Court rules UK plan to hit net zero emissions too vague

The UK government’s plan for reaching net zero emissions was unlawful because it provided insufficient detail for how the target would be met, a judge ruled in a high-profile climate case on Monday.

Kwasi Kwarteng, secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, launched the so-called net zero strategy last year. But neither he, nor the minister who approved the strategy on his behalf, knew how each individual policy would contribute to achieving the legally binding target, and therefore could not properly assess the credibility of the plan, Justice David Holgate said.

That was a breach of the government’s obligations under the Climate Change Act, the judge said.

A detailed and quantified explanation of how the policies would achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was important for holding ministers to account and for “transparency”, the judge said. He ordered ministers to publish an updated strategy by the end of March 2023.

“This decision is a breakthrough moment in the fight against climate delay and inaction. It forces the government to put in place climate plans that will actually address the crisis,” said Sam Hunter Jones, senior lawyer at environmental law charity Client Earth, one of the campaign groups that challenged the government.

“The decision confirms that the government must show how its plans will deliver the carbon budget targets in full,” he added.

The ruling came as the UK and large swaths of Europe endured record temperatures, with the UK predicted to hit 40C on Tuesday for the first time ever.

The government has come under repeated fire for lacking a detailed plan for how to achieve net zero. In June, the Climate Change Committee, which advises ministers, said there was “scant evidence” of delivery against the high-level target, with major policy gaps in key areas.

Other groups, including a House of Lords committee, have warned that the government’s plans are insufficiently detailed, and that it is unclear how the target will be met.

The campaign groups that challenged the government, including Friends of the Earth, the Good Law Project and environmental campaigner Jo Wheatley, had highlighted that, taking the policies together, the net zero strategy would only achieve 95 per cent of the required emissions reductions, leaving a 5 per cent shortfall.

They argued that ministers should have been aware of how each policy contributed to the overall reduction, which they were not, and that the plan should have explained how that shortfall would be met, which it did not — both points that the judge agreed with.

The government had argued that it did not need to provide a quantification of the effects of its individual policies.

A BEIS spokesperson said: “The net zero strategy remains government policy and has not been quashed. The judge made no criticism about the substance of our plans which are well on track and, in fact, the claimants themselves described them as ‘laudable’ during the proceedings.”