Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Answer of 12 January 2023 to Question 118973, how much funding has been allocated to steel plants for decarbonisation through the £1.5 billion bidding fund, as of 18 January 2023.

Industrial businesses, including steel plants, can bid into Government competitive funds worth more than £1.5 billion to support them to go green, cut emissions and become more energy efficient. This funding includes:

o The £1 billion Carbon Capture Utility and Storage Infrastructure Fund

o The £240 million Net Zero Hydrogen Fund

o The £55 million Industrial Fuel switching Fund

o The £20 million Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre

o The £289 million Industrial Energy Transformation Fund

o Up to £66 million as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

The £289m Fund Industrial Energy Transformation Fund allocated £3.1m of energy efficiency funding to steel plants in its first application window. Support for energy efficiency upgrades helps to reduce the sites energy demand and paves the way for future decarbonisation. This support was broken into (Name, Grant Allocated, Region and Constituency):

Celsa – Energy Efficiency Deployment Project, £3m. Wales, Cardiff South and Penarth.

Firsteel - Energy Efficiency Study, £80k. West Midlands, Walsall South Constituency.

William Cook – Energy Efficiency Study, £38k. Yorkshire and the Humber, Sheffield South East.

Since then, a further five application windows have continued the funding available to the steel industry, details of winners will be released in due course. The final window of the IETF closes in February 2023.

As many of these funds are still running their course, we are unable to provide further detail at present.