The Climate Change Committee (CCC) is an independent, statutory body established under the Climate Change Act 2008. Our purpose is to advise the UK and devolved governments on emissions targets and to report to Parliament on progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change.
The Climate Change Act formalised the UK’s approach to tackling climate change – both on mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (increasing resilience to climate change). It established the Climate Change Committee to ensure that the assessment of progress and advice provided can be evidence-based, independently assessed and long term in its advice. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the Committee is required to produce statutory reports to Government and Parliament. The key reports are:
- Advice on carbon budgets and long-term emissions targets
- Progress reports on meeting carbon budgets and targets
- An assessment of UK climate change risks
- Progress reports on adapting and preparing for climate change
In addition, Ministers can request CCC advice on specific issues and topics. Our conclusions, analysis, and underlying data are all available in the publications section of this website. CCC recommendations are frequently referenced in the Northern Ireland, Scotland, UK, and Welsh parliaments and assemblies. They are also commonly a source of information for business and industry, academia, the national and international media and, increasingly, the public. Climate Change Committee members are appointed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, with Adaptation Committee members appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The current members are listed below.
Our people
Climate Change Committee members
Professor Piers Forster
Interim Chair
Piers Forster is Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures and Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds. Piers has played a significant role authoring Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and is a coordinating lead author role for the IPCC’s sixth assessment report.
Piers:
- established the forest protection and research charity, the United Bank of Carbon
- has a number of roles advising industry, including membership of the Rolls Royce Environment Advisory Board
Professor Keith Bell
Keith Bell is a co-Director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has been at the University of Strathclyde since 2005, was appointed to the Scottish Power Chair in Smart Grids in 2013 and has been involved in energy system research in collaboration with many academic and industrial partners.
- A Chartered Engineer
- A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- A Member of the IET
Dr Steven Fries
Steven Fries is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
- Steven has previously held roles as:
- He was group chief economist at Shell (2006–11; 2016–21)
- And chief economist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (2011–16).
- He also previously served in a series of senior roles at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (1993–2006), including Deputy Chief Economist and Director of Policy Studies.
Professor Corinne Le Quéré FRS
Corinne Le Quéré is Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia (UEA), where she conducts research on the interactions between climate change and the carbon cycle.
- Corinne is also:
- Director of the annual update of the global carbon budget by the Global Carbon Project (GCP)
- Chair of the French Haut Conseil pour le Climat
Nigel Topping CMG
Nigel Topping was appointed by the UK Prime Minister as UN Climate Change High Level Champion for COP26. In this role Nigel mobilised global private sector and local government to take bold action on climate change, launching the Race To Zero and Race To Resilience campaigns and, with Mark Carney, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.
- Nigel is now a global advisor to governments, financial institutions and private companies on climate and industrial strategy. He is a non-executive director of the UK Infrastructure Bank and an Honorary Professor of Economics at Exeter University.
- He is a non-executive director of the UK Infrastructure Bank
- An Honorary Professor of Economics at Exeter University.
Professor Swenja Surminski
Swenja Surminski is Chair of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, Managing Director Climate and Sustainability at Marsh McLennan and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Her work focuses on capacity building and knowledge transfer between science, policy and industry, building on her work in industry and as advisor to governments, private sector and civil society, including as Visiting Academic at the Bank of England.
Adaptation Committee members
Baroness Brown DBE FREng FRS
Chair, Adaptation Committee
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (Professor Dame Julia King) is an engineer, with a career spanning senior engineering and leadership roles in industry and academia.
Baroness Brown also holds the following positions:
- Non-executive director of Ceres Power, Ørsted and Frontier IP
- Chair of the Carbon Trust
- She was non-executive Director of the Green Investment Bank and led the King Review on decarbonising transport (2008). She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society, and was awarded DBE for services to higher education and technology. She is a crossbench Peer, a member of the House of Lords European Union Select Committee, and Chair of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee.
Dr Ben Caldecott
Ben Caldecott is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and the inaugural Lombard Odier Associate Professor of Sustainable Finance at the University of Oxford.
Ben is also the founding Director and Principal Investigator of the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment (CGFI), established by UK Research and Innovation in 2021 as the national centre to accelerate the adoption and use of climate and environmental data and analytics by financial institutions internationally.
Professor Richard Dawson FREng
Richard Dawson is Professor of Earth Systems Engineering and Director of Research in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University. Over the last two decades his research has focused on the analysis and management of climatic risks to civil engineering systems, including the development of systems modelling of risks to cities, catchments and infrastructure networks.
In addition, Professor Dawson:
- holds an MEng degree in Civil Engineering and a PhD in flood risk management
- is a member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Technical Expert Panel, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKRCIC)
- holds editorial roles for the scientific journals Climatic Change, Flood Risk Management and Infrastructure Asset Management
Previously, he served as:
- lead author for the chapter on Infrastructure in the 2017 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) evidence report
- a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the IPCC’s 2018 Cities and Climate Change Conference
Professor Chris Evans
Chris Evans is a biogeochemist studying the impacts of land-use and other environmental drivers on the terrestrial and aquatic carbon and nutrient cycles. He currently leads UKRI, Defra and DESNZ projects with a value exceeding £10m on mitigating GHG emissions from peatlands, and managing them for carbon capture and storage.
In addition to his role on the Adaptation Committee he is a board member of Fenland Soil, and a member of the National Trust’s Natural Environment Advisory Group. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed research papers, which have been cited over 20,000 times, and was awarded an MBE for services to ecosystem science in 2020.
Dr Marina Romanello
Marina Romanello is the Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change, an independent and multi-disciplinary research collaboration of almost 300 researchers around the world, and headquartered at University College London’s Institute for Global Health.
She is also Principal Research fellow at UCL, studying the links between public health and climate change. Trained as a clinical biochemist in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and holds a PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research background spans from toxicology through to environmental health and climate change, and she has previously carried out her research in the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires, the University of Cambridge, and the Francis Crick Institute.
Professor Nathalie Seddon
Nathalie Seddon is Professor of Biodiversity and Founding Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. Nathalie trained as an ecologist at Cambridge University and has over 25 years of research experience in a range of ecosystems across the globe. Nathalie attends the Mitigation Committee on discussions of nature and land.
As a University Research Fellow of the Royal Society, she developed broad research interests in the origins and maintenance of biodiversity and its relationship with global change. She holds a host of other positions, including Director of the Agile Initiative at the Oxford Martin School, co-Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, and Founding non-executive Director of the Oxford University Social Venture, Nature-based insetting.
Professor Swenja Surminski
Swenja Surminski is Chair of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, Managing Director Climate and Sustainability at Marsh McLennan and Professor in Practice at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Her work focuses on capacity building and knowledge transfer between science, policy and industry, building on her work in industry and as advisor to governments, private sector and civil society, including as Visiting Academic at the Bank of England.
Expert advisers
Professor Richard Betts MBE
Adaptation Committee adviser
Richard Betts is Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter and Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre.
He was a lead author on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and led the Technical Report for the third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3). He joins the Adaptation Committee as Expert Advisor for CCRA4.
Professor Michael Davies
Adaptation Committee adviser
Michael Davies is Professor of Building Physics and Environment at the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE).
At UCL his research interests relate to the complex relationship between the built environment and human well-being. He is also Director of the Complex Built Environment Systems Group at UCL and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of ‘Healthy Polis’ – the International Consortium for Urban Environmental Health and Sustainability.
Professor Rebecca Willis
Mitigation Committee adviser
Rebecca Willis is a Professor in Energy & Climate Governance at Lancaster University, where she leads the Climate Citizens research group, investigating citizen engagement in energy and climate policy.
- She is an Adviser to Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living Initiative and the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund.
- In 2020 she was an Expert Lead for Climate Assembly UK, the Citizens’ Assembly established by the UK Parliament.
- Previously, she was: Founder of Green Alliance’s Climate Leadership Programme, Research Fellow for the IGov project at the University of Exeter, a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of UKRI’s Energy Programme, Vice-Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising the Prime Minister and First Ministers of the devolved administrations, and a Director of Green Alliance.
