Department for Energy Security & Net Zero

The STEP prototype fusion powerplant will be delivered by UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd. (UKIFS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), itself sponsored by DESNZ and fully owned by the UK Government. STEP will be delivered in several phases. The first has been completed producing the powerplant concept design, site selection (West Burton) and identifying the appropriate regulatory framework. Site characterisation is ongoing, and a live tender is underway to select industrial partners to work on the plant with UKIFS, and Fusion R&D Partner UKAEA.

The Government is currently consulting on proposals to streamline the infrastructure planning process for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

Our reforms aim to ensure the system is flexible, proportionate, and responsive to Government priorities and build on proposals in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that could reduce the typical time spent in pre-application by up to 12 months. Subject to passage of the Bill this would apply to all projects seeking development consent under the Planning Act 2008.

Once the consultation closes on 27 October 2025, the Government will carefully analyse all responses received to shape the final policy decisions and any legislative changes.

The UK’s £300m HALEU programme will be the first commercial scale capability outside of Russia and is due to deliver in the early 2030s.

The programme is already underway with site preparation work having commenced on the £196 million enrichment project at Urenco’s Capenhurst site, to develop an enrichment capability. Further funding has been allocated to support the HALEU supply chain through awards to National Transport Solution on transportation prototypes (including testing and development of pilot transport packages for safely and securely moving HALEU), the regulators and our National Nuclear Laboratory building our technical capabilities. This project will support building resilient nuclear supply chains, free from political interference and reduce global reliance on Russia.

As part of the REMA Summer Update on the 10th of July 2025, we announced that we will not implement zonal pricing.

In the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, the Department estimated that the plan would require around £40 billion of investment on average per year between 2025-2030, much of which will be private investment [1]. This included around £30 billion of investment in generation assets per year, together with around £10 billion of investment in electricity transmission network assets per year, estimated by the National Energy System Operator (NESO) [2]. These estimates are in 2024 prices, undiscounted, and rounded to the nearest 10 billion. A substantial proportion of the network costs estimated by NESO would be associated with pylons and cables. In their Clean Power 2030 advice to Government, NESO also estimated that of the £30 billion technology investment required per annum between 2025-30, low carbon flex capacity – which includes batteries and long duration storage – would require approximately ~£5bn per year in investment over the same period [3].

1. DESNZ, Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A new era of clean electricity: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan

2. DESNZ, Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A new era of clean electricity – technical annex: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6776727f6a79200ddfa21b81/clean-power-2030-action-plan-technical-annex.pdf

3. NESO, Advice on achieving clean power by 2030, Annex 4: Costs and benefit analysis, p. 21: https://www.neso.energy/document/346806/download

DESNZ do not produce their own figures on the number of jobs within the civil nuclear sector. Cogent Skills, who published their industry-led 2024 Nuclear Workforce Assessment, estimated that the civil nuclear sector supported over 51,000 jobs in 2024.

The Government supports ground mount solar through its Contracts for Difference scheme, which has supported 7.5GW so far. It supports demand for rooftop solar by various means, including favourable tax treatment, permitted development rights, new building standards, the Smart Export Guarantee, and the £13.2bn being made available through the ambitious Warm Homes Plan.

The Government recently published the Solar Roadmap, which set out actions for government and industry to remove barriers to deployment. Progress will be monitored by a Ministerially chaired Solar Council, allowing industry representatives to engage directly on any challenges or opportunities which arise.

The Government recognises that we need to support households in constituencies like Newbury and across the UK who struggling with bills whilst we transition to clean power by 2030. This is why we delivered the Warm Home Discount to around 3 million eligible low-income households last winter. On 19 June we announced that we are expanding the Warm Home Discount to around an additional 2.7 million households. This means that from next winter, around 6 million low-income households will receive the £150 support to help with their energy bill costs.

The Government has been clear with suppliers that they should do all that they can to support their customers – including vulnerable consumers – who may be struggling with their bills. I would urge any consumers who are struggling to pay their bills to speak to their supplier, local authority, or Citizens Advice who may be able to provide help and support. Your constituents in Newbury can also visit the GOV.UK website, where extra cost-of-living support can be found: www.gov.uk/cost-of-living.

The Government is continuing to work with Ofgem and energy suppliers to ensure energy bills remain fair and affordable while we transition to clean power by 2030.

Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGRs) will be important to Net Zero - balancing residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors whilst providing economic opportunities. In August Government published details of the GGR Business Model and published the Carbon Capture and Storage HyNet Track-1 expansion Project Negotiation List, which includes two GGR projects. To support demand, Government published a response to the consultation on the integration of GGRs into the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and have consulted on options to ensure integrity of the Voluntary Carbon and Nature Market. To ensure removals are measurable and verifiable, the British Standards Institution, commissioned by Government, published in July interim methodologies for Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage and Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage. The Government has also invested £100 million in research and innovation for GGRs, including the GGRs Innovation Programme.

The Government will deliver an updated plan that sets out the policy package out to the end of Carbon Budget 6 in 2037 for all sectors of the economy, including Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGRs), by October 2025. The Government will also set Carbon Budget 7 by June 2026, in line with our statutory duties. Under the Climate Change Act, the UK has a legally binding commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. GGR technologies will be important for reaching net zero – balancing residual emissions from hard-to-decarbonise sectors while providing new economic opportunities.

As part of the REMA Summer Update on the 10^th of July 2025, we concluded the REMA policy development and published our decision to retain a single national, GB-wide, wholesale market pricing regime and introduce an ambitious package of reforms to improve the efficiency of our power system. We will not implement zonal pricing.

We will set out how the reforms will be implemented in our Reformed National Pricing Delivery Plan later this year.

In the Industrial Strategy the Government has committed to further align our civil and defence nuclear capabilities. We plan to set out further details of our plans for future collaboration later this year.

As announced in the Clean Energy Sector Plan of the Industrial Strategy, Great British Energy and Great British Nuclear will invest more than £8.3 billion over this Parliament in homegrown clean power.

Specifically, as part of the £10 million Mayoral Renewables Fund announced by Great British Energy on 17 July 2025, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority was awarded £700,000 to deliver clean energy projects in their communities helping to lower energy bills.

Additionally, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Authority received a share of 6.8m to host the Greater South East Net Zero Hub, and a further share of £5 million through the Great British Energy Community Fund, which it can use to support projects in the Greater South East region, including in Huntingdon.

The Common Understanding between the European Commission and the United Kingdom, agreed at the UK-EU Summit on 19 May 2025, sets out the progress made on strengthening connections to the EU energy market. Both sides have committed to exploring the UK’s potential participation in the EU’s internal electricity market, including access to trading platforms across all timeframes. Discussions are ongoing to define the parameters of such an arrangement. The UK and European Commission also agreed to continue technical regulatory exchanges on new energy technologies such as hydrogen, carbon capture, utilisation and storage, and biomethane.

The Warm Home Discount is available for homes off the gas grid, as it is an electricity bill discount, not tied to gas supply.

The previous Minister for Energy Consumers had discussions with industry, local government and devolved governments in the development of the Warm Homes Plan.

As the first step towards the Warm Homes Plan, the government committed an initial £3.4 billion over the next 3 years towards heat decarbonisation and household energy efficiency, with £1 billion of this allocated to 2025/2026.

The department has also launched the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (WH:SHF) to support social housing providers and tenants in England, and the Warm Homes: Local Grant (WH:LG) to support low-income homeowners and private tenants in England. Further detail on the Warm Homes Plan will be set out in October.

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) provides the UK with a flexible source of gas supply to meet gas demand – helping respond when demand peaks, for example over winter when gas demand rises for home heating.

However, we are aware of the emissions associated with its use and we are working with international partners to explore ways to minimise methane and CO2 emissions across the LNG supply chain. This includes considering enhanced measuring, monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions to improve accountability and progress toward lower-emission LNG production and transport.

The Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) recommendations are independent advice, not government policy. The Government is considering the CCC’s advice and will set the CB7 level by 30th June 2026.

Alongside reporting the UK’s territorial emissions, the Government publishes UK carbon footprint statistics, which includes imported emissions. In July 2025, we announced the Production and Consumption Transformation (PACT) Centre. PACT will conduct independent world class research to expand the evidence base on production and consumption, providing actionable insights on energy and material efficiency solutions, including assessing imported emissions. This will support effective analysis and policy making in this field.

Natural gas is used as an input for Power CCUS and CCUS-enabled hydrogen production. However, the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan (23 June 2025) did not include a specific estimate of imported LNG emissions for CCUS. We are clear that future emissions from the production of natural gas will need to reduce in the UK and across the world and we are working with the US, EU and others to develop a framework to better measure, monitor, and report methane emissions from imported gas.

Between the 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025 the department lost 18,203 days to sickness absence. The average days lost per employee was 3.9.

The Climate Change Act (2008) made the UK the first country to introduce a legally binding, long-term emissions reduction target. This sets our commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 in law. The UK has already halved its emissions, having cut them by around 53% between 1990 and 2023, while growing the economy by over 80% in the same period.

We will deliver an updated plan that sets out the policy package out to the end of Carbon Budget 6 in 2037 for all sectors of the economy by October 2025. The Climate Change Committee published its 2025 progress report in June, and we will also formally respond to this report by October 2025.

Modern slavery is a serious human rights violation depriving individuals of their freedom and dignity while inflicting immeasurable harm on families, communities, and society as-a-whole. DESNZ is committed to tackling all forms of modern slavery, holding perpetrators to account, and ensuring that victims are supported to recover and rebuild their lives.

The Government will continue to assess and monitor the effectiveness of new policy tools that are emerging to ensure we can effectively tackle forced labour in supply chains. Government’s Responsible Business Conduct Review will be a primary lever for delivering this as a cross-departmental endeavour to review and address UK’s policy regime and voluntary due diligence requirements for forced labour. Additionally, the Industrial Strategy Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan committed to embedding ethical supply chain standards into DESNZ public spend; and Great British Energy confirmed it will follow strict ethical standards to help ensure solar supply chains are free from exploitation.

The Government believes that our mission to deliver clean power by 2030 is the best way to break our dependence on global fossil fuel markets and protect billpayers permanently. The creation of Great British Energy will help us to harness clean energy with less reliance on volatile international energy markets and help in our commitment to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030.

The Government wants to provide businesses with better protection from being locked into unfair and expensive energy contracts, and more redress when they have a complaint. Last year, the Government launched a consultation on introducing regulation of Third-Party Intermediaries (TPIs), such as energy brokers. This is aimed at enhancing consumer protections, particularly for non-domestic consumers.

The consultation has now closed, and a Government response will follow in due course once all feedback has been reviewed. The Government recently published a summary of responses to the consultation which set out that we government continues to believe that the current regulations aren’t sufficient and we remain minded to directly regulate this market when parliamentary time allows.

From 19 December 2024 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 50 employees can now access free support to resolve issues with their energy supplier through the Energy Ombudsman. This means that 99% of British businesses can now access this service with outcomes ranging up to £20,000 in financial awards.

The Government recognises that most landlords strive to provide decent homes, which is why we are proposing stronger standards for the entire sector, to make sure they are not undercut by those providing substandard properties. Around half of properties already meet the current standard of EPC C.

Support is currently available to private landlords to improve their properties through a range of schemes, including the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which offers £7,500 off the cost of a heat pump, as well as the Warm Homes: Local Grant which launched this year. We are also exploring the role the finance sector may play in scaling up and mobilising low-cost lending.

The Government knows that more needs to be done to support vulnerable households struggling with their energy bills. That's why we are expanding the Warm Home Discount to around an additional 2.7 million households. This means that from this winter, around 6 million low-income households will receive the £150 support to help with their energy bill costs. The Warm Home Discount regulations expire in 2026, and we will want to consider all options for future bill support beyond this point.

I have been clear with suppliers that they should do all that they can to support their customers – including vulnerable consumers – who may be struggling with their bills. I would urge any consumers who are struggling to pay their bills to speak to their supplier, local authority, or Citizens Advice who may be able to provide help and support. Your constituent can also visit the GOV.UK website, where extra cost-of-living support can be found - www.gov.uk/cost-of-living.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has spent money on social media influencers since July 2024. Influencers can be effective in reaching audiences that the Government and traditional marketing channels find hard to reach.

The number of employees who have declared they are disabled as of 31 August 2025 in the department is 535.

We have made an excellent start delivering our Clean Energy Superpower Mission. We are bearing down on energy bills and identifying options to lower energy costs. We have secured over £50 billion of private investment in clean energy, backed the next generation of nuclear power with £14.2 billion of funding for Sizewell, and invested in a £1 billion supply chain fund under Great British Energy to unlock investment in offshore wind jobs and our clean energy supply chains. Industry stakeholders have acknowledged and welcomed the acceleration in our ambition and progress we're making to deliver our objectives. We recognise there is much work to do, and our long-term plan will take time, requiring extensive engagement across all sectors of our society. But we won’t be deterred by the scale of the task, and this Government will not waste a moment delivering it.

In the recent Onshore Wind Taskforce Strategy, the government committed to publishing a consultation on whether the existing permitted development rights are fit for purpose and if they could support other forms of small-scale onshore wind deployment. The Department is currently conducting stakeholder engagement to prepare for this consultation. As part of this, some stakeholders have expressed interest raising the height limit for a permitted development onshore wind turbine to 30 metres, alongside other suggestions, conditions and limits. The Government will consider all options carefully ahead of consultation.

The then Minister for Energy Consumers (Miatta Fahnbulleh) had discussions with industry, local government and devolved governments in the development of the Warm Homes Plan.

Boat dwellers will not qualify for government energy efficiency schemes as a valid domestic Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating is required to access this support. The Reduced data Standard Assessment Procedure (RdSAP) method does not support the creation of domestic EPCs for houseboats.

However, the Warm Homes Plan will help households, including off-gas grid rural households, take up measures like solar panels, heat pumps, batteries and insulation, helping them save money on their bills and benefit from cleaner, cheaper heating.

The Department will receive independently verified annual gas and oil boiler sales data from scheme participants after the completion of each scheme year via the scheme’s administrator, the Environment Agency. Further detail on these reporting processes can be found in the published scheme guidance. It also has access to heat pump installations data from the Microgeneration Certification Scheme and publishes statistics on Government-supported installations at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/heat-pump-deployment-statistics.

The Department is considering the options to publish some Clean Heat Market Mechanism scheme data, for example aggregated annual verified sales and installation data, but needs to assess commercial sensitivities in doing so.

The then Minister for Energy Consumers (Miatta Fahnbulleh) had discussions with industry, local government and devolved governments in the development of the Warm Homes Plan.

The Warm Homes Plan will help households, including rural off-gas grid households, take up measures like solar panels, heat pumps, batteries and insulation, helping them save money on their bills and benefit from cleaner, cheaper heating. The Department has partnered with combined authorities and local and devolved governments to roll out this plan.

The plan will be published by October and will set out our strategy for decarbonising homes, including in rural settings, in more detail.

The then Minister for Energy Consumers (Miatta Fahnbulleh) had discussions with industry, local government and devolved governments in the development of the Warm Homes Plan.

The Warm Homes Plan will help households, including rural off-gas grid households, take up measures like solar panels, heat pumps, batteries and insulation, helping them save money on their bills and benefit from cleaner, cheaper heating. The Department has partnered with combined authorities and local and devolved governments to roll out this plan.

The plan will be published by October and will set out our strategy for decarbonising homes, including in rural settings, in more detail.

The Government believes that communities are providing a service to the country when they host clean energy infrastructure, so there needs to be benefit for them. On 21 May, the Government published a working paper on community benefits and shared ownership of low carbon energy infrastructure and is the process of reviewing responses. We will consider the appropriate technological scope of a mandatory scheme for community benefits, including whether such a scheme should cover grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Maintaining the resilience and security of energy infrastructure is a top Government priority. Although rare, substation fires do occur, and we are aware of multiple recent incidents. These are reported to Government when there is a potential or actual impact to customer supplies. We are monitoring these incidents closely, as part of our normal processes for infrastructure incidents.

Due to the impact on Heathrow Airport following the fire at North Hyde Substation, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero commissioned the independent National Energy System Operator (NESO) to review the incident. NESO’s report was published on 2 July 2025 and the Department will respond in due course.

The Government strongly supports the installation of solar panels on public sector buildings. These can generate clean power close to demand, and bring down public spending on energy costs. This includes £180 million investment from the UK government and GBE to install rooftop solar panels on schools and hospitals in England, which could see millions invested back into frontline services.

The North Sea basin is super-mature, and production is in natural decline. Oil and gas production fell by 72% between 1999 and 2023. Direct jobs in oil and gas extraction fell by around a third between 2014 and 2023.

The clean energy transition creates an opportunity for our expert oil and gas sector to play a central role in the future of energy supply.

Robert Gordon University estimates that the renewables workforce could grow from 39,000 in 2024 to 84,000-153,000 by 2035, subject to realised deployment across those technologies and proportion of UK content delivered by the domestic supply chain.

The Government has made no such specific assessment.

A universal service obligation (USO) ensures that every household and small business is supplied, regardless of their location. This prevents suppliers segmenting customers by their profitability. As well as the USO, it should be noted that electricity distribution networks are not constructed along national boundaries - the same networks serve customers either side of the Wales/England border, making it very difficult or impossible to split customers by their location such that different licensing regimes can be introduced.

The Government incentivises industrial rooftop solar in various ways, including permitted development rights, favourable tax treatment, and the Smart Export Guarantee.

Solar is part of our strategy for improving the energy performance of buildings. It will play an important role, where appropriate, on newbuild non-domestic buildings in the Future Buildings Standard which is to be introduced later this year. The UK’s overall approach to Net Zero commercial buildings will be set out in the Warm Homes Plan later this year.

Achieving our ambitious clean power mission will require rapid deployment of rooftop and ground-mounted solar. However, planning guidance makes clear that, wherever possible, solar developers should utilise brownfield, industrial, contaminated, or previously developed land.

The Department (DESNZ) established the Office for Clean Energy Jobs (OCEJ) to engage industry and employers on skills needs and challenges. In partnership with Skills England, it leads workforce planning by identifying skills gaps and supporting reskilling.

DESNZ consulted with all stakeholders, including employers on ‘Building the North Sea’s Energy Future’. It included questions on supporting the oil and gas workforce to transition to clean energy sectors. A Government response will be published in due course.

These engagements have informed recent initiatives, including the Energy Skills Passport, the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund pilot in Aberdeen, and the training guarantee for at-risk workers at Petroineos and Prax oil refineries.

We will shortly be publishing a Clean Energy Workforce Strategy which will set out our approach to upskilling and reskilling the workforce into clean energy roles through initiatives including the Energy Skills Passport, in collaboration with industry, which is helping oil and gas workers to identify routes into roles in offshore wind including construction and maintenance.

The skills system is delivering training for existing workers looking to retrain or upskill into clean energy. Support includes the announcement of 10 Technical Excellence Colleges for construction, which will transform existing further education colleges to deliver the skills needed for growth-driving sectors like clean energy; the Growth and Skills levy to deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers in England; and Skill Bootcamps to address the need for clean energy skills where this reflects regional priorities.

The Office for Clean Energy Jobs is funding targeted Regional Skills Pilots across the UK which will address skill gaps in a limited number of places which have been identified as priority areas for clean energy, including Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

The Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire pilot, the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund, is being delivered in partnership between UK Government, Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland. This is a targeted pilot for workers in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

Pilots are also running in Cheshire West and Chester, North and North East Lincolnshire and Pembrokeshire, with local and devolved partners empowered to develop their own plans for how best to target the funding. The Department will publish a Clean Energy Workforce Strategy setting out our approach to creating good jobs across the country.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State has regular meetings with Welsh Government ministers on a range of issues.

The Government has made a commitment that all policy decision-making should be rural proofed. Rural proofing ensures that rural areas are not overlooked and that the intended outcomes are deliverable in rural areas.

Defra leads on rural proofing, but individual departments are responsible for ensuring that their policy decision-making is rural proofed.

Rural proofing is important because rural communities are an important part of the economy. Rural areas are home to around one-fifth of England’s population and half a million registered businesses.

Policy outcomes in rural areas can be affected by economies of scale, distance, sparsity and demography. That is why it is important that government policies consider how they can be delivered in rural areas. Rural proofing ensures that these areas receive fair and equitable policy outcomes.

Our department takes its obligation to rural proofing seriously and is committed to ensuring there is a suitable low-carbon heat solution for every home, including rural properties, through the Warm Homes Plan. The government recognises that heat pumps may not be the best solution for all buildings. Other low carbon heating technologies are available, and the government offers grants of £5,000 for biomass boilers in off-gas-grid rural homes under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS). The department has recently consulted on expanding BUS to support other low carbon heating technologies.

The government is offering energy efficiency upgrades to rural low-income homeowners through the Warm Homes: Local Grant, with support available until 2028.

The Local Net Zero Delivery Group convenes Government Ministers and local government leaders, including from rural areas, to discuss net zero strategy, policy and delivery, this provides a forum which supports rural proofing.

Great British Energy, the new publicly owned energy company, will be supporting community energy schemes, including in rural communities, as it delivers its mission to accelerate clean power deployment.