UK government sued by green groups over 'unlawful' net-zero strategy

Two environmental groups are suing the U.K. government over its strategy to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, arguing that its suite of green policies are insufficient for climate neutrality.

ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth will separately file papers in the High Court this week claiming that the government's failure to implement a credible plan for net-zero is unlawful.

The government unveiled the strategy in October 2021, saying it will help unlock £90 billion in investment by 2030 and create 440,000 green jobs. Policies include support for electric vehicles, hydrogen, nuclear power and the development of sustainable aviation fuel.

But ClientEarth, which has previously won court cases against the U.K. over air pollution and also targets companies building new fossil fuel infrastructure, said the plan relies on unproven technologies and overlooks more effective near-term solutions.

"It's not enough for the U.K. government simply to have a net-zero strategy, it needs to include real-world policies that ensure it succeeds," Sam Hunter Jones, a senior lawyer at ClientEarth, said in a statement. "Anything less is a breach of its legal duties [on climate change and the protection of human rights] and amounts to greenwashing and climate delay."

Friends of the Earth argued that the strategy does not comply with the section of the U.K. Climate Change Act that requires the government to produce policies to meet legally binding carbon-reduction targets.

"A rapid and fair transition to a safer future requires a plan that shows how much greenhouse gas reduction the chosen policies will achieve, and by when," Katie de Kauwe, a lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. "That the plan for achieving net-zero is published without this information in it is very worrying, and we believe is unlawful."

The U.K. became the first major economy to introduce legislation for climate neutrality when it passed an amendment to the Climate Change Act in June 2019.

Its subsequent net-zero strategy built on Prime Minister Boris Johnson's 10-point climate plan, announced in November 2020, which included a raft of measures to boost the country's green economy, such as a ramped-up offshore wind target and a faster phaseout of diesel and gasoline vehicles. Johnson has also pledged that the U.K. electricity grid will be entirely low carbon by 2035.

In its analysis of the net-zero plan, the independent Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government, called it "an ambitious and comprehensive strategy that marks a significant step forward for U.K. climate policy."

However, the advisers added that the government "has not quantified the effect of each policy and proposal on emissions."

"[While] the government has proposed a set of ambitions that align well to the emissions targets, it is not clear how the mix of policies will deliver on those ambitions — albeit in theory they could," the committee said in a report.

A spokesperson for the U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the strategy "sets out specific, detailed measures we will take to transition to a low-carbon economy, including helping businesses and consumers to move to clean and more secure, home-grown power, supporting hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs and leveraging up to £90 billion of private investment by 2030."

Once the lawsuits are filed and the government has submitted its defense, the High Court will decide whether to grant the green groups permission to proceed to a full hearing.

Both ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth said that failing to meet the U.K.'s emissions-reduction goals would disproportionately impact groups that are protected in law, such as children, people of color and those with disabilities.

"This unaddressed inequality needs transparency and political accountability," Friends of the Earth said.

The U.K. lawsuits come after Germany was forced to strengthen its 2030 emissions-reduction target following a pivotal ruling by the country's constitutional court in favor of young environmental activists, who claimed the previous climate pathway left the heavy lifting to future generations.