News blog

UK unveils post-2020 greenhouse gas targets

Britain today became the first country to unveil its greenhouse gas emission limits for the years after 2020.

Between 2023 and 2027 the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the UK will be cut to 50% below 1990 levels. However, the government will also push for Europe to move to a 30% target for 2020 and if the UK looks like it is getting out of step with the rest of the continent, the country’s ‘carbon budget’ could be upped.

“Today’s announcement makes the UK the first country in the world to have declared a legally binding target on greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2020. This is significant,” said Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust, which advises UK businesses on carbon emissions. “Now we have set the long-term course we must fine tune the plan to reach it.”

Under the 2008 Climate Change Act the UK government has to set ‘carbon budgets’ for five year periods up to 2050, by when an 80% cut from 1990 levels should have been achieved. The first three budgets were set in 2009.

Today’s pledge sets the UK to limit itself to 1,950 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the period of the fourth budget, energy minister Chris Huhne told Parliament today.

But emissions from industrial and energy sectors are determined by the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, he noted. So, if the EU sets easier targets than the UK, sectors outside industry and energy could have to pull more than their share of the weight.

“To overcome this and to provide clearer signals for businesses and investors, government will review progress towards the EU emissions goal in early 2014. If at that point our domestic commitments place us on a different emissions trajectory than the Emissions Trading System trajectory agreed by the EU, we will, as appropriate, revise up our budget to align it with the actual EU trajectory,” says Huhne.

Comments

  1. Maxime said:

    The most worrying is that it seems that more and more people don’t trust the media and environmental agencies anymore, all the more since the failure of the Copenhagen summit. I am currently working in carbon management company in South Africa (https://www.climateafrica.co.za/ , https://www.climatestandard.org/) and more and more people come up with stuff like “Why should we reduce our ghg emissions when volcanoes are responsible for more CO2 emissions than human activities?”. I don’t know where people hear that but i suspect anti-ecologist to be behind such statements. I did some research and volcanoes are responsible for 200 million tons of emissions whereas human activities represent 30 billion tons. I hope that the media will cover such questions more accurately, so that people become really aware of the problem.

  2. ecorumors said:

    I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! I definitely loved every little bit of it.Cheers for the info!!!! & This is the perfect blog for anyone who wants to know about this topic. You know so much its almost hard to argue with you

    Report this comment Cancel report
    Your details

    Please confirm the words below

    In order to reduce spamming, this process ensures you are a real person and not an automated program.

Comments are closed.