In a historic vote Thursday, the citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The U.K. has been a member of the European Union (and its precursors) since 1973 and as such teamed up with the 27 other nations in the coalition in preparing for and negotiating December’s Paris climate change agreement.
The immediate reaction to the vote, while not legally binding, has been chaotic. The value of the pound plummeted, Cameron announced that he will resign in the fall, and Scottish leaders have announced plans for another vote on separation from the U.K. so they could join the EU on their own.
Legally, nothing has changed this morning as the U.K. will remain a member of the EU for at least two years as is required under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The effects, though, were already being felt this morning, with Prime Minister David Cameron — who had opposed the EU divorce — saying he would step down in a matter of months and markets taking a significant hit.
In the wake of the “Brexit” much remains uncertain, but there is at least some hint as to how the move will affect the commitments in the Paris Agreement.
The nations of the EU submitted a joint Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) in which the member states committed to reducing greenhouse gases 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. In choosing to leave the EU, the U.K. is also leaving the INDC. “The UK will have to ratify the Paris Agreement on its own and will indeed need to send in an NDC,” Wendel Trio, director of the Climate Action Network Europe, told GHG Daily.
The U.K. is the No. 2 emitter in the European Union, contributing 1.55 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Only Germany, at 2.56 percent, out-emits the U.K. in the EU.
Trio said he suspects the U.K.’s NDC would take a form similar to those of non-EU member states Norway and Iceland. “I would assume that the basic intention would be to continue the alignment of the [U.K.] to the overall EU 40 [percent],” he said by email before the final referendum results were known.
Iceland’s INDC says the nation “aims to be part of a collective delivery by European countries to reach a target of 40 [percent] reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. A precise commitment for Iceland within such collective delivery has yet to be determined, and is dependent on an agreement with the European Union and its Member States and possibly other countries.”
Norway’s INDC similarly states that the nation “intends to fulfil this commitment through a collective delivery with the EU and its Member States.”
Assuming the U.K. decides to remain a member of the EU Emissions Trading System, which does not require membership in the EU, the new national NDC might rely somewhat on that system, according to Trio. “Very likely the UK NDC would need to be based on the UK climate act, and would set a combined target for emissions under the ETS and outside the ETS, and thus would be substantially different than the targets of the EU Member States, as their targets will only cover the non-ETS emissions,” he said.
The U.K. Climate Change Act sets a goal of reducing emissions by at least 80 percent in 2050 from 1990 levels and requires the government to set “carbon budgets,” caps on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted over a five-year period.
