Climate campaigners have urged ministers to make steeper cuts in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions after the government’s statutory adviser on the climate gave its verdict on new targets.
The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, has written to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, to advise cuts of 81% in the UK’s emissions, compared with 1990 levels, by 2035, if emissions from aviation and shipping are excluded.
Miliband now faces the choice of whether to follow the committee’s advice in setting the UK’s new international commitment under the Paris agreement at a forthcoming UN climate summit.
A cut of 81% as an international target would be broadly in line with the UK’s existing domestic carbon budgets for the 2030s, which are also set with advice from the CCC and are intended to deliver net zero emissions by 2050.
But campaigners urged the government to go further in order to demonstrate global leadership and spur innovation and a low-carbon economy. Mike Childs, the head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: “With climate change spiralling dangerously out of control, the recommended 81% cut should be seen as the very minimum carbon reduction target the UK government should commit to. Ramping up ambition to make even deeper cuts in practice would show real leadership in global efforts to avert the worst of climate breakdown.”
Catherine Pettengell, the executive director of Climate Action Network UK, said: “[This] should be the floor, not the ceiling, of the UK’s ambition and action. A more ambitious and fair target could be achieved if the UK brings its full economic and political will to the table.”
Meeting the new target will be a stretch. The UK is far away from meeting the international target in place of a 68% reductions in emissions by 2030, which was set by Boris Johnson before the UK hosted the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, according to analysis by Friends of the Earth.
Doug Parr, the policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “True leadership means the government must also set out tangible plans to deliver on its 2035 target.” He called for the fulfilment of Labour’s promise to end new oil and gas licences, at least triple renewables and double energy efficiency rates by 2030, and support workers to transition away from polluting industries.
Another key question for Miliband, in drawing up the UK’s international target – known as a nationally determined contribution, or NDC, under the Paris agreement – is how to account for emissions from international aviation and shipping to and from the UK.
These emissions are now included in the UK’s domestic carbon budgets, but were not explicitly in the 2015 Paris agreement, and previous international pacts, because of the difficulty of apportioning the emissions to particular countries. Some campaigners argue that aviation and shipping are implicitly covered by the Paris agreement, but there is disagreement over this and most countries exclude them from their NDCs.
Jonathan Hood, the UK sustainable shipping manager at the Transport & Environment campaigning group, said they should be included. “Passing responsibility for shipping emissions to the ineffective International Maritime Organisation and excluding them from the NDC makes no sense – particularly when the UK has already accepted legal responsibility for international shipping and aviation emissions by including them in the sixth carbon budget,” he said.
If aviation and shipping are included, in effect the headline target for an NDC would be likely to equate to a cut of about 78% by 2035, in line with the UK’s carbon budgets.
New NDCs are not due to be submitted to the UN until next February, but Keir Starmer promised that the UK’s would be unveiled early, at the forthcoming Cop29 UN climate summit, taking place in Azerbaijan from 11 November.
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The prime minister told other leaders at the UN general assembly in New York last month: “The UK will lead again, tackling climate change, at home and internationally and restoring our commitment to international development. The threat of climate change is existential and it is happening in the here and now. So we have reset Britain’s approach.”
Delivering the NDC early is intended to spur other major economies to do the same. However, the big question mark hanging over Cop29 is whether Donald Trump will win the US presidential election, which takes place just five days before. Trump has vowed to dismantle the green industrial stimulus put in place by Joe Biden, boost fossil fuels, and withdraw the US from the Paris agreement.
The UK met the first three five-year carbon budgets set under the Climate Change Act of 2008, but current and future budgets look harder to meet. This carbon budget runs to 2027, and will be assessed at the end of this parliament in 2029. The fifth and sixth carbon budgets call for a cut of 58% in emissions by 2032, and 78% by 2037. The seventh carbon budget will be set by the CCC next year.
Robert Jenrick, the Conservative leadership candidate, has pledged to repeal the Climate Change Act, and his rival in the contest, Kemi Badenoch, is also hostile to the UK’s net zero ambitions.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “Britain is back in the business of climate leadership because the only way to protect current generations in the UK is by making Britain a clean energy superpower, and the only way to protect our children and future generations is by leading global climate action.
“We are grateful to the Climate Change Committee for this expert advice, which we will consider carefully before we announce an ambitious nationally determined contribution target at Cop29 to help limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.”