Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009
Act of the Scottish Parliament
The Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 (asp 12) is an act of the Scottish Parliament concerning the setting of emissions reductions targets and certain other matters.
History
Role in the formation of the first Scottish National Party government
In May 2007 the Scottish Green Party supported Alex Salmond's first election as First Minister, and his subsequent appointments of ministers, in return for early tabling of the climate change bill and the SNP nominating a Green MSP to chair a parliamentary committee.
Consultation
The government consulted on the legislation and received more than 21,000 responses. The bill was announced in December 2008.
Parliamentary passage
The bill was passed unanimously by the Scottish Parliament on 24 June 2009 and received royal assent on 4 August.
Provisions
Provisions are included in the act for the creation of a Scottish Committee on Climate Change, as at present the only advisory body is the UK-wide Committee on Climate Change. Ministers in parliament must now report on the progress of these targets. As of January 2011, public sector bodies in Scotland must comply with new guidelines set out by the Scottish Government.
The act acknowledged transport as a major source of emissions.
The act requires that a 42% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
“Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009” enters the record as act of the Scottish Parliament. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Climate, Change and Scotland can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Climate, Change and Scotland provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16829767. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2007, 2008 and 2011.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.