Carbon Budgets

(asked on 18th October 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on 1.5 degrees.


Answered by
 Portrait
Claire Perry
This question was answered on 25th October 2018

We are leading the world in our response to the IPCC report – commissioning our independent experts, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), for advice on our long-term targets a week after publication of the IPCC report. The CCC’s focus for this particular advice will rightly be on our long-term targets, including the costs, benefits and deliverability of more ambitious targets.

The UK carbon budgets already set in legislation are among the most stringent in the world, requiring a 57% cut in emissions by 2028 - 2032 from a 1990 baseline. The Government’s focus is on delivering those challenging targets as part of our Clean Growth Strategy. As part of their ongoing analysis on our progress, the CCC already advise on a decarbonisation pathway that takes us on a steeper trajectory than legislated carbon budgets (see the CCC’s Progress Report of June this year).

Under the Climate Change Act, the CCC will next advise us on carbon budget levels in 2020 when they set out their views on the sixth carbon budget (2033-2037).

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