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SDG: 13 Climate action

Climate action

In 2026, the UK government will decide on its Seventh Carbon Budget, covering the years 2038 to 2042. Policies recommended by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) require widespread social change, additional investment of around 1% of GDP, and major changes in practices and technologies within many industries (CCC, 2025). To successfully navigate such major changes, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) have identified macroeconomic and distributional analysis as evidence gaps they must address to set the Seventh Carbon Budget. In this Sprint we aim todevelop new modelling approaches to fill those evidence gaps. The models will assess macroeconomic impacts of carbon budgets, including the impact on people with different levels of income and wealth. Methods will be designed so as to be readily transferrable to other countries and regions.

Data-driven macroeconomic agent-based models have the characteristics required to model carbon budgets’ macroeconomic and inequality impacts. These models use real socioeconomic survey data to simulate the interactions of households, firms, government and the financial sector. This realism allows very specific policy interventions, in contrast to most macroeconomic climate modelling that flattens all policies into a carbon tax equivalent. This class of model is in its infancy but has already demonstrated the potential to rival the forecasting performance of DSGE* models (Poledna et al., 2023). Our team at INET Oxford has developed a prototype model that covers all OECD countries (Wiese et al., 2024). As the model outputs individual income and wealth balance sheets for each of the thousands or millions of agents represented in each time period, it has great potential to conduct dynamic analyses of the distributional impacts of policy over time.

* Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models

Why this Sprint? Why now?

Partnering directly with DESNZ, we aim to provide provisional analysis in time to influence the 2026 Seventh Carbon Budget. This will enable macroeconomic and inequality goals to be taken into account when the government decides how emissions reductions are allocated between sectors of the economy, and how individual mitigation policies in the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan (DESNZ, 2023) are implemented.

Achieving Net Zero is arguably the defining challenge of the 21st century, and education holds immense—yet still underutilised—potential to drive transformative change. Around the world, climate change education is gaining momentum, often spurred by the demands of students and teachers. However, a persistent gap remains between high-level curriculum ambitions and the everyday reality in classrooms.

As the quantity of climate change education balloons, there is growing urgency to address its quality. The rise in attention to climate change education represent huge opportunities, yet the interdisciplinarity of climate knowledge, its breadth, complexity and dynamism, the deeply politicised nature of Net Zero, its contested relationship with questions about justice, and the deluge of low-quality information, all present policy makers and classroom teachers with considerable challenges.

Why this Sprint? Why now?

England is entering a key period of curriculum reform, led by the Department for Education’s Curriculum Review Group. This offers a timely and strategic opportunity to embed high-quality Net Zero education. The wider political context—marked by weakening Net Zero commitments and delays to key milestones—adds urgency. In this climate of uncertainty, education offers as a realistic, scalable, and long-term lever for change.

Globally, more than a billion young people are in school. What they learn—and how they learn—about Net Zero will profoundly shape their ability generate political will, advocate for meaningful action, and elevate the quality of public discourse. Equipping and empowering young people will unleash the creativity, ingenuity, and scientific expertise needed to meet this challenge. This Sprint brings together Oxford’s interdisciplinary expertise with the insights of practitioners and policymakers, including close collaboration with the Department for Education, the David Ross Education Trust and a Youth Advisory Board. It will deliver the Oxford Net Zero Education Framework to support curriculum designers in creating meaningful and ambitious climate education for all.