The UK risks not meeting its climate change goals if the government does not expand the carbon budgets to include emissions from shipping and aviation, warn advisors
According to the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), emissions from the shipping and aviation sectors need to be included in the carbon budgets now or it will be too difficult to cut carbon output to the levels needed to prevent global temperature rises of more than 2°C.
Created by the Climate Change Act 2008, the carbon budgets set UK-wide reduction targets in five-year periods up to 2050, ultimately cutting emissions by 80% on 1990 levels. And, while proceeding governments have operated as if the 2050 target includes emissions from aviation and shipping, the Act excluded the sectors from the budgets because, at the time, it was not possible to accurately assess the UK’s share of the international emissions.
The expansion of the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) to include aviation and the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) adoption of the energy efficiency design index, now provide the calculation of emissions needed and there no longer remains any reason why they should not be included in the budgets, says the CCC in its latest report.
“A failure to include international aviation and shipping emissions … would represent a departure from the approach taken by the government in its carbon plan, and … could result either in increased costs and risks of meeting carbon budgets, or in accepting higher risks of dangerous climate change,” it states.
The CCC argues that the formal inclusion of the aviation and shipping sectors will not increase the cost of meeting the targets, and will provide greater flexibility in how the country can make reductions. Advances in aviation or shipping could mean more expensive carbon abatement action is avoided in other sectors, according to the report.
To accommodate the new sectors the CCC recommends revising the second, third and fourth carbon budgets, and extending the overall emissions cap, rather than keeping the lower targets and forcing more reduction activities.
Using EU ETS and IMO calculations for the UK’s aviation and shipping emissions, the CCC suggests the carbon budgets increase by 40 million tonnes of CO2 a year – 31 million tonnes for the aviation sector and 9 million tonnes for shipping. This will, however, slow the pace of emissions reductions from a 50% cut on 1990 levels by the end of the fourth carbon budget (2023-2027) to a 46% fall.
Under the requirements of the Climate Change Act, the government has until the end of the year to decide whether it should include the sectors in carbon budgets.
