The UK has set its carbon budgets. Delivery is now the challenge.

With Net Zero Week having provided a useful moment to reflect on the UK’s progress in reducing emissions, the Seventh Carbon Budget now passed into law sets a clear trajectory for emissions reductions over 2038–2042, with the Sixth Carbon Budget covering 2033–2037 still several years away. While these milestones can feel distant, the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) latest Progress in Reducing Emissions report makes clear that significant progress is required today. Urgent delivery, not ambition, will be the key driver in meeting these targets.

The central message of the CCC’s assessment is not that the UK lacks targets, but that the systems required to deliver them are not yet fully in place. Across multiple sectors, the report highlights a widening gap between the pathways needed to meet future carbon budgets and the current pace of policy implementation and the policy frameworks needed to mobilise private investment.

Nowhere is this more evident than in engineered carbon removals.

The CCC identifies engineered removals as one of the core delivery routes required to meet future carbon budgets, alongside electrification, low-carbon fuels and nature-based solutions. In its pathways, engineered removals are not optional enhancements but a structural requirement, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, agriculture and parts of heavy industry.

However, the report also makes clear that current policy frameworks are not yet aligned with the scale of deployment required, or with the private investment needed to deliver it. In the report, there are no additional emissions reductions beyond 2023 levels from engineered removals, highlighting a significant gap between long-term requirements and near-term delivery mechanisms.

This is not a question of technological readiness. It is a question of policy.

Other countries are already moving to close this gap by putting in place policy frameworks that provide investors with greater certainty. The European Union, for example, is developing regulatory and market frameworks for permanent carbon removals to help create confidence in the market and support early deployment. The common denominator is not the technology itself, but the availability of clear, long-term policy signals and bankable business models that give private investors the confidence to commit capital.

The UK risks falling behind if it does not move at a similar pace. Without clear mechanisms to support engineered removals and the infrastructure they depend on, capital will increasingly flow to jurisdictions where frameworks are more mature and investment conditions more predictable.

Within this context, BECCS represents one of the most credible near-term routes to delivering engineered removals at scale.

In the UK, residual waste wood provides a particularly relevant feedstock. It is a resource that already supports renewable electricity generation but, when coupled with carbon capture, can deliver durable engineered removals while ensuring unavoidable waste streams are put to productive use rather than ending up in landfill.

The CCC’s report does not call for new ambition. It calls for implementation. This would involve government moving beyond target-setting towards adapting and developing business models, market frameworks, and supporting infrastructure that can help unlock investment at scale.

The direction of travel is now clear. Emitters and consumers have already accepted the need to pay for decarbonisation through compliance obligations such as the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and SAF Mandate, The question is whether the UK is prepared to implement the policies necessary for private sector investment in the delivery system required to get there.

Because carbon budgets alone do not reduce emissions. Delivery does.