Carbon Budget

The Climate Change Act 2008 imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to set an amount for the net UK carbon account for each successive five-year 'budgetary period', starting with 2008-2012, and to ensure that actual emissions for that period do not exceed the budget that has been set. Each carbon budget must be fixed well in advance — for periods after 2018-2022 it must be set no later than 30 June in the twelfth year before the period begins — and is made by order of the Secretary of State, subject to the affirmative resolution procedure in Parliament.

Before laying a draft order setting a carbon budget, the Secretary of State must take into account advice from the Climate Change Committee, the independent body created under the same Act, and must publish reasons if the budget set departs from the Committee's recommendation. The sixth carbon budget, covering the period 2033 to 2037, was set following the Committee's advice and — for the first time — incorporated the UK's share of international aviation and shipping emissions, taking the UK's trajectory more than three-quarters of the way to its 2050 net zero target.