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Committee on Climate Change > Tackling climate change > Legal context > The Climate Change Act and UK
regulations

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The science of climate change

Mitigation: reducing carbon emissions
Legal context
Global Action on Climate Change
Climate Change Legislation in the EU
The Climate Change Act and UK regulations

Adapting to climate change

The Climate Change Act and UK regulations

The Government has taken a number of steps to limit the UKs emissions of greenhouse
gases through legally binding targets, both now and in the future. The UK has been
signed up to the Kyoto Protocol since 1995.

The Climate Change Act

The Climate Change Act was passed in 2008 and established a framework to develop
an economically credible emissions reduction path. It also strengthened the UKs
leadership internationally by highlighting the role it would take in contributing to urgent
collective action to tackle climate change under the Kyoto Protocol.

The Climate Change Act includes the following:

2050 Target. The act commits the UK to reducing emissions by at least 80% in

2050 from 1990 levels. This target was based on advice from the CCC report: Building
a Low-carbon Economy. The 80% target includes GHG emissions from the devolved
administrations, which currently accounts for around 20% of the UKs total emissions.
Carbon Budgets. The Act requires the Government to set legally binding carbon

budgets. A carbon budget is a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in the
UK over a five-year period. The Committee provides advice on the appropriate level of
each carbon budget which are designed to reflect cost effective path to achieving the
long terms objectives. The first four carbon budgets have been put into legislation and
run up to 2027.
The Committee on Climate Change was set up to advise the Government on

emissions targets, and report to Parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse

gas emissions. It includes the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) which scrutinises and
advises on the Governments programme for adapting to climate change.
A National Adaptation Plan requires the Government to assess the UKs risks
from climate change, prepare a strategy to address them, and encourage critical
organisations to do the same. For more detail, visit the UK adaptation policy page.

(B) UK Government and Climate Change

Preventing dangerous climate change, and preparing for it, touches on all aspects of the
economy. Therefore many government departments provide input into climate change
policies. The two key government departments charged with setting climate policy are:

Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) leads on the UKs policy to
reduce emissions. It is responsible for delivering secure energy and driving ambitious
action on climate change at home and abroad. For up-to-date information about
current policies in the UK for tackling climate change see the DECCwebsite.
Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) leads on the UKs domestic
adaptation policy. It is responsible for developing a National Adaptation Programme to
address the risks set out in the first Climate Change Risk Assessment. Government is

working with business, Local Government, civil society and public sector organisations
to develop this programme. See Defra website for more information.
Devolved Administrations
The governments in the devolved administrations (DAs) also have a role to play in
developing climate change policy in devolved policy areas and helping to implement UKlevel policies. In addition to being covered by the UK Climate Change Act, the DAs are
taking forward their own climate change policies;

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act was passed in 2009, committing Scotland to
a 42% reduction in emissions by 2020 and annual reductions between 2010 and
2050.

Following advice from the Committee, Northern Irelands Environment Minister is

developing plans for a Northern Ireland Climate Change Act

The Committee recently provided advice to the Welsh Government on potential

options for climate change legislation.

See the CCCs latest progress reports in our publication section for our views on current
government policies designed to reduce climate change.

Success

The Failure of the UK Climate Change Act

The Belgian think tank Bruegel points to data showing that the United Kingdom's
GDP has returned to pre-economic crisis levels, as shown above. This allows us to do
a quick and intuitive examination of how much the UK economy has decarbonized
over that time period, and how that rate of decarbonization compares to that implied
by
the
UK
Climate
Change
Act.
As a refresher, decarbonization refers to the rate of decline in carbon dioxide
emissions to GDP. In order for the UK to hit the targets prescribed in the UK Climate
Change Act for 2022, it will need to achieve consistently an annual rate of
decarbonization of more than 3%, for any GDP growth rate greater than 1% per
year. For more detail, and a full exploration of the quantitative implications of the UK
Climate Change Act for decarbonization of the British economy, see my 2009 paper
in
ERL
(open
access).
With the UK GDP in 2014 at the same level as it was in 2008, it allows us to calculate
a simple rate of decarbonization, as it will be exactly equal to the annual rate of
emissions
decline.

The 12 month (ending 2nd quarter 2008) carbon dioxide emissions for the UK for
2008 was 536.1 million metric tonnes (data here in XLS). The trailing 12 month
(ending first quarter 2014) carbon dioxide emissions for the UK for 2014 was 507.9
million
metric
tonnes
(data here
in
XLS).
These data imply a rate of decarbonization of -0.9% per year. This is far less than
would be needed to hit the targets of the UK Climate Change Act. Last year I
calculated an update of the UK decarbonization rate through 2012, which arrived at
a similar result. That calculation is shown below.

It is also possible to express the magnitude of the challenge of meeting the targets
of the UK Climate Change Act in more intuitive terms. The graph below shows how
much carbon-free energy (not electricity) would need to be deployed by 2020
assuming constant demand to 2022.

In my 2009 paper, which was written upon passage of the UK Climate Change Act in
2008, I concluded:

The approach to emissions reduction embodied by the Climate Change Act is exactly
backwards. It begins with setting a target and then only later do policy makers ask
how that target might be achieved, with no consideration for whether the target
implies realistic or feasible rates of decarbonization. The uncomfortable reality is that
no one knows how fast a major economy can decarbonize. Both the 2022 interim and
2050 targets require rates of decarbonization far in excess of what has been
observed in large economies at anytime in the past. Simply making progress to the
targets requires steps of a magnitude that seem practically impossible, e.g., such as
the need for the UK to achieve a carbon efficiency of its economy equal to that of
France in 2006 in a time period considerably less than a decade.
Further, the focus on emissions rather than on decarbonization means that it would
be very easy for policy makers to confuse emissions reductions resulting from an
economic downturn with some sort of policy success (cf, McGee 2009). However, as
implicit in the Kaya identity, a lower GDP does very little to change the role of energy
technology in the economy. So during a downturn emissions may level off or even
decrease as policy makers of course seek to preserve (and even accelerate)
economic growth. Consequently, a more directly useful metric for policy success for
efforts to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is the
decarbonization of the economy, represented in terms of carbon dioxide emissions
per
unit
GDP.
A focus on decarbonization as the central goal of carbon policy rather than emissions
reductions means that to achieve specific stabilization targets the rate of
decarbonization of the UK economy must not only exceed the rate of economic
growth, but it must exceed rates of decarbonization observed historically in the UK
and in other developed countriesNote5. Because no one knows how fast a large
economy can decarbonize, any policy (or policies) focused on decarbonization will
have to proceed incrementally, with constant adjustment based on the proven ability
to accelerate decarbonization (cf Anderson et al 2008). Setting targets and
timetables for emissions reductions absent knowledge of the ability to decarbonize is
thus
just
political
fiction.
.
.
The failure of the UK Climate Change Act is yet to be broadly recognized, but when it
is, it will provide an opportunity to recast carbon policies in a more effective manner.