Recently elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new climate target today, committing to cut UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 81% by 2035, on a 1990 basis. The new target, announced at the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, raises the UK’s climate ambition from the 78% target set under Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021.

The new decarbonization goal will form the UK’s new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement. NDCs are national climate action plans presented by each country under the agreement, and are required to be updated every five years with increasingly higher ambition. The UK’s current NDC is to achieve a 68% reduction in emissions by 2030.

The new goal also aligns with a recent recommendation from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK government’s climate advisor, advising the government to adopt target to reduce emissions 81%by 2035 in order to contribute to the global goal to limit temperature increase to 1.5°C.

In his remarks, Starmer highlighted a series of key actions take by his government since its election in July 2024 to restore the UK’s “role as a climate leader on the world stage,” including scrapping a ban on onshore wind, committing to no new North Sea oil and gas licenses, closing the final coal power plant in the UK, and launching Great British Energy, which will invest, own and manage clean energy projects with over $10 billion backing from the government. The government also announced in October that it will invest up to £21.7 billion over the next 25 years for the development of two new “carbon capture clusters” capable of removing and storing more than 8.5 million tonnes of industrial carbon emissions per year.

Starmer added:

“Make no mistake – the race is on for the clean energy jobs of the future. The economy of tomorrow. And I don’t want to be in middle of the pack. I want to get ahead of the game.”