Lawyers for the UK government have been in the High Court of Justice in London defending its flagship plan for reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Three non-profit organisations, ClientEarth, Friends of the Earth and the Good Law Project, argued that the Net Zero Strategy was in breach of the 2008 Climate Change Act over its failure to set out how much individual policies will cut emissions.
Judgment on the case was reserved yesterday, meaning we probably won’t find out who wins for months, but the case has revealed a number of important facts about the UK’s approach to tackling climate change.
Last October, at the strategy’s launch, government officials said it put the UK on course for its 2037 carbon target as well as earlier interim ones. But evidence presented by Richard Honey, a lawyer for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), reveals that the policies and proposals that were quantified by the government only add up to 95 per cent of the emissions reductions needed.
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That means some new measures – be it more energy efficiency in homes, more electric cars, more low-carbon hydrogen or something else – will be needed to fill the gap. The target is for an average of 193 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year to be emitted between 2032 and 2037. The strategy says it will get to 192 million tonnes per year.
But Honey disclosed, for the first time, that quantified measures will only get the UK to 202 million tonnes per year. “We think that’s really shocking,” says Katie de Kauwe at Friends of the Earth.
Justice Holgate, the judge hearing the judicial review, repeatedly quizzed Honey on how the gap of 10 million tonnes could be explained. Honey said there was no calculation to explain it, but suggested it was derived from analysis by government officials. After a long explanation, Honey said: “Hopefully that helps?” Holgate said he didn’t think it did. The question came up again and again, with the judge at points appearing openly frustrated. “The question I’m asking is blindingly obvious,” he said at one point.
Holgate also asked why the government hadn’t previously admitted the strategy would only meet 95 per cent of the carbon cuts needed for 2032 to 2037. Honey said there was concern in government that breaking down the specific emissions savings for individual policies would allow for them to be “misconstrued as predictions”.
It is possible that recent changes to the assumptions underpinning climate models could help the government stay on target. Honey pointed out that the strategy was based on an assumption that greenhouse gases would trap a relatively high amount of heat, something known as global warming potential.
But in November 2021, soon after the Net Zero Strategy was published, countries at the COP26 climate summit agreed on using a much lower global warming potential. That would make it easier for the 2037 carbon target, and earlier ones, to be met. The 5 per cent shortfall would be eliminated by the lower effect, Honey said.
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