CSE continues to focus its efforts on ways to deal with the continued increase in damaging carbon emissions - the single biggest challenge we currently face
Cutting carbon emissions
Climate change, caused principally by the emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use, is the single biggest challenge facing us today. The prospects for future generations are bleak if we don't achieve huge and rapid cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Effective action is urgent. Latest scientific evidence gives us at most a decade in which to achieve these cuts and thus limit future damage to just tolerable levels.
All nations within the world need to play their part, in particular developed nations who emit far more than their ‘fair share’ of global emissions. And within each nation, every company, community and individual will need to change the way they think and act on energy.
Achieving this change is at the heart of CSE’s work – from advising individual householders on how to cut energy use – to embedding carbon reduction in local authority performance frameworks – to researching for Government the feasibility of a system of personal carbon allowances.
While the UK now has challenging, legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions, CSE’s focus is on the practical steps and innovative interventions needed to deliver these targets.
Our research is helping policy makers understand what practical measures and actions are needed to cut emissions and the most effective interventions to secure household behaviour change; our work with communities is helping to engage local groups in practical carbon reduction activities*; our training programmes are designed to pass on the skills and knowledge for a low carbon future; and we have developed tools that help local authorities to improve performance and develop effective local initiatives.
We are also exploring how best to ensure that policies to deliver lower carbon emissions achieve a fair distribution of the costs and benefits of action – see Exploring energy justice
* See particularly The Source, CSE's website for community energy
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