A disappearing crisis? Climate debate in the 2026 Scottish election campaign

Dr William Dinan

Will Dinan is a senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Stirling. His research interests include political communication, lobbying and public affairs. His recent work addresses climate advocacy by business interests and civil society organisations.

Scottish Election 2026

Section 1: Parties and the campaign

  1. How SNP and Swinney stopped the rot (Eddie Barnes)
  2. The Scottish green wave breaks at last (Dr Jonathan Parker)
  3. What went wrong for Labour (Prof Kezia Dugdale)
  4. The Scottish Conservatives (Dr Alan Convery)
  5. Reform’s courting of Scotland’s post-industrial communities (Dr Maike Dinger and Prof Darren Lilleker)
  6. From chatbots to the ballotbox – how voters used AI to learn about the Scottish Parliament election (Dr Louise Luxton, Dr Timea Balogh, Elise Frelin & Prof Zoe Greene)
  7. Online advertising in the Scottish Parliament election (Kate Dimson and Prof Cristian Vaccari)
  8. Boring is not a virtue: Lessons from Scottish parties’ campaigns on TikTok (Prof Ana Ines Langer, Dr Lluis de Nadal)
  9. When parties travel, does negativity follow? Comparing campaigns on X (Dr Aybuke Atalay, Dr Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira)
  10. Minding the distance: leaders in the election manifestos (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
  11. “It’s the Crisis, Stupid!” – Permacrisis and the 2026 Scottish Parliament election (Dr Paul Anderson, Dr Coree Brown Swan, Dr Judith Sijstermans
  12. ‘Whither Scottish national identity? The Reform UK challenge to an inclusive Scotland’ (Dr Murray Leith, Dr Duncan Sim)
  13. Environmental politics: flooded off the agenda? (Dr Kristen Nicolson)
  14. A disappearing crisis? Climate debate in the 2026 Scottish election campaign (Dr William Dinan)
  15. The Curious Case of the Co-operative Party and Lessons for Labour (Katharine McCrossan)

The issue of climate change appeared to be something few parties in the 2026 Scottish parliamentary elections wished to place at the centre of their campaign. An IPPR produced study of manifestos found that the parties running for Holyrood paid relatively less attention to climate in 2026 than they did in 2021 (and there was not a single mention of climate in the Reform manifesto). So, has the climate emergency declared by the Scottish parliament in 2019 now passed?

Clearly the policy challenges associated with addressing climate change and a just transition are enormous. The rhetoric of steady climate progress, such as the SNPs manifesto claim that “Scotland is now more than halfway to net zero” is misleading. While there has been notable progress in reducing emissions there remain the costly and hard to abate sectors of the economy that need to be addressed if Scotland is to meet its climate targets.

The debate on climate in this election took place in the context of global conflicts and concerns about energy security, as well as the parties strategically focussing on cost of living issues. This connected with debates on jobs, growth, the future of the oil and gas industry in Scotland, and what a “just transition” might look like for Scotland. The closure of refining capacity at Grangemouth and the prospects for a North East economy transitioning from oil and gas extraction became the important context for a “new realism” in policy on climate change.

All parties expressed support for high skilled engineering jobs. For the more climate sceptical parties like Reform and the Conservatives this meant increasing North Sea licensing and exploration to retain the existing skills base. The Greens envisaged a radical and worker led transition away from fossil fuel extraction. The SNP promised support for industrial clusters in Grangemouth and Mossmorran as well as a £500 million Just Transition Fund to support workers and businesses. The Labour party pledges aligned with existing government policy at Westminster, with emphasis placed on supporting legacy industrial sites to find new investment, grid expansion, as well as skills passporting between oil and gas and renewables industries.

The ideological and policy consensus at Holyrood that climate issues are real and need to be prioritised appears to be in retreat. While most parties publicly acknowledge the importance of climate, the emphasis in their campaigning in the 2026 election points to the challenges of sustaining cross party commitment to tackling the climate crisis in the next parliamentary session. An insurgent Reform party, championing their commitment to scrap all net zero targets, subsidies and quangos suggests climate policy may well produce wedge issues in the next Holyrood parliament.

While the political parties calibrated their campaign promises on climate to maximise voter support, the stated priorities of various interest groups may well tell us more about the direction, and speed, of travel on climate policy in Scotland.

Offshore Energies UK, the trade body representing the oil and gas sector (as well as offshore renewables), argued for continued investment in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), and criticised government policy as “deindustrialisation masquerading as decarbonisation”. Pragmatism and an “all energy” approach suggests that lobbying in the next parliament will be focussed on abolishing distinctions between clean and dirty energy in the minds of policymakers.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) have argued for a Scottish industrial strategy that balances the development of a renewables industry while prioritising fair work, a just transition, and community benefit. Their emphasis on the lack of job creation in the renewables sector is likely to become a core issue that the political parties must address as they seek to manage the expectations of stakeholders and the wider public around climate policy. The Stop Climate Chaos Scotland coalition called for a Just Transition Commission to be put on a statutory footing. While this may be an ambitious policy pitch, it does suggest that the incoming parliament might want to consider governance mechanisms that help take the heat out of climate politics.

The metaphors of heat and insulation are apt considering the Climate Change Committee recommended Scotland prioritise the installation of low carbon heating across the Scottish housing stock and increase support for insulation. The main political parties recognised this issue, but the proposals put forward during the campaign lacked detail and substance.

Finally, there was almost no discussion of the transition to low carbon farming by the main parties during the campaign, despite recognition within the policy community that incentives are needed to help this sector to reduce emissions from livestock and crop management and transition to other forms of land use. How the new Scottish parliament engages with these issues will have consequences for livelihoods and the environment.

The cross-party consensus that underpinned the Scottish Climate Act in 2009 seems a distant and different political universe. The challenge for the incoming parliament will be to identify common ground to advance progressive and urgent climate policy.