Climate Change Act

The Climate Change Act 2008 was the first piece of legislation that laid out long-term legally binding legislation to combat climate change.

The Act had a number of elements and purposes, and has lead to many other initiatives and schemes. These were some of its key outcomes:

• Setting national GHG reduction targets (34% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, against a 1990 base)
• Outline 'budgets' to reach these targets
• Set-up national frameworks and institutions to meet targets and help combat the problem
• To generally better equip the UK to deal with climate change