ABSTRACT
The 2008 Climate Change Act commits the UK to a legally binding emissions target for 2050. The Act also puts in place a new institutional architecture to ensure this long-term objective is achieved. UK emissions will be controlled through a series of statutory five-year carbon budgets, the first three of which were set in Spring 2009. Recommending the targets and overseeing compliance with them is a new independent body, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). This paper summarizes the inaugural report of the CCC, published in December 2008, and explains the analytical basis behind its recommendations: a long-term reduction in all greenhouse gas emissions of at least 80 per cent, relative to 1990, by 2050, and an initial cut in emissions of 34 per cent over the first three budgets (2008–2022), potentially rising to 42 per cent in the context of a new international agreement post-2012.
