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CARBON BUDGETING & EMISSION MITIGATION PLANNING: DRAFT REGULATIONS OUT FOR COMMENT
- 01 August 2025
- Environmental Law
- SA Legal Academy
The Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment has gazetted draft national greenhouse gas carbon budgeting and emissions mitigation planning regulations for public comment by 30 September 2025. Input is sought by the same date on the associated draft technical guidelines.
This comes 11 days after a departmental media statement announcing Minister Dion George’s approval of the proposed new regulations for the required public consultation process, which at the time was expected to begin during ‘early August’.
Among other things, the statement drew attention to comprehensive stakeholder consultations underpinning the draft regulations, which ‘support the implementation’ of 2024 Climate Change Act sections 26 and 27.
According to the Act itself, these sections respectively require the Minister to:
- publish ‘a list of greenhouse gases … reasonably believe(d to) cause or ... likely to cause or exacerbate climate change’, and
- ‘allocate a carbon budget’ to entities conducting a listed activity.
Sub-sections 26(2) to (6) and section 27 were among those excluded from a 17 March 2025 presidential proclamation on the Act’s commencement and therefore have yet to come into effect – as SA Legal Academy reported at the time. However, once finalised and gazetted the draft regulations will operationalise these provisions.
The departmental media statement elaborated on this, noting that carbon budgets will be allocated to ‘significant emitters’, which will also be required to prepare ‘greenhouse gas mitigation plans’ for submission to the authorities concerned.
Against that backdrop, once in force the regulations are expected to:
- ‘facilitate South Africa’s transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy’, while
- ‘ensuring compliance with international obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the (2016) Paris Agreement’.
Please click the links below for more information:
- draft national greenhouse gas carbon budgeting and mitigation planning regulations
- draft technical guidelines
- media statement
- Act
- SA Legal Academy report on the Act’s partial commencement
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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