The British government is to formally ask its official climate advisors, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), to consider the “implications” for the UK of meeting the 1.5C Paris target.
Claire Perry, minister for energy and clean growth announced that Britain would call on its official climate watchdog to explore how Paris would affect the UK’s long-term climate goals, following an IPCC report on 1.5C due later this year.
The UK’s Climate Change Act already sets a legally binding long-term target of reducing emissions by 80% from a 1990 baseline by 2050, but experts – including the CCC – have warned that the UK will need to raise its ambition to comply with the Paris climate agreement.
But the Paris deal set a higher ambition of staying “well below” 2C and striving for 1.5C.
The current chief executive of the CCC is Chris Stark, a former civil servant in the Scot-Govt widely known as the ‘brains’ behind Scottish Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse.
Perry said: “The UK will need to legislate for a net-zero emissions target at an appropriate point in the future to provide legal certainty on where the UK is heading.”
This may – or possibly not – be important in context of a ‘hard Brexit’ and what appears to the Brit-Govt power-grab to divert devolved powers from Scotland to Westminster after Britain’s Independence Day when the UK quits the EU in March 2019.
19 Apr 2018
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