Fairness needs to be the foundation for the Government’s next Carbon Budget

12 years from now might seem like a long time away to be legislating for a specific amount of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. If you cast your mind back to 12 years ago, the world looked radically different. AI was in its infancy, the global economy was not yet ravaged by the impacts of a pandemic, and regional wars in Europe and the Middle East hadn’t escalated to today’s extent.

But we could not have foreseen then how rapid the transition to renewables would be. The UK installed a solar panel on British rooftops every two minutes in 2025, and a report also out today from the think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and CBI Economics found that the clean energy economy provides over 1.1 million jobs.

What’s clear is that the race to renewables, and a cleaner, safer future for our children, is now unstoppable. This has people’s backing – 74% of people think climate change is important and 68% want us to be ambitious. But lots of people don’t know how far we have come, so it’s vital that we keep shouting about our progress.

But above all, the key task for the Seventh Carbon Budget will be setting out how those harder to decarbonise areas of our lives – transport, agriculture, diets and our housing stock – can be done in the fairest way.

At Climate Outreach we regularly seek to hear the views of the public on climate action. Pride in our renewable energy sectors is high, but trust in our politics is at an all time low. People are looking at their increasing energy and food bills and being drawn to parties on the right offering quick fixes, even if they disagree with their anti-climate credentials.

As Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee warned, the central task of the next Carbon Budget is to put fairness at the heart of delivery – not punish ordinary people for their consumption habits or how they travel.

Because so many of the next steps for creating a clean economy depend on changing our behaviours, Climate Outreach believes it is vital to put time and resources into engaging the public.

It’s critical to link the clean energy transition to everyday concerns around bills and housing, and ensure it’s rooted in communities on the front line of the transition. Those hosting infrastructure, creating jobs or protecting their homes from flooding. Only this way can we bring everyone with us on the mission of a fairer, cleaner and safer future that we know the public backs.