The CCC has recommended that the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commits to reduce territorial greenhouse gas emissions by 81 per cent by 2035 from a 1990 baseline. This is based on the CCC’s advice on the UK’s Seventh Carbon Budget, due to be published in February 2025.

Professor Piers Forster, interim chair of the Climate Change Committee, said: “With climate damages already felt around the world, targeting an 81per cent emissions reduction by 2035 sets the right level of ambition. Our analysis shows this can be achieved in a way that benefits jobs and the economy, provided we hit the country’s 2030 target – set in line with the CCC’s advice in 2020.”

The call comes as the UN has published its Emissions Gap Report 2024, stating that nations must deliver dramatically stronger ambition and action in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions or the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal will be gone within a few years.

A failure to increase ambition in new NDCs, due for submission in early 2025, would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1C over the course of this century it says.

The UN remains convinced that it is technically possible to get on a 1.5C pathway, with solar, wind and forests holding real promise for sweeping and fast emissions cuts, but to deliver on this potential, sufficiently strong NDCs would need to be backed urgently by a whole-of-government approach, measures that maximise socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits, enhanced international collaboration that includes reform of the global financial architecture, strong private sector action and a minimum six-fold increase in mitigation investment.

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