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In the present era, dangers posed by anthropogenic climate change 1 and associated issues (e.g. concerns around energy security 2) have been driving many states down a path of radical decarbonisation. Against this backdrop, the UK has been undergoing an unprecedented āLow Carbon Transitionā. The UK Low Carbon Transition involves the partial but substantial decarbonisation of the national life, and while it can be understood as an ongoing āprocessā, it is also articulated in print across certain key government documents, perhaps most importantly UK Governmentās UK Low Carbon Transition Plan : National Strategy for Climate and Energy3 and The Carbon Plan .4 The UKās Climate Change Act (hereafter āCCAā), which passed into law in 2008, is an Act of UK Parliament that is designed to articulate in law and achieve in practice the major general processes and outcomes underpinning the Low Carbon Transition. In other words, the CCA is the primary domestic statute5 that the UKās decarbonisation process is founded on. As the main legislative embodiment of the UKās national climate governance framework, it may come as little or no surprise to scholars and practitioners in the fields of environmental studies, policy, law and governance to find that it manifests a special, complex and frequently challenging legal regime.
The CCA does several large things, and many subsidiaryāor smallerāthings, the most important of which will be highlighted at several points in this chapter, in advance of the more detailed and in-depth exploration of the frameworkās mechanisms and requirements to follow in Chapter 2. Most particularly, the CCA imposes rigorous greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets on the UK, doing so in a way where these cumulative targets provide blanket coverage of all of the stateās socio-economic sectors. Thus, the framework transposes cornerstone elements of the UKās national decarbonisation programme into legally binding duties: it commits the UK nationally to an āinterimā emissions reduction target, set as a 34% binding greenhouse gas reduction target that is to be met by the date of 2020,6 and it also commits the UK to a more distant 80% emissions reduction target, set for the date of 2050.7 These reduction percentages are measured from 1990 baseline emissions levels.8 The framework also creates and applies a carbon budget system, which introduces finite emission units that are to be steadily reduced over five-year budgeting periods.9 These target percentages, the carbon budget system and other key mechanisms are outlined and explored in greater detail in Chapter 2. Further, the next chapter will outline and consider the UKās Committee on Climate Change (hereafter āCCCā), which has also been created under the terms of the Act. The CCC is a public body that is independent of government, which scrutinises and monitors the decarbonisation process and provides expert advice to UK Government and other key governance actors.10
As just noted above, the CCA adopts a broad approach that endeavours to provide blanket coverage of all of the stateās socio-economic sectors. So, for instance, the CCA has a direct impact upon the transport sector, the agricultural sector, industry, and so on. It will become apparent from the analysis of the substance of the CCA in Chapter 2 that this blanket-style approach can be construed as a āskeletonā framework that facilitates a potentially broad range of targeted and/or pragmatic political-legal action in the sphere of environmental governance; in realising and employing aspects of these existing capacities for innovative action, within the frameworkās permitted parameters, such action serves to put flesh on the bones of the skeleton framework and contributes towards the achievement of practical outcomes. In addition to blanketing the UKās socio-economic sectors, the framework also blankets the UK geographically, that is, the regime covers and applies to the UK as a whole, rather than, for example, being restricted to England and Wales only.11
In terms of specific sectoral coverage, this introductory book to the CCA is concerned to hone in most particularly on the sector that has received most attention to date in the context of climate governance, the energy sector.12 The compound term āenergy sectorā can be defined in many ways, and āenergyā itself is a rather elastic and nebulous word that might arguably encompass many things13; however, in the present book the āenergy sectorā should be understood in a narrow conventional sense, such that it refers to processes, practices and issues pertaining to the generation of electricity and heat .14 Further, ādecarbonisationā of the energy sector refers to the mitigation or removal of greenhouse gases from power generation. This said, it will also be seen over the course of this introduction that, while the CCA is heavily concerned with climate change mitigation , it is also concerned particularly with the issue of adaptation , that is, the need to adapt to the tangible problems and severities arising as a consequence of climate change.
It has been noted in the Preface to this book that the energy sector has been chosen to occupy the central sectoral focus of consideration because energy generation constitutes the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, and it is also the single largest source across the EU and the international community taken generally. Thus, it is the sector that is being most directly and pervasively targeted under the terms of the CCA at the present time, and the decarbonisation of the energy sector stands as a high priority if the Low Carbon Transition is to succeed effectively.
