(Bloomberg) -- Keir Starmer ratcheted up the UK’s climate ambitions, announcing a new greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2035 that keeps Britain at the forefront of the battle against global warming.
The UK will now aim to cut emissions 81% from 1990 levels by 2035, Starmer said Tuesday at the United Nations’ annual climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. That’s a step up from the previous 78% cut Britain was targeting, and brings the government’s policy in line with the recommendations of its adviser, the Climate Change Committee.
“This country recognizes that the world stands at a critical juncture in the climate crisis,” Starmer said in Baku, promising to restore Britain’s role in the international effort. “There is no national security, there is no economic security, there is no global security without climate security.” He added that he’d urged all countries to come forward with ambitious targets of their own.
By raising Britain’s ambitions at the global conference — known as COP — Starmer aims to exert soft pressure on other nations to adopt targets compatible with limiting global warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5C (2.7F). He told reporters on the flight to Baku that he aims for Britain to show “global leadership” on the climate emergency, describing it as an important obligation internationally as well as a “huge opportunity” to create jobs at home.
“Make no mistake: the race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, the economy of the future,” Starmer said. “And I don’t want to be in the middle of the pack: I want to get ahead of the game.”
Starmer’s attendance at the summit comes just a week after the US presidential election won by former President Donald Trump, whose victory has cast a shadow over global efforts to rein in climate change. Trump has called global warming a “hoax” and during the campaign, promised an energy policy centered on the mantra “drill, baby, drill.” He’s also pledged to pull the US out of the Paris Accord, the UN’s global treaty on climate change, just as he did during his previous presidential term.
Environmental groups including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth welcomed the new UK target after the Guardian reported the plan late on Monday, though both also warned of the need for Starmer to say how he intends to get there.
“This is a relatively ambitious target compared with many other nations, and will help build momentum at these talks,” Greenpeace UK’s senior political adviser, Rebecca Newsom, said in a statement. “But targets need to be backed up with bold action. When the government submits its action plan next year, it must include details of how the UK will deliver a full phase out of oil and gas.”
“With the warning signals flashing red, a planet battered by increasingly severe floods, storms and heat waves, and the election of climate denier President Trump, the need for climate leadership by the UK has never been more urgent,” said Friends of the Earth’s head of campaigns, Rosie Downes. “Keir Starmer’s 2035 carbon-reduction pledge is a step in the right direction but must be seen as a floor to the level of ambition not a ceiling. Deeper, faster cuts are needed.”
The US is the biggest historical emitter and second to China now, and has a target of at least halving emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. The European Union is targeting a 55% reduction from 1990 levels by 2030 and shares a goal with the UK of achieving “net zero” emissions by 2050.
The UK is pursuing that target through a series of five-year carbon budgets setting out how much the nation can emit over successive periods. The country also has an interim target of cutting greenhouse gases by 68% by 2030.
While the power sector has done the heavy lifting of Britain’s emissions cuts so far, the 2035 target will require bigger cuts in sectors such as domestic transport — which accounts for more than a quarter of Britain’s emissions — and buildings, responsible for about a fifth. The prime minister said he will not be “telling people how to live their lives” as part of plans to reach the new goal.
Starmer’s Labour Party fought the UK’s July 4 election pledging to encourage growth by leveraging green investment from the private sector. That’s despite the party in February slashing its promises of green spending to less than £5 billion ($6.4 billion) a year from £28 billion. Since winning power after a 15-year absence, Labour has set up Great British Energy, a public company designed to spur investment in clean energy, while also boosting the market for offshore wind and other renewables with a contracts for difference auction that supported a record 9.6 gigawatts of projects.
“The new UK government was elected on promises of stronger climate action at home, and climate leadership on the world stage,” and Starmer’s announcement “represents both,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of the international program at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. “His is a powerful pledge from a major economy with significant historical emissions.”
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.