This paper investigates national ‘climate change acts’. Climate change acts are a newly emerging, innovative form of legislation designed to drive down economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions. They impact the energy sector most particularly, as the most abundant source of global greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis highlights various conceptual, definitional and linguistic problems that arise where one seeks to apply the term ‘climate change act’ meaningfully in the context of climate and energy law and policy discourse. It is demonstrated that such difficulties exert a latent undermining influence on technical and analytical coherence in the field. Means of reducing or avoiding these sorts of problems going forward are outlined and discussed. As part of this process, a working definition of this emerging form of legislation is set out in careful exacting terms. Here, its meaning is equated with the technical descriptor ‘national framework climate legislation’. Consideration is also accorded to the future of climate change acts in this analytical setting, and extant commentary engaging the notion of second-generation climate policy is drawn upon in order to construct a working definition of second-generation climate change acts that can usefully inform aspects of analysis in going forward.

本文调查了国家的“气候变化行为”。气候变化法案是一种新兴的创新立法形式，旨在降低整个经济体的温室气体排放。作为全球温室气体排放最丰富的来源，它们对能源部门的影响最大。分析强调了在气候和能源法律和政策论述的背景下有意义地应用“气候变化法案”一词时出现的各种概念、定义和语言问题。事实证明，这些困难对该领域的技术和分析一致性产生了潜在的破坏性影响。概述和讨论了减少或避免此类问题的方法。作为这个过程的一部分，这种新出现的立法形式的工作定义以谨慎而严格的措辞提出。此处，其含义等同于技术描述词“国家框架气候立法”。在这种分析环境中，还考虑了气候变化行动的未来，以及现有的评论中涉及的概念借鉴第二代气候政策是为了构建第二代气候变化法案的工作定义，为今后分析的各个方面提供有用的信息。