Regulatory and litigation pathways to reach net zero

Amid mushrooming net zero commitments made by states and non-state entities, studies report on the gap between such pledges and the action needed in order to comply with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. In the context of exploring the governance architecture for a net zero world, net zero mandates and standards established through law - which are legally binding and enforceable - deserve close attention. This paper examines the range of existing regulatory and litigation pathways to reach net zero in six selected jurisdictions across the Global North and the Global South: Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Japan, and the United States. The jurisdictions are selected to include countries that have and do not have net zero targets set in domestic law, and countries that have or have not experienced litigation around their legal net zero targets. We also selected countries that are high emitters and countries where some of the largest emitting corporations have their headquarters (using the Carbon Majors 2020 Dataset). This also paper strives for equal representation from countries in both the Global North and Global South. We argue that stronger regulatory frameworks are likely to lead to more litigation. But litigation is also being used as a lever to influence the outcomes and ambition of climate policy. The first section of the paper defines net zero commitments and the various approaches used by state and non-state actors to develop these commitments. The second section discusses the different regulatory pathways to reach net zero, and considers where and how such targets have been introduced through legislation. Some countries include economy-wide net zero targets enshrined into domestic climate framework laws and prescribe net zero trajectories. In other countries, regulatory pathways take a facilitating approach, such as disclosure rules encompassing transition plans or general competition law. The third section identifies four net zero enabling litigation strategies: (1) litigation that takes a planetary perspective and focuses on net zero pathways and tipping points; (2) litigation that seeks to enforce net zero targets, and specifically, the reliance on negative emissions; (3), litigation that challenges the sufficiency of the ambition of existing net zero targets; and (4) ‘net zero washing litigation’, which challenges misleading net zero commitments (e.g. that over relies on negative emissions technologies). This paper concludes providing a synthesis of the existing legal pathways to reach net zero found across a diverse collection of countries, and with a consideration of the critical ways in which the law can contribute in the delivery of emissions reductions in line with national net zero targets.