Committee on Climate Change

The Welsh Government’s Climate Change Strategy, was published in October 2010, and outlined a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within areas of devolved competence by 3% each year from 2011, as well as to reduce all greenhouse gases in all sectors by 40%from 1990 levels by 2020,.

The strategy outlines the Welsh Government’s approach to reducing emissions across the range of sectors, and also presents an adaptation framework and delivery plan, aimed at making Wales more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

The Committee provided advice, as requested by the Welsh Government during the development of the Climate Change Strategy, in relation to the level of ambition of the proposed targets and also on the proposed actions in the strategy. Further to this, both the Committee and the Adaptation Sub-Committee (ASC) were asked by the Welsh Environment Minister for a report reviewing progress against measures to reduce emissions and preparing for climate change.

This advice was published in October 2011 in a letter to the Minister John Griffiths and an accompanying report.

On the emission reduction strategy, the Committee concluded that Wales has ambitious emission reduction targets – more so than the UK. However, the Welsh target framework strikes a good balance between short term and long term goals, and the 3% target is a rational way of focusing on areas under Welsh control.

Wales is making good progress developing approaches to deliver significant emission reductions over the next decade. However, at the sectoral level, our analysis suggests there may be more scope for emission reductions, particularly in residential, business, agriculture and public sectors.

On adaptation, the Welsh Government has a good framework in place and has started to deliver on some of the key measures in the last year, focusing mainly on building capacity within organisations and ensuring policies in priority areas factor climate change into their decision making

Over the coming year, it will be important to start to implement actions to encourage the uptake of low-regrets measures and ensure that decisions with long-term consequences are explicitly considering the costs and opportunities from a changing climate and responding appropriately.

The following pages summarise emissions trends in Wales, the abatement potential identified in the CCC’s analysis on carbon budgets, including the latest report ‘The Fourth Carbon Budget – Reducing emissions through the 2020s, and policies across a range of sectors in Wales aimed at reducing emissions and making the transition to a low carbon economy.