Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain at the United Nations climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday.
Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

At COP29, Keir Starmer Announces the UK’s Ambitious Climate Targets

The prime minister announced more ambitious climate targets, charting a very different course from the United States, which is expected to roll back its energy transition plans.

by · NY Times

Britain on Tuesday announced the swiftest, most ambitious climate target of any industrial economy. In so doing, it not only laid out the economic case for clean energy, but also sought to chart a very different course from its longtime ally across the pond, the United States.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain told delegates at the international climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, that his country would aim to reduce its emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases by 81 percent by 2035, compared with levels in 1990.

“The race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future, the economy of the future,” he said.

The announcement at the talks, known as COP29, hinted at how Britain is trying to position itself in the world as a destination for companies that want to invest in the clean energy transition, especially at a time when President-elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to roll back the tax incentives that had recently made the United States an attractive bet for a range of clean energy companies, from battery makers to wind power firms.

Helen Clarkson, who heads the Climate Group, a nonprofit organization, and works with the private sector in advancing clean energy, said in an emailed statement that Mr. Starmer’s administration would now have to lay out a plan for companies seeking to invest. “The economic prize on offer to the U.K. is enormous,” Ms. Clarkson said.

Mr. Starmer’s left-leaning Labour Party came to office in July with a promise to accelerate the transition away from coal, oil and gas and to produce the country’s electricity mainly from renewable energy sources by 2030, a full decade ahead of the European Union.

That 2030 target faces stiff challenges. It requires not only a doubling of wind power on land and a threefold expansion of solar capacity, according to the National Energy System Operator, an independent agency, but also the construction of new power lines to take the energy from where it’s produced to where it’s used. It also means an estimated $80 billion in investments and requires changes to planning rules.

The system operator’s report, published in early November, also said that gas, which supplies more than a fourth of the country’s electricity needs now, would have to remain as emergency backup for windless days.

Mr. Starmer’s challenge now is to show that his government can carry out such a swift energy transition without hurting Britons’ pocketbooks. The government has pledged not to issue new oil and gas exploration licenses in the North Sea, has authorized several large energy infrastructure projects, and has ended what was effectively a ban on new wind projects on land.

Mr. Starmer’s remarks at a news conference in Baku hinted at the political sensitivities of the energy transition. “We’re not going to start dictating to people what they do,” he said, according to Reuters.

Tuesday’s announcement ratchets up the country’s previous target to reduce emissions by 78 percent. And it follows the recommendation of the country’s Climate Change Committee, an independent panel of advisers, which in October advised Mr. Starmer’s administration to raise the country’s ambitions and argued that they could be “achieved in a way that benefits jobs and the economy.”

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