Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether emissions from a transport refrigeration unit count towards a heavy goods vehicle's compliance with Euro VI standards when entering a charging Clean Air Zone.

Emissions from transport refrigeration units are not included within the European emission standards used for assessing compliance for free entry to charging Clean Air Zones.

Guidance on the operation of Clean Air Zones in England is set out in a Framework published on 5 May this year available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-quality-clean-air-zone-framework-for-england. The Framework encourages local authorities to work with business to reduce pollutant emissions from vehicles, including encouraging the upgrade of refrigeration units on cold chain vehicles to the least polluting options.

The UK Government has been actively involved in developing new legislation for non-road mobile machinery at a European level that covers transport refrigeration units. The new regulation has recently come into effect and has widened the scope such that any new transport refrigeration unit powered by a combustion engine will be subject to strict new emissions limits from 2019.