摘要：This paper evaluates the United Kingdom's Climate Change Act of 2008 in terms of the
implied rates of decarbonization of the UK economy for a short-term and a long-term
target established in law. The paper uses the Kaya identity to structure the evaluation,
employing both a bottom up approach (based on projections of future UK population,
economic growth, and technology) and a top down approach (deriving implied
rates of decarbonization consistent with the targets and various rates of projected
economic growth). Both approaches indicate that the UK economy would have
to achieve annual rates of decarbonization in excess of 4 or 5%. To place these
numbers in context, the UK would have to achieve the 2006 carbon efficiency
of France by about 2015, a level of effort comparable to the building of about
30 new nuclear power plants, displacing an equivalent amount of fossil energy.
The paper argues that the magnitude of the task implied by the UK Climate
Change Act strongly suggests that it is on course to fail, and discusses implications.
