The UK’s Climate Change Committee – the official independent advisory body of which I am interim chair – has spent the past three months poring over thousands of pages of government strategy documents to inform its latest annual progress report to parliament. And our confidence in the UK meeting its climate goals is now markedly less than it was in our previous assessment a year ago. Key opportunities have been missed.
Before the COP27 Glasgow climate summit in 2021, the UK committed to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030. Every country that signed the Paris Agreement set a pledge – and this was the UK’s. If the country is to deliver it in only seven years, the rate of annual emissions reduction outside the electricity supply sector must nearly quadruple, increasing from its current value of 1.2% per year to 4.5% per year. Every year that the government fails to up the pace, it becomes harder the next year – and the scale by which action needs to multiply becomes larger.
