Blitz Bureau
The UK has announced fresh climate change targets, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he wants the country to lead on cutting emissions. The UK will now aim for an 81 per cent cut in its emissions by 2035, he told the UN conference of parties (COP29) in Azerbaijan, according to BBC.
He was one of only seven G20 leaders attending the summit, with 13 absentees including the premiers of the US, China, France and Germany. The target updates a 78 pc pledge by 2035 under the previous Conservative Government, although that also included international aviation and shipping emissions, and goes beyond another pledge of a 68 per cent reduction by 2030, the news agency said. The UK has called for other countries to match the new target.
CCC recommendations
The Prime Minister said the new target was based on recommendations from the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5C compared to levels in 1990. Starmer insisted the Government would not “tell people how to live their lives” but the target was vital to the UK’s future prosperity and energy security.
“Make no mistake, the race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, the economy of tomorrow, and I don’t want to be in the middle of the pack – I want to get ahead of the game”, the agency quoted the Prime Minister as saying.
The target will be included in papers to go before Parliament before February and, although Starmer did not announce any new policies, he did commit to continuing to provide £11.6bn of climate finance until March 2026, a pledge made under the previous Government.
Announcing a £1bn investment in a wind turbine project in Hull, which he said would create 1,300 local jobs, the PM said the world was standing at a “critical juncture in the climate crisis”.
The latest target is broadly in line with the UK’s legally-binding carboncutting path towards net zero emissions by 2050, contained in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
