Blair warming to the Climate Bill
SCC
In March 2007, after intensive campaigning and lobbying by P&P groups around the country, the Government launched the first draft of its Climate Change Bill. They have now opened a consultation about this first draft.
Anyone can take part in the consultation. This is your chance to tell the Government what you think needs changing to make the Bill really effective to tackle climate change.
The closing date for consultation responses to DEFRA is 12 June 2007.
What’s in the draft Climate Change Bill?
The draft Bill provides a long-term legal framework for the UK to achieve its goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and will ensure that steps are taken towards adapting to the impacts of climate change.
The introduction of the Bill is a major first step. Creating the framework is exactly what we’ve been calling for, and is essential for the UK to effectively reduce emissions. However, the Bill must set strong enough goals and targets for emissions reductions. These goals must ensure that the UK makes its fair share of the international effort needed to prevent the rise in average global temperature exceeding 2°C.
Here’s a summary of some of the key points of the draft Bill and People & Planet’s response:
Provision in the draft Bill |
What People & Planet thinks |
|---|---|
The Bill sets targets to reduce UK carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050 and 26-32% by 2020, against a 1990 baseline. |
It’s clear from the latest science that 60% cuts are not enough to avoid a greater than 2°C rise in global temperatures. We must commit to cutting emissions by at least 80% by 2050. This will require annual cuts of at least 3%. |
Five-year carbon budgets will require the Government to set binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions during five year budget periods, beginning with the period 2008-12. |
Five year carbon budget periods are too long. Governments will be able to pass the buck to their successor if they fail to meet targets. We want to see shorter budget periods and annual milestones, to make sure that emissions do not go off track. |
The Bill sets out a process for reporting on annual carbon emissions. However, it does not make provision for public sector organisations and companies to publicly declare their emissions. |
To ensure accountability, the Bill must ensure mandatory disclosure of carbon emissions from publicly funded organisations such as universities, hospitals and local authorities, and for large private sector companies. |
Emission reductions purchased overseas may be counted towards the UK´s targets. This would occur through carbon trading via schemes like the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, or if carbon credits are bought through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. |
The UK needs to cut emissions at home, and must not be able to buy its way out of making the cuts in emissions that are needed to tackle climate change. If overseas emissions reductions are to be counted at all in the Climate Bill, there must be a strict limit on the percentage of reductions permitted through overseas carbon trading. |
The Bill only includes domestic UK emissions, and this means that emissions from international aviation and shipping are excluded. |
The UK’s share of international aviation and shipping must be included in the UK’s carbon budgets. These are crucial areas where emissions are increasing, and the legislation must commit the UK to reducing emissions in these areas. |
People & Planet’s response to the consultation
People & Planet has produced a response to the Climate Change Bill consultation, which has now been sent to DEFRA.
- Download the People & Planet consultation response.
Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas to this submission.
Write your own response to the consultation
The consultation on the draft Climate Change Bill is open to everyone. Why not write your own submission, either on your own, or as a group? If you’re in a hurry you can use our quick submission tool below to submit a short email response. However, a longer, more considered response will be more effective.
The Government has published a consultation document which sets out all the provisions of the Climate Change Bill, with questions on the areas they would like responses to. There is a response form which you can use to submit your answers to these questions.
To respond to the consultation, you do not have to give opinions on all the questions in the consultation. You may think that there are one or two crucial areas that need to be changed or strengthened (see Details of the Bill section below for ideas). In this case, just leave the other questions blank. The response form has a space at the end for any other comments, so use this if you have things to suggest which do not fit any of the questions.
Email your response form to DEFRA, with ‘Consultation on draft Climate Change Bill’ as the subject line. Submissions must be received by 12 June 2007.
Quick Submission: email action
If you don’t have time to write a full response to the consultation, you can email the government with your views using this quick submission box.
We’ve included some suggested text which you can use, but your submission will be more effective if you write your own response to the Bill. Please don’t change the subject line, as this is the text DEFRA has asked for.
This action is no longer active.
When the action was active, this was our suggested text.
Consultation on Draft Climate Change Bill
Dear DEFRA,
I welcome the draft Climate Change Bill, and the commitment to provide the framework that is essential for the UK to cut carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to climate change. The Bill must ensure that the UK makes its fair share of the international effort needed to keep average global temperatures from rising above 2°C.
In response to your consultation on the draft Bill, I would like to make the following points:
Long-term targets and short-term budgets:
The latest science demonstrates that a 60% cut in emissions by 2050 will not be enough to keep global temperature rises under 2°C. The Bill should set a target of an 80% cut in UK CO? emissions by 2050. Any lower than this and the Bill will not avoid dangerous climate change.
The five year carbon budget periods proposed in the Bill are too long, and will make it hard to hold governments to account on their progress towards emissions reductions. Three year budget periods, to coincide with government spending cycles, would ensure greater accountability. Within the budget period, there is also a need for annual milestones to stop carbon reductions going off track.
Legal duty and reporting mechanisms:
The Bill is absolutely right to impose a legal duty on the Government to stay within the limits of its carbon budgets. Further than this, there must be stronger mechanisms to deal with failure to achieve targets.
Annual reporting of progress towards carbon budgets is essential. However, the Bill makes no provision for the mandatory disclosure of emissions from either public or private sector organisations. Such mandatory disclosure is essential to ensure that the government is able to monitor progress towards targets, and to increase public accountability.
Purchasing emissions reductions overseas:
The UK needs to cut emissions at home, and must not be able to buy its way out of making the cuts in emissions that are needed to tackle climate change. If overseas emissions reductions are to be counted at all in the Climate Bill, there must be a strict limit on the percentage of reductions permitted through overseas carbon trading.
Inclusion of all emissions in the carbon budget:
The draft Bill does not include emissions from international aviation or shipping in the UK's carbon budgets. These are two crucial areas where emissions are rising, and the Bill must include the UK's share of these emissions.
The Bill must be strengthened in these areas if it is to be effective.
Yours,
Details of what’s in the draft Bill and People & Planet’s response to it
Why are we arguing for a target of 80% reduction in emissions by 2050?
The Bill sets targets to reduce UK carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050 and 26-32% by 2020, against a 1990 baseline.
The UK´s 2050 emissions target should be set at a level that will enable us to make our fair share of the global emission reductions required to prevent the rise in average global temperature exceeding 2°C. Scientists say that a temperature rise above this threshold will lead to catastrophic climate change.
The Government's existing target of a 60% emissions reduction by 2050 will not be enough to prevent the average global temperature rise exceeding 2°C, unless the bulk of those reductions are achieved early on. A reduction in emissions of at least 3% each year from 2010 to 2050 will be required, with an overall reduction of at least 80% over the whole period. The Bill should make this target explicit. As the Stern Report shows, postponing emissions cuts will carry far greater economic costs than making them now.
What are carbon budgets? Why are we arguing for them?
Carbon budgets are a way of setting targets for reducing the amount of emissions we produce. Climate change will be exacerbated by the total amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere over the whole period between now and 2050, not just by the annual emissions in 2050. To prevent dangerous climate change, we need to set a limit to the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere each year for the next four decades — just as in a financial budget we might set a limit to our annual spending. This is a good way to set emission reduction targets because any excess carbon emitted in one year can be taken from the following year´s carbon budget allocation.
Why are annual milestones both necessary and workable?
The Bill requires the Government to set binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions during five year budget periods, beginning with the period 2008-12. Progress towards the five year budget will be reported on annually, but there will be no annual milestones set out in advance.
Setting emissions targets at five or ten year intervals would offer little incentive for any government to act. Parliaments frequently last only four years and failure can too easily be blamed on past governments' mistakes. In any case, many scientists say that we need to make a dramatic impact on carbon emissions in the next decade in order to prevent catastrophic climate change. Targets set over longer periods do not reflect this urgency.
We need annual milestones so that we can tell if the budget is off track and take corrective action early on. Milestones have been set further apart in recent years and these milestones have not been met because there was no mechanism to trigger corrective action early enough. The likely failure to meet the 20% emissions reduction target by 2010 means that future governments will have a much more difficult task. We cannot afford slippage on this scale in the future.
Annual targets are already set in many areas, both by business and by government. Every organisation sets annual financial budgets and they have to take rapid corrective action if they exceed those annual budgets. We must start managing our carbon emissions in exactly the same way.
There may be years when we emit too much and exceed our carbon budget; what is essential in that case is that, as in any good budget management system, there is a mechanism to trigger a corrective response in the following year. Annual milestones offer such a mechanism.
They would be the short-term objectives of a national emissions reduction strategy, calculated to add up to a binding carbon budget set over three year intervals in line with the Government´s three year Spending cycle and its review.
If an annual milestone were exceeded, the Secretary of State would have a duty to implement proportionate contingency measures to ensure that the excess emissions were eliminated over the course of the following year and were not carried over into future years´ carbon budgets.
We have always agreed that the Government needs some flexibility to deal with factors (like cold winters) that vary from year to year. Annual milestones achieve this. However, we also need to set a binding carbon budget over a three-year period. The whole system would have little meaning if excess emissions could be carried over from one budget period into the next; allowing governments to pass on the burden of past failures to future governments.
Why should the Bill make disclosure of carbon emissions mandatory?
The Bill has no provision for ensuring that the carbon emissions of specific organisations or companies are made public.
Without mandatory disclosure of emissions, it will be impossible to hold organisations or companies to account for their progress in emissions reductions. People & Planet is calling on the Government to make disclosure of emissions mandatory for all public sector organisations, such as universities, hospitals and local authorities, and for large private sector companies.
In the education sector, for example, universities provide information on their emissions on a voluntary basis to Funding Councils, but this information is currently kept confidential. Making such information disclosure both mandatory and public is essential to holding specific institutions and organisations to account.
Should a limit be placed on contributions to UK targets made by emissions traded under the EU ETS or credits given under Kyoto´s Clean Development Mechanism?
The Bill allows for overseas carbon credits to count towards the UK’s carbon budget. These credits would be purchased through existing schemes such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, or the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism.
It is crucial that the Climate Bill ensures that carbon reductions are made first and foremost in the UK. There must be no buy out clause which enables the UK to avoid the necessary domestic emissions reductions. People & Planet is calling for a strict limit on the use of overseas carbon reductions. The Committee on Climate Change should be mandated to determine what this limit should be, in terms of a percentage of overall reductions.
However, we are already living in a world of international emissions trading. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme currently covers power stations and major industrial sources, which account for nearly half of the UK´s domestic CO₂ emissions. Moves to increase the scope of the EU ETS to include aviation and even surface transport could bring a very large proportion of the UK´s emissions under the scheme beyond 2012. For emissions covered by the ETS, the level of the cap on emissions, set by government, is the key issue for assessing compliance with the targets set by the Bill.
The Committee on Climate Change should report annually on the actual emissions from the UK. It should highlight any excessive reliance on imported credits or allowances, expressed as a percentage of the total UK carbon budget for that year. This would allow Parliament to consider whether the UK is moving towards a low carbon economy or simply buying its way out of the problem in the short term, while locking us into a high carbon infrastructure for the future. Tough limits should also be set for the total use of Clean Development Mechanism credits by business and government. This would give real teeth to the principle that we have a moral obligation to make our own fair share of emissions cuts within the UK, rather than relying on buying emissions reductions from poor countries.
Should carbon emissions from shipping and aviation be included in the UK´s annual targets?
Emissions from international and shipping are not included in the Bill as part of the UK’s carbon budget.
These emissions contribute to climate change and must be reduced as part of the overall 2050 target. Only by monitoring these emissions, setting targets for their reduction, and including shipping and aviation in the government's strategy to reduce emissions will the 2050 target be met. Leaving them out of the targets and strategy would create incentives for shifts from land-based transport to aviation and shipping, instead of the reductions which climate scientists say are necessary.