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Since 2021, we have supported six Scottish Islands (Barra, Cumbrae, Hoy, Islay, Raasay and Yell) in their ambition to become fully carbon neutral by 2040. This report highlights the significant made progress across all six islands throughout 2023 and 2024.

Introduction

Scotland’s Islands and the Climate Emergency

The Scottish Government has declared a climate emergency and stepped up its climate action and commitments through Scotland’s 2019 Climate Change Act. We remain steadfast in our statutory commitments in calling for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

We know that island communities are among those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change globally. Scotland is no exception to this and many of our islands are particularly exposed to the risk of rising sea levels and coastal erosion. The potential damage and even loss of habitats will impact heavily on their rich natural diversity.

At the same time, the transition to net zero offers an opportunity to support the sustainability of island communities and their economies in the long term. In order to ensure this happens in line with the Just Transition principles, the CNI project is working to address the particular challenges that islands face - be that higher costs of living, fuel poverty, connectivity or community resilience.

To support climate action going forward in an island context, the CNI project is facilitating community-led efforts to ensure that islanders can actively patricipate in the drive to net zero in decarbonisation. The learning from the project will inform the journey to net zero across all Scottish islands and potentially mainland rural areas too.

Scotland’s climate change legislation also ensures we prepare and adapt to the impacts which we are already seeing, including rising sea levels and more extreme weather.

CNI Project Background

Since its inception under the ‘A Fairer, Greener Scotland: Programme for Government 2021-22, the project has worked closely with communities and built capacity to support decarbonisation activity across the six islands. This report summarises activity which took place in financial year 2023/2024.

The project’s key principles remain:

Alignment: The project aims to align with existing island-based climate change efforts and to avoid duplication.

Justice and fairness: The project will support islands to become carbon neutral in a just and fair way. Fairness will be promoted through an effective bottom-up participatory process driven by the six island communities.

Replicability: All Scottish islands will benefit from the project through the sharing of good practices coming from the implementation of the project. Effectively the six islands will act as catalysts for net zero action across Scotland.

The CNI project’s core goals link closely with Scotland’s National Planning Framework’s overarching spatial principles, namely the following:

• Just transition: We will empower people to shape their places and ensure the transition to net zero is fair and inclusive.
• Conserving and recycling assets: We will make productive use of existing buildings, places, infrastructure and services, locking in carbon, minimising waste, and building a circular economy.
• Local living: We will support local liveability and improve community health and wellbeing by ensuring people can easily access services, greenspace, learning, work and leisure locally.
• Rebalanced development: We will target development to create opportunities for communities and investment in areas of past decline, and manage development sustainably in areas of high demand.
• Rural revitalisation: We will encourage sustainable development in rural areas, recognising the need to grow and support urban and rural communities together.

As highlighted in section 4, many of the capital funded projects that have been developed during the project to date align with several of these principles bringing greater value to rural communities and supporting a just transition to net zero.

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