The U.K. will fail to meet its carbon target without taking new emissions-reduction steps, the government’s climate change adviser said. Britain has a self-imposed goal to lower carbon-dioxide output in half from 1990 to 2025. That entails a 31 percent cut from today’s levels, and the nation is on course only to slash CO2 by 21 percent to 23 percent, the Committee on Climate Change said today in an e-mailed report. Taking additional measures to accelerate carbon cuts is important because the committee has identified the 2025 target as the cheapest pathway for the U.K. to bring down emissions. Britain has enshrined in law a requirement to reduce carbon by 80 percent from 1990 to 2050. “The U.K. is still not on track to meet our statutory commitment to cut emissions by 80 percent,” John Gummer, chairman of the committee and a lawmaker in the House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper chamber, said in the statement. “The longer we leave it, the costlier it becomes. This report shows the best and most cost-effective ways to ensure we meet our targets. There is no time to lose.” The panel recommended the government improve and expand on policies to cut emissions by promoting energy efficiency in homes and factories, increasing the use of renewable-heat technologies such as heat pumps, extending support for renewables beyond 2020, accelerating the development of carbon capture and storage, and supporting longer-term European Union targets for emissions from new vehicles. Carbon Targets The government’s carbon targets are laid out in five-year budgets. The fourth budget runs 2023 through 2027 and caps U.K. emissions at 1,950 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the period. That’s 390 million tons a year, or half the 1990 level of 780 million tons. “The U.K. has met its first carbon budget and the government’s latest projections show that we are on course to achieve the second and third carbon budgets,” the Department of Energy and Climate Change said in an e-mailed statement. “But we are not complacent. There is more to do if we are to meet the targets of the fourth carbon budget.” The goal caused friction between the Treasury and the energy department when it was announced in 2011, and the government this year is reviewing whether to retain or weaken the budget. While Gummer’s committee has repeatedly recommended it be retained, the government has yet to indicate when it will make an announcement.