Improving the 5th UK carbon budget
Climate Governance, ETS, UKThis briefing represents Sandbag’s official written evidence to the Energy and Climate Change parliamentary select committee inquiry on the 5th carbon budget.* It details our five key recommendations to improve the 5th carbon budget and maintain its environmental integrity. We focus especially on the carbon accounting rules, and how the treatment of EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) allowances need to be changed to ensure that:
- the government is held accountable for reducing emisssions in ETS sectors, especially the UK power sector
- the government has a clearer understanding of its obligations for reducing emissions in non-ETS sectors
- the carbon budgets are corrected for 319 million extra non-ETS carbon units generated through accounting anomalies
*There are some cosmetic formatting changes compared to the official ECC submission. An additional chart and some additional references have also been added.