Progress on carbon budgets – evidence submitted to the UK Environmental Audit Committee

In this written evidence submitted to the EAC, Sandbag argues that the UK government has no basis to weaken the 4th carbon budget, and on the contrary should look to strengthen it. We highlight that EU ambition for the relevant period (2023-2027) has not yet been decided, and argue that UK ambition poses little danger of outstripping EU ambition in any case. We stress that the methodology used by the CCC to determine the UK trajectory embraces an unacceptably high risk of passing 2°C, and awards the UK an inequitably large proportion of the global carbon space. Finally we argue that where the UK carbon budgets are endangered by overly generous EU allocations, these can be protected simply by unilaterally cancelling EU allowances.