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The UK can end its contribution to global warming within 30 years by setting an ambitious new target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, according to a report published by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) earlier this month.

Ten years after the Climate Change Act became law, the CCC believes now is the right moment to set a more ambitious goal. Achieving a ‘net-zero’ target by the middle of the century is in line with the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement; the pact which the UK and the rest of the world signed in 2015 to curb dramatically the polluting gases that cause climate change.

This is a crucial time in the global effort to tackle climate change. Global average temperature has already risen by 1°C from pre-industrial levels, driving changes in our climate that are increasingly apparent. In the last ten years, pledges to reduce emissions by the countries of the world have reduced the forecast of global warming from above 4°C by the end of the century to around 3°C. Net-zero in the UK would lead the global effort to further limit the rise to 1.5°C.

The CCC’s recommended targets are achievable with known technologies, alongside improvements in people’s lives, and should be put into law as soon as possible, the Committee says. Falls in cost for some of the key zero-carbon technologies mean that achieving net-zero is now possible within the economic cost that Parliament originally accepted when it passed the Climate Change Act in 2008.

Meanwhile, The Climate Coalition (see next item) believes we could reach net zero by 2045 and Extinction Rebellion is calling it for to met by 2025.

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