The UK must deepen its carbon-cutting policies over the next ten years to ensure it can meet longer term binding emission goals more cheaply, a government advisory body said Tuesday.

Britain has set legally binding five-year carbon budgets out to 2025 but must do more to ensure future budgets towards a 2050 emission goal of at least -80% under 1990 levels is met, the Committee on Climate Change said in a progress report.

“Without significant new policies, progress will fall behind what is required to meet legal obligations through the 2020s … Our assessment of existing policies is that some of these are at risk of failing to deliver, either due to design and delivery problems, or because they are currently unfunded,” it said.

The watchdog body said that despite UK emissions falling 8% last year due to new renewable capacity and a mild winter, it is due to fall some 15 percentage points short of its targeted levels over 2023-2027, when the country’s emissions are expected to halve on 1990 levels.

The Conservative government responded by saying it was committed to meeting the 2050 goal and had already made great strides towards it by cutting emissions by 30%.

“It has been the intention since the fourth carbon budget was set in 2011 that we would review options to close the gap in this Parliament. This work is underway,” the climate and energy ministry said in a statement, adding that it would provide a fuller response in October.

By Ben Garside – ben@carbon-pulse.com