Can Starmer achieve his ambitious 81% emissions cut by 2035?

ITV News Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana, reporting from Baku, sets out the challenges involved with Labour’s new climate plans
Keir Starmer has set out an ambitious climate target for 2035 – leading to praise for Britain as a leader at this Cop29. And no wonder, the PM was one of the few G20 leaders to even show up to the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
But how realistic is his target – and will he achieve it?
The aim is to reduce emissions to 81% below 1990 levels by midway through the next decade – a target that essentially accepts the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
But what Starmer does not accept is just how hard the CCC suggests that transition will be.
It makes clear that being on target for that reduction would involve accelerating the changes that are happening today (including switching people from boilers to heat pump), but also taking much tougher steps post 2030.
By then, the CCC suggests the demand of key products will have to be reduced – in particular how much people fly and how much meat they eat.
When I saw Starmer this morning to interview him on behalf of broadcasters, I asked him if he was prepared to get people making those lifestyle changes. His answer was basically – no.
The PM argued that nothing he was setting out was about telling people how to live their lives, an argument he reiterated at a later press conference.
His argument is that a technological revolution will carry the UK towards its target and with huge economic opportunities too – with the government hopeful that a boost in renewables could help drive GDP growth.
And many would agree – that carbon reduction is not just about reducing risk, but investing in the future.
Take the example of China – now a clean energy superpower – driven less by a moral desire to tackle climate change, and more by the massive profits that can be made.
But few experts think that the type of reduction in emissions Starmer is talking about is realistic without lifestyle change alongside it.
And when I asked Ed Miliband, his energy secretary, the same question he was clear that lots of things will have to change.
‘For my part, we believe climate change is real, it’s happening… we’ve got to tackle it,’ Ed Miliband tells Anushka Asthana in Baku
So, would he support telling people to eat less meat or fly less? Miliband argued that he preferred “carrots to sticks”.
The government is hoping that subsidies to encourage on and off-shore wind production, the switch to heat pumps and a move to electric cars or more solar.
What about the other big concern overshadowing this Cop – the election of Donald Trump in the White House – a climate denier who has described climate change as a hoax?
While many of the most high profile world leaders missed this conference, dozens came from vulnerable countries and warned of impending doom for their communities.
The former Maldives’ president Mohamed Nasheed told me that time was running out for his country, but that damage was happening across the developed world too, citing floods in Spain and Florida.
On Trump he talked about a great grandfather who had not believed that men walked on the moon. He also said it was disappointing that so many world leaders did not show up.
Meanwhile, the Colombian president was ready to head to Baku when extreme weather caused major floods that meant he had to remain at home. The foreign minister explained that it was no longer a climate crisis but emergency, and called for faster action.
He wanted action towards the trillion dollar fund being called for by poorer countries, arguing that his country was trying to pivot from fossil fuels that it has in good supply, to renewables but was being punished for doing so. He argued there was too much “rhetoric” and not enough action.
Trump will almost certainly pull the US out of the Paris agreement that underpins the Cop process, but many were putting on a brave face in Baku – arguing that many US states would still partake, and that it was in America’s economic interest to join the race for renewables.
I asked Ed Miliband if he would make his arguments to Trump – he said that Starmer would.
Starmer himself avoided directly criticising Trump – but did suggest that he would be prepared to raise the subject, and made clear that he saw an economic opportunity for the UK.
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