Explained: The Carbon Budget Delivery Plan
The UK government has just released a document that explains how it will meet its legally-binding carbon emissions reduction targets. It’s called the Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan, and in this short explainer we’ll walk through what it contains, what’s missing, and what this means for you.
What is the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan?
In May 2024, the then-Conservative government lost a legal challenge from charities including Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth, who had argued that the government was falling behind on its legal duty to cut carbon emissions. The court ordered the government to publish a clear plan on how it would meet the “carbon budgets” that are set every five years by the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee.
This plan is the now-Labour government’s attempt to satisfy the court’s order. Most of what it contains is not new policy - instead, it mostly gathers together existing plans and explains how they’ll lead to reductions in carbon emissions that will add up to the legal requirements. It’s published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and has been backed by the prime minister.
What policies are in the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan?
The government has divided the policies included in the carbon budget delivery plan into four areas - energy security and lower bills, jobs and growth, improved quality of life, and protecting our natural world.
The first area covers energy. It includes investment in nuclear power, speeding up approvals for wind and solar, reforming the way renewable energy projects are paid for, supporting people with energy costs, and starting up the government’s publicly-owned clean energy company Great British Energy.
The second is focused on growth. It covers building out domestic supply chains and security private investment in clean energy industries, reducing the cost that energy-intensive industries pay for power, retraining veterans and North Sea workers to work with clean energy, and launching a set of clean technology innovation challenges.
The third is about quality of life. It includes investment in home upgrades, discounts for people who want to buy electric cars, and more electric vehicle chargepoints. Notably, it says that renters will be allowed to demand that their landlords give them access to electric vehicle chargepoints. This section also mentions a mandate that requires that 22% of fuel used in planes by 2040 should be biofuels known as “SAF”.
The final section is about nature and wildlife. It includes funding for tree planting and peatland restoration, and a pledge to create new jobs in re-use, repair and material reprocessing.
What’s missing?
There are several glaring omissions from the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan - easy low-hanging fruit that would cut emissions while bringing down the cost of living, reducing inequality, and boosting health and wellbeing:
Aviation
The government is in the process of expanding Gatwick and Heathrow airports, which will dramatically increase aviation emissions and make it much harder for the UK to meet its future climate targets. There is no way of meeting those targets without the people who fly the most flying less, and there is no evidence that airport expansion drives economic growth or can be delivered in line with climate goals. Meanwhile, aviation biofuels require large amounts of land to produce and are nowhere close to being available at the scale required to decarbonise aviation.
Luckily there’s a fix. Most people fly rarely, while a small group of the wealthiest people take most of the flights. A frequent flyer levy - where people who fly more pay a tax that increases the more flights they take in a year - would reduce the number of flights being taken while still safeguarding people’s family holidays. By taxing ultra-frequent fliers and private jet users, we can bring down aviation emissions while avoiding impacting ordinary working people.
2. Road travel
The government’s plans would see a dramatic expansion of the number of electric cars on the road. While this may deliver some short-term carbon emissions reductions, it doesn’t solve the UK’s traffic congestion problems, the dangerous trend towards large SUVs, the harm caused by microplastics from car tyres, and the toxic dust from brake pads.
To bring down emissions and boost our health and the economy, we need to make it easier for people to walk, wheel, cycle or take public transport for most journeys - not just rely on switching to electric cars. The Carbon Budget Delivery Plan briefly namechecks public transport and active travel, but it fails to make any concrete promises. Any serious plan to tackle transport emissions must include bold targets for traffic reduction, cutting the costs and improving the quality of public transport, and building out walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure in both cities and rural areas. This will not only avoid locking in car dependency, but cut healthcare costs and dramatically improve health and wellbeing.
3. Repair and reuse.
There's no mention in the government’s plan of the fact we do need to buy and throw away less stuff. The Climate Change Committee has said "The deployment of low-carbon technologies needs to be done in parallel with a shift away from high-carbon goods and services. This is particularly true where no major lower-carbon technology exists or where these shifts are required to reduce emissions in the near term due to technologies taking longer to develop. Our assumptions here are informed by evidence on what is deliverable, as well as by the views of our citizens’ panel on what needs to be done to make changes accessible and affordable." They identify reductions in commercial, household, and food waste as part of this - we need to end our throwaway society including taking action on electronic waste (the UK's fastest growing waste stream) through repair and reuse, as well as better design.
Relatedly, while it’s good to see mention of green jobs, they are almost entirely focussed on clean energy - what about all the jobs that could be created by a switch to a more service-based economy, such as jobs in the repair economy?
4. Food.
There is no mention at all of food in the government’s Carbon Budget Reduction Plan, which is a glaring absence that ties to a lot of the other areas they've spoken about (like protecting nature). Reducing the consumption of meat and dairy is a key area identified by the Climate Change Committee but is completely missing in this plan.
Possible will keep pushing the government to take these things seriously, but we need your help. Here are six different ways that you can help us spark action and build a sustainable future for years to come.