Working with other countries and international institutions such as the EU and UN to rapidly shift towards a low carbon, high growth global economy is one of our key foreign policy goals.

Climate Change is not just an environmental problem. It is a threat to global peace and security and a development challenge. The FCO website has more information about what the FCO is doing globally to combat climate change with our international partners.

Our political work in Lisbon is focused on working with the Portuguese Government to help deliver the EU’s ambitious climate change and energy targets. This includes an ambitious package of targets for emissions and use of key low carbon technologies, deployment of carbon capture and storage and establishing a carbon price in the EU.  We also work closely with the Portuguese government to ensure a global deal to stabilise emissions.

Whatever we do, we will still suffer the effects of climate change. That is why the British government is taking action to adapt the UK to climate change and has put leading world resources in place such as the UK Climate Impacts Programme.  We wish to participate in this debate in Portugal, and work with Portugal to make adaptation a key part of a global deal to tackle climate change  We are working in partnership with the Portuguese Ministry of Environment and Ecoprogresso in an iniciative on adaptation called "Portugal ... um Clima em Mudança"

Promoting renewable energies is a key part of our overall strategy for tackling climate change and to meet our share of the EU target to source 20% of the EU's energy from renewable sources by 2020.  The UK has published a comprehensive public consultation setting out how we intend to achieve this.

Our commercial work complements our political work.  We actively promote commercial interchange, co-operation in research and development in low carbon technologies and Portuguese investment in renewable energy in the UK.  See our Commercial homepage for more details.