UK general election delays Climate Change Progress Report

by: Felicity Cousins | June 5, 2024

UK: The upcoming General Election in the UK has delayed the publication of the 2024 Climate Change Progress Report.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak called the election for July 4th, and a statement on the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) website says “the Climate Change Committee’s annual UK Progress Report will be delayed because of the dissolution of Parliament ahead of the upcoming UK election.”
As such, the report can’t be published until it is “laid in Parliament.”The statement continues: “As an independent arm’s length body to the Government, the Climate Change Committee also operates under pre-election guidance. We will not be making any public comments during the pre-election period.”

The CCC’s progress report to Parliament in June last year set out the risks to meeting the UK’s emissions targets and identified policy gaps and delivery risks.

The report highlighted that the UK was not on track to meet the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the UN process for a 68 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.

The Prime Minister then reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to Net Zero in his September 2023 speech on Net Zero.

However, at the time the CCC said of the prime minister’s speech it was “not accompanied by corresponding estimates of their effect on emissions, nor with evidence to back the Government’s assurance that the UK’s targets will still be met. This is unhelpful – and the Committee urges the Government to adopt greater transparency in updating its assessment of policy impacts at the time of major announcements.

“Based on the information available, the CCC has made an independent assessment of how these developments will affect plans to meet the targets. We did not have enough information to assess the full effects of some of the proposed policy measures.”

The CCC added: “Other developments since June 2023 have made meeting future targets harder through both the direct impacts of reduced policy ambition and through the Government’s indication that it will loosen certain Net Zero policies.”

You can read how the government’s “loosening” of certain Net Zero policies impacts on achieving Net Zero here.

The CCC will announce the new publication date for the 2024 UK Progress Report as soon as possible after the general election.

Photo by Mark Stuckey on Unsplash