"Zero carbon sooner" CO2 budget report from CUSP

This is a commentary on a report on the UK's CO2 budget titled Zero carbon sooner by Prof Tim Jackson of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Proposperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey.

It was published in 2021 following the publication of the IPCC's AR6 WG1 report.

The main points are that
  • the UK Government's timescale of cuts in CO2 emissions is grossly inadequate
  • instead, to meet the UK's international commitments, immediate radical emission cuts of over 20% annually are needed.




The conclusions of the report
In its preferred analysis, the report concluded:

About CO2 budgets
The remaining CO2 budget is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that can be emitted into the atmosphere from now until a state of net zero emissions is reached.

Starting points in the report
and in its preferred analysis

Implications of the report

Related studies



Links to the report

References

[1]IPCC (Aug 2021) AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
[2]Tyndall Centre The Tyndall carbon budget tool (2019) https://carbonbudget.manchester.ac.uk/reports/
[3]https://folk.uio.no/roberan/img/GCB2018/PNG/s00_2018_Mitigation_Curves_1.5C.png
[4]Figures from Global Carbon Budget 2018 https://folk.universitetetioslo.no/roberan/GCB2018.shtml


First published: 24 Feb 2022
Last updated: 16 Aug 2023