Is Climate Litigation Driving The Energy Transition?

Introduction

Throughout 2022, we continued to see legal action addressing issues of climate change – so-called "climate litigation" – used against governments and businesses as a tool to accelerate the energy transition. As the climate crisis remains firmly on the political and economic agenda, both real and threatened claims can influence, or even compel, entities to clarify, reform or repeal their sustainability policies.

What is climate litigation?

The most frequent type of claim remains against governments for their (in)action on climate change. For example, a local court ruled last summer that Czech government ministries had acted unlawfully because their emission mitigation measures were insufficient to achieve a 55 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, as required by the Czech Republic's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. More recently, in January 2023, the English Court of Appeal