UK’s Climate Change Committee publishes recommendations for how Wales should account for emissions and set carbon budgets
The UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has given its recommendations for designing future carbon targets and budgets in Wales, advising aviation and shipping emissions should be accounted for in the Welsh Government’s action plans.
In an independent advisory report to the Welsh Government last week, the CCC said Wales’ share of international aviation and shipping should be included within future Welsh statutory emissions targets, arguing doing so on the basis of fuel sales “would present no practical challenges”.
In addition, the report said Wales should be allowed to purchase credible, international emissions credits in order to “provide flexibility for unseen circumstances”, such as increased industrial output.
Should competitive companies in Wales win more business which leads to higher than anticipated emissions levels, the CCC said, it could be “reasonable for international emissions credits to offset these additional emissions”.
The overall accounting framework should also be based on actual emissions in Wales, the CCC recommends, rather than adjusted for activity in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as is the approach for setting the UK-wide carbon budgets.
However, the CCC warns against policies which could give rise to ‘carbon leakage’ by encouraging a reduction in domestic industrial output that could be replaced by industrial output in countries with less stringent climate policies.
“Using actual emissions is the most transparent way of accounting for emissions and would encourage decarbonisation in all sectors of the Welsh economy,” the report states.
The independent CCC is statutorily required to provide the Welsh Government with advice on the framework for setting carbon targets and budgets in Wales, after the Environment (Wales) Act was passed in March last year.
That Act committed the Welsh Government to reducing emissions in Wales by at least 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050, in line with the UK’s overall carbon reduction goal. This includes interim emissions targets for 2020, 2030 and 2040, as well as five-yearly carbon budgets.
The level of ambition for these interim targets and carbon budgets up to 2025 is currently up for consideration, and Welsh ministers are required to set them in regulation before the end of 2018.
The CCC is due to give further detailed advice on precisely how the Welsh government should reach its climate targets later this year.
As of 2014, Wales lags behind the rest of the UK in terms of decarbonisation, having cut its emissions by around 18 per cent from 1990 levels, in comparison to a 36 per cent cut across the UK as a whole.
But while the UK is on course to meet its first three statutory carbon budgets, the Westminster government is facing increasing pressure to publish its long-delayed Clean Growth Plan setting out a path for decarbonisation up to 2032.
