Both the UK and EU face difficulties in realising climate related policies, the UK gambles on CCUS technology developing whilst the EU faces floundering in the courts in recent regulation.

Two recent articles from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE demonstrate the difficulties in creating effective climate policy and the difference between the approaches of the UK and EU.

The Government published Powering Up Britain along with several other documents on 30 March 2023, in the wake of three legal challenges brought by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, the Good Law Project and Jo Wheatley, which concluded that the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had not provided sufficient details about how the Government would reduce emissions in line with the Climate Change Act and the statutory carbon budgets.

Powering Up Britain includes an investment of up to £20bn in the early deployment of carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS), which was included in the Spring Budget. It was no secret that such investment is intended to provoke private sector funding; the UK remains gambling on the development of CCUS to meet its targets.

The EU, on the other hand, is looking to increasing legislation to reduce the climate impacts of non-state actors in the supply chain from two key areas of reform: corporate due diligence and climate-washing.

The proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) requires companies falling under its scope to conduct due diligence along its ‘chain of activities’ and identify actual or potential negative impacts on human rights and the ‘environment’.

However, climate change is not expressly listed in the proposal as one of the adverse environmental impacts. This ambiguity is further muddied by the fact that climate is expressly indicated in the requirement to adopt ‘transition plans’. Such vague terms are an almost open invitation for litigation.

As Tiffanie Chan, author of this report notes: “However, if climate initiatives are not credible, they create a dangerous illusion of progress.”

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