R (Friends of the Earth Ltd) v Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
The government's Net Zero Strategy was unlawful because it did not contain enough information about how its policies would deliver the carbon budgets set under the Climate Change Act 2008.
Facts
Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the Secretary of State must set carbon budgets limiting the United Kingdom's greenhouse gas emissions over five year periods, and must prepare proposals and policies which he considers will enable the budgets to be met. In 2021 the government published its Net Zero Strategy. Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project challenged the strategy, arguing that it did not show how the policies would achieve the emissions reductions needed, and that Parliament had not been given that information.
Legal principle
Holgate J held that the strategy was unlawful. He said that the Secretary of State could not lawfully conclude that the policies would enable the carbon budgets to be met without information about the contribution which each policy was expected to make to emissions reductions, and that the report to Parliament under section 14 of the Act had to contain that information, so that Parliament and the public could scrutinise the government's plans. The government was ordered to produce a new strategy, and published the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan in 2023, which was itself later held to be unlawful.
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