The UK Committee On Climate Change Recommends 2050 "Net-Zero" Target

On 2 May 2019, the UK's Committee on Climate Change ("CCC") recommended that Parliament legislate, without delay, to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions to "net-zero" by 2050. The CCC is the UK Government's chief climate change advisory body, and its previous recommendations have been implemented. It is possible that the new target could be enacted through legislation by late 2019 or early 2020.

The CCC has advised that to implement and realise the net-zero target, the UK Government would need to introduce new policies across many sectors of the economy. Specifically, the CCC has stated that Government would have to facilitate widespread adoption of low carbon power, modernise the approach to heating buildings, scale up carbon capture and storage, require all new cars to be electric by 2035, and arrange for the equivalent of 1.5 billion trees to be planted. The CCC further emphasised that, based on its latest forecasts, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would