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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how the UK carbon budget contributes to the Government's Climate Change mitigation strategy; and what assessment he has made of what investment is required in educational buildings to retro-fit those building to net zero emissions standards as part of the Build Back Better Strategy.

The Climate Change Act 2008 introduced our framework of carbon budgets to mitigate climate change by ensuring continued progress towards our emission reduction target, capping emissions in successive five-year blocks. Through this legal framework and ambitious policy action, we have shown that cutting emissions and growing the economy go hand-in-hand – reducing our emissions by over 43% since 1990 while growing the economy by 78%.

We are going further and faster to mitigate climate change. This year we will set the sixth carbon budget in legislation and publish a Net Zero Strategy ahead of COP26, setting out the Government’s vision for transitioning to a net zero economy.

The Government remains committed to its manifesto pledge to invest £9.2 billion in the energy efficiency of homes, schools, and hospitals, helping to decarbonise buildings to keep us on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme is a government-funded grant scheme to help public sector organisations in England, including schools, colleges and universities, and reserved public services across to the UK to install low carbon heating and energy efficiency measures on their estates. On 17th March 2021, £75m of funding was announced for Phase 2 Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.