UK Net Zero Strategy Successfully Challenged For Failure To Confirm How Targets Will Be Met

Court orders UK Government to lay revised strategy before Parliament by 31 March 2023.

Climate change is a global problem. These are the opening words of Mr Justice Holgate's judgment in respect of a legal challenge to the adequacy of the UK Government's Net Zero Strategy (NZS) and the statutory reporting undertaken in connection with it. This judgment was released on 18 July 2022, a day on which temperatures in the UK reached 38.1C, just short of the 2019 UK record of 38.7C. On the day of writing UK temperatures are anticipated to reach up to 40C, an experience being repeated across the world. Whilst the NZS notes that the UK currently accounts for less than 1% of global GHG emissions, addressing climate change requires a collective global effort. It is therefore important that the UK Government's policies and proposals are demonstrably capable of enabling the carbon reductions required to (hopefully) address the effects of climate change.