Plan B v Secretary of State for Business, Industrial and Energy Strategy

Legal Topic: Climate change

Geographic relevance: United Kingdom

Language: English

Data type: Legal citations

About this resource:

In the UK, an environmental organisation brought a case against the government for failing to revise their 2050 mitigation target after the Paris Agreement.

• The government’s view was that the Paris Agreement’s reference to “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees” was only intended to strengthen efforts to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees.
• Plan B argued this interpretation of the Paris Agreement was incorrect and, because the government relied on this interpretation in making their decision not to change the 2050 target, this decision was based on an error of law and was illegal.

The case was recently dismissed by the Court of Appeal.

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