The UK's shrinking possibility space: carbon budgets under evolving climate targets

<p dir="ltr">The Tyndall Centre is celebrating 25 years of research at the midpoint of the ‘critical decade’ for climate action in 2025, amid unprecedented global climate change challenges. To mark this milestone, a report and analysis has been published to reflect on Tyndall’s early energy scenario research, drawing lessons from the past to enhance our future impact.</p><p dir="ltr">Energy scenarios have long shaped policy feasibility and ambition. Reflecting on past scenarios with the benefit of hindsight allows for an evaluation of assumptions on plausibility and outcomes. Here this is used to explore what can be done differently in response to the urgency of contemporary climate challenges. As climate impacts intensify, we ask how energy research can better align with the commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and raise levels of ambition to support those already on the frontline, as well as future generations.</p><p dir="ltr">This figure illustrates cumulative CO₂ emissions in GtCO2, combining actual emissions and future estimates under different mitigation scenarios.The innermost concentric ring (Emissions so far) represents the UK’s territorial CO₂ emissions from 2002 to 2024. The three surrounding rings illustrate cumulative emissions according to prominent UK decarbonisation pathways; each anchored to the same historical record starting from 2002. The outermost ring (Tyndall Scenarios (2005)) corresponds to the Tyndall Centre’s Decarbonising the UK scenarios. The middle ring (Climate Change Committee (2025)) represents modelled emissions from the 1.5°C Balanced Pathway of UK Climate Change Committee’s 7th Carbon Budget report.The innermost grey ring shows Anderson et al's (2020) fair-share pathway for a UK-aligned 2°C pathway. Links to the references used for these figures are: (i) Tyndall Scenarios (2005) https://tyndall.ac.uk/reports/decarbonising-the-uk-energy-in-a-climate-conscious-future/; (ii) Climate Change Committee (2005) https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/the-seventh-carbon-budget/; (iii) Anderson et al., (2020) <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2020.1728209" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2020.1728209</a></p>