This Environmental Audit Committee inquiry will examine the Climate Change Committee's advice on the Seventh Carbon Budget. It will consider the assumptions and costs underpinning the CCC’s recommendations, explore the balance between emerging and established technologies, the policy choices facing Government, and the potential impacts on households, businesses and the wider economy. The inquiry will …
| Title | HC No. | Published | Items | Response |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8th Report - The Seventh Carbon Budget | HC 1327 | 4 Mar 2026 | 40 | Overdue |
The Climate Change Committee’s advised level for the Seventh Carbon Budget is technically credible, but will require tough political decisions, and represents a necessary checkpoint in the UK’s statutory pathway to net zero by 2050. (Conclusion, Paragraph 30)
As the ‘low hanging fruit’ of decarbonisation has largely been achieved, delivery risk increases materially under the Seventh Carbon Budget, at the same time as delivery options are reduced (as represented by the CCC’s decision to produce a single balanced pathway rather than multiple pathways). Emissions reductions become more complex, …
The Government should legislate for the Climate Change Committee’s recommended level of 535 MtCO₂e for the Seventh Carbon Budget period. However, legislation must be accompanied by strengthened action to address the delivery risks identified in this report. (Recommendation, Paragraph 32)
The Government should consider additional measures that offer an opportunity to provide resilience and headroom against delivery risk, without damaging public consent for the measures. (Recommendation, Paragraph 33)
In legislating for the Seventh Carbon Budget, the Government should consider the United Kingdom’s contribution to global efforts to limit warming, alongside its domestic statutory framework. While the UK has exercised international leadership through the Climate Change Act 2008, the statutory net zero target and its 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution, …
The Government should set out clearly in the impact assessment that will accompany the draft Carbon Budget Order, how the proposed legislative level of the Seventh Carbon Budget aligns with the United Kingdom’s legally binding obligations under the Paris Agreement, including how CB7 enables the UK to meet its status …
The Government must make sure its cross-departmental arrangements offer the clarity, authority and consistency required to deliver the Seventh Carbon Budget. As emissions reductions must accelerate sharply in the 2030s, delivery will depend on sustained, coordinated action across multiple departments and policy areas. Strong central leadership and clear mechanisms for …
Alongside the draft Carbon Budget Order for the Seventh Carbon Budget, the Government should publish a clear, indicative, cross-governmental delivery framework. The framework should demonstrate how departmental policies will be aligned, mutually reinforcing and consistent with the emissions limits set by Parliament. This framework should: • set out the respective …
Public perceptions are shaped not by ministerial statements alone, but by the cumulative impact of decisions taken across Government. Where policy choices in areas such as transport, buildings and infrastructure cut across climate objectives and are not aligned, they signal that net zero is a conditional ambition rather than a …
DESNZ should provide clear, consistent and sustained cross-government leadership on communication of net zero policy. Policy announcements and public messaging should reinforce, rather than dilute, the urgency of emissions reductions and the long-term direction of travel required to deliver the Seventh Carbon Budget. (Recommendation, Paragraph 57)
DESNZ should set out a clear cross-sector prioritisation framework within the Seventh Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, explaining how limited low- carbon resources, including clean electricity, network capacity, sustainable feedstocks and land, will be allocated between competing demands. This framework should set out how priorities will be managed where policies across …
DESNZ Ministers should provide visible cross-government leadership by setting out, in a single, authoritative statement within our recommended indicative delivery framework, how departmental policies collectively support delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget. This should include clear objectives, indicative timelines and an explanation of how policies that risk increasing emissions or …
Delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget will depend on major cross-sector changes in infrastructure, technology, and behaviour, many of which must be secured well before the 2038–2042 period begins. These changes will not occur automatically in response to ambition alone. Without early clarity on policy instruments, funding mechanisms, delivery governance, …
Delivery risk is particularly acute in sectors that rely on technologies not yet available at scale and subject to significant cost, supply, and investment uncertainty. While policy frameworks exist in principle, they do not yet provide a sufficiently credible or transparent basis for delivering the scale of emissions reductions assumed …
Alongside the draft Seventh Carbon Budget Order, the Government should publish draft sector delivery plans setting out how each sector is expected to contribute to delivery of the budget. These plans should: • Set out the policy instruments that will be used and when they will take effect; • Identify …
Delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget relies on nascent technologies and on greenhouse gas removals, including both land-based approaches and engineered removals, some of which face significant uncertainty over scale, cost, and delivery timescales. While these options are necessary for addressing genuinely residual emissions, increasing reliance on them shifts delivery …
The Government should ensure that delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget is grounded primarily in early, high-confidence emissions reductions where possible. Greenhouse gas removals should be treated as conditional and supplementary, not as substitutes for mitigation. (Recommendation, Paragraph 93)
The Seventh Carbon Budget delivery plan should set out explicit contingency arrangements, identifying in advance how mitigation would be strengthened if nascent technologies or greenhouse gas removals are delayed or underperform. These contingencies should prioritise accelerating proven measures, including energy efficiency, electrification, and demand reduction, rather than increasing reliance on …
The Seventh Carbon Budget must deliver genuine emissions reductions, not reductions achieved by exporting emissions overseas. Meeting carbon budgets through offshoring would undermine their environmental purpose 61 and the integrity of the UK’s climate framework, and risks weakening public confidence in decarbonisation by creating the appearance of progress without reducing …
Decarbonisation must not be confused with deindustrialisation. Allowing production to relocate abroad would weaken the UK’s industrial base while doing little to reduce global emissions. (Conclusion, Paragraph 102)
Delivering the Seventh Carbon Budget therefore requires a policy framework that supports domestic decarbonisation and provides long-term certainty for investment in low-carbon production in the UK. Without this, there is a material risk that progress towards the carbon budgets is achieved on paper rather than through real emissions reductions. (Conclusion, …
The Government should set out clearly how its carbon budget policies will prevent the offshoring of emissions and support domestic decarbonisation, particularly in energy-intensive and trade-exposed sectors. (Recommendation, Paragraph 104)
The carbon budget delivery plan should provide clarity on how key policy mechanisms, including electricity price support, infrastructure delivery, and carbon pricing will operate together during the Seventh Carbon Budget period to support domestic investment and manage carbon leakage. (Recommendation, Paragraph 105)
The Government should also set out how free allocation under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and the forthcoming UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will interact during the transition, with a commitment to review their combined effectiveness globally once the UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is in place. (Recommendation, Paragraph 106)
We reiterate our previous recommendation in our report on Airport Expansion, and that of the Climate Change Committee, that the Government should provide Parliamentary time to legislate to include international aviation emissions within carbon budgets and the UK’s net zero targets, before laying the draft Carbon Budget Order. This is …
Delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget will depend more than ever on changes in how homes are heated, how people travel, and how energy and goods are used across the economy. We are concerned that, while behaviour change is a central assumption within the Climate Change Committee’s pathway, it is …
The Government should treat behaviour change for delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget as a major national delivery challenge. Meeting this challenge should include sustained political leadership, clear accountability within Government, and coordinated action across departments. The Government should set out its approach to behaviour change within the Impact Assessment …
Behaviour change should not be treated as an adjunct to technology deployment or as a matter of individual responsibility alone. Delivery planning should make full and explicit use of policy levers to shape prices, incentives, defaults, infrastructure and markets, so that low-carbon choices are affordable, accessible and practical at scale. …
Behaviour change at the scale required for the Seventh Carbon Budget will not occur by default. It depends on policies that tangibly improve everyday life for households and communities. Warmer homes, lower running costs, cleaner air and better local environments are not ancillary benefits of climate action, but essential delivery …
The Government should place delivery of co-benefits at the centre of its approach to the Seventh Carbon Budget. Policies intended to drive behaviour change should be designed from the outset to improve 63 affordability, health outcomes, air quality and local environments. Departments responsible for housing, transport, energy, planning and public …
Fairness is fundamental to the legitimacy of the Seventh Carbon Budget. Where transition costs are experienced early and unevenly, while benefits arrive later or are less visible, public consent cannot be assumed. The current approach to funding energy policy risks placing disproportionate burdens on households with the fewest options, while …
The Government should further prioritise reducing electricity costs by removing appropriate policy costs from electricity bills and funding them through general taxation. This would improve affordability for households and businesses, strengthen incentives for the electrification of heat and transport, and avoid placing additional costs on households that are not yet …
Alongside the Seventh Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, the Government should publish a Fairness and Distribution Assessment setting out the expected distributional impacts of carbon budget policies, identifying groups at risk of disproportionate costs, including workers whose jobs are displaced by the transition, and the measures in place to support them. …
Public participation is an essential delivery requirement for the Seventh Carbon Budget, not a communications add-on. As decarbonisation increasingly depends on decisions taken by households and communities, public consent must be sustained through consistent leadership, honest explanation of trade-offs, and genuine two-way engagement that is rooted in credible, practical policy …
The Government should set out its public participation approach for the Seventh Carbon Budget as a clear, resourced programme within the Seventh Carbon Budget Delivery Plan. This should focus on engagement, rather than just communications, and should: 64 • embed ongoing, two-way engagement, including deliberative processes at a national and …
Local authorities are essential to delivering the Seventh Carbon Budget as it will rely on place-based action rooted in local knowledge, trusted relationships and visible local benefits. Without a clear mandate and sustained funding, the Government cannot credibly expect local authorities to deliver the scale of change assumed under the …
The Government must place local authorities at the centre of delivery of the Seventh Carbon Budget by: • legislating for a clear statutory duty for local authorities in relation to net zero delivery; and • providing long-term, predictable funding to support place-based delivery, including behaviour change, public engagement and household …
We welcome the Government’s decision to invite us to undertake early scrutiny of the Seventh Carbon Budget. This represents a material improvement on previous practice and reflects growing recognition of Parliament’s role in scrutinising not just carbon targets, but the credibility of the plans intended to deliver them. (Conclusion, Paragraph …
However, experience shows that Parliamentary scrutiny of carbon budgets has too often been cursory. The Sixth Carbon Budget, despite setting a legally binding emissions limit with implications for public spending, 65 infrastructure and everyday life, did not remotely receive commensurate Parliamentary focus. That approach is no longer defensible. As delivery …
The Government should support a formal, enhanced Parliamentary scrutiny framework for the Seventh Carbon Budget that enables meaningful scrutiny both before approval and throughout delivery, by an annual report on each Department’s progress towards time framed targets. Following the setting of the Sixth Carbon Budget, our predecessor Committee made a …
| Date | Witnesses | |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Jan 2026 | Emma Pinchbeck · Climate Change Committee, Nigel Topping · Climate Change Committee, Polly Cook · Leeds City Council, Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE · Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, Toby Park · Behavioural Insights Team | View ↗ |
| 3 Dec 2025 | Caroline Bragg · Association for Decentralised Energy, Claire Dykta · National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO), Dr Edmund Hughes · Green Marine Associates, Gareth Stace · UK Steel, Jonathon Counsell · International Airlines Group, Rt Hon Chris Huhne · Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association, Tanya Sinclair · Electric Vehicles UK, Victoria Whitehouse · UKRI Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge | View ↗ |
| 12 Nov 2025 | Mike Childs · Friends of the Earth, Professor Joeri Rogelj · Imperial College Business School and Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment, Professor Michael Grubb · UCL, Sam Hunter Jones · ClientEarth, Shaun Spiers · Green Alliance | View ↗ |
| Date | Direction | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Feb 2026 | From cttee | Letter to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero relating to d… |
| 11 Feb 2026 | To cttee | Letter from the Chair of the Climate Change Committee, Nigel Topping CMG, relat… |
| 12 Nov 2025 | To cttee | Letter from the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero relating t… |