Mind the gap: Reviving the Climate Change Act

This report finds that the Climate Change Act - the UK's groundbreaking law, now eight years old - has in practice been dangerously neglected. The Act is a living law, and it must be treated as such. Successive governments have failed to close the policy gap for the UK to meet the fourth carbon budget in the 2020s, a gap which has persisted for five years. Dramatic shifts in policy have been to the detriment of investor confidence. The operational and decision-making machinery that make the Act work across government and over time have fallen by the wayside.

Unless government now changes substantially the way the Act works in practice, there is a very real risk that we will miss future carbon budgets.