ESG Weekly Update ' July 27, 2022

• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, Energy Law, Environmental Law, Oil, Gas & Electricity, Climate Change
• Law Firm: Debevoise & Plimpton
• Author: Geoffrey P. Burgess, Andrew M. Levine, Sue Meng, William D. Regner, David W. Rivkin, Jeffrey J. Rosen, Samantha J. Rowe, Patricia Volhard, Ulysses Smith, Julia Y. Chen, Diana Moise, Katherine L. Nelson, Amanda H. Esteves and Gianni Pizzitola

UK: High Court Orders Government to Show How it Plans to Achieve Net Zero

On July 18, 2022, the UK High Court found that the government's Net Zero Strategy does not comply with the legal requirements because it did not specify any data showing how planned emission cuts will achieve the reduction targets. The application for judicial review was made by Friends of the Earth Limited, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project in relation to decisions made by the UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Under the Climate Act 2008, the UK Secretary of State is required to approve proposals and policies to enable the UK government's obligation to meet its carbon budgets. The Secretary of State is also required to publish the government's Net Zero Strategy, which was done in October 2021 through the Net Zero Build Back Green report (available here).

The High Court found, among other things, that the Net Zero Strategy report did not set out any quantitative assessment of the contributions expected to be made by individual policies to emissions reductions, nor did it reveal that there was a 5% shortfall in the carbon budget. It should have done so in order to comply with the language and statutory purposes of the Climate Change Act 2008.

The claimants asked the High Court to order the UK government to comply with the legal requirements, but not to quash the Net Zero Strategy. The Court therefore ordered the Secretary of State to present to Parliament a new Net Zero Strategy report before the end of March 2023 specifying how the policies will achieve the emissions targets.

The judgment follows a series of international court decisions scrutinising governments' climate strategies. In the case of Urgenda v Netherlands, a Dutch court found that the government's failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% before 2020 had breached its duties to protect the right to life and the right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights. More recently, in 2021, the German Constitutional Court ordered the government to improve its Climate Protection Act to ensure that the 2030 greenhouse gas reductions goals are compatible with the strategy to reach net zero in the period from 2031 onward. More legal actions may follow.

Links:
R. (on the application of Friends of the Earth Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [2022] EWHC 1841 (Admin)

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