The UK Government has announced that it intends to "set the world’s most ambitious climate change target into law to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels".
Under the new target, emissions from the UK Shipping Industry and the aviation industry will be included in the carbon budget for the first time.
The announcement has been made ahead of the major US summit on Thursday 22nd April where President Joe Biden is expected to set out a new US target for reducing emissions. And also feeds into the Government’s plan to take a lead on climate change ahead of the international COP26 talks in Glasgow in November.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has insisted that he is “not opposed to aviation” and believes the sector can find a way “to fly in a clean, green way”, in response to a question made during a press briefing from Downing Street that Johnson’s personal views against Heathrow expansion.
Johnson said: “My own views about that particular matter are well-known but that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to aviation and doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that this country has a great future in pioneering low carbon aviation.
“Aviation and a green future are not mutually exclusive and they can be done. That’s why one of the things that I set out in the 10-point plan for the green industrial revolution was to get to a jet-zero world and the government is working with partners across industry to try to achieve that.”
He added: “There are all sorts of promising looking approaches and all sorts of ways in which we could reduce carbon emissions from planes and we’ve got to do it. In the end, humanity is going to need to fly and it’s going to need to fly in a clean, green way.
“I’m a technological optimist and I think we can do it.”