track” and “significantly so” for tree planting and peatland restoration rates, heat-pump installations, and electric van sales and in recycling where they had seen “no progress in rates over the last 10 years.”

Noting “ambitious” Scottish government targets to cut miles driven by a fifth on 2019 levels, it similarly concludes: “A clear strategy on how this will be achieved is still missing.”

Committee interim chairman Professor Piers Forster said: “Scotland has laudable ambitions to decarbonise but it isn’t enough to set a target — the government must act.”

The report was seized on by climate and social justice campaigners as they urge the Scottish government to action.

Oxfam Scotland’s Jamie Livingstone warned the government’s “remaining climate credibility now firmly on the line,” adding they should “turbocharge climate action, funded by taxing the biggest polluters and the better off.”

WWF Scotland’s Fabrice Leveque meanwhile called the report “yet another reminder of the Scottish government’s failure to act” and Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Imogen Dow said it showed the “embarrassing and abject failure of politicians to deliver on their legal commitments to the Scottish people.”

Scottish Labour Net Zero spokeswoman Sarah Boyack said: “The SNP’s environmental record is made up of empty rhetoric, missed targets and broken promises, and the Scottish Green Party is no longer worthy of the name.

“This lack of progress is not only an environmental travesty but an economic one too, with jobs and communities being put at risk by a clueless government with no strategy.”

The Scottish government were contacted for comment.