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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support businesses to become carbon neutral.

Achieving our net zero goal requires all businesses to take action. My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister has set out his Ten Point Plan for the UK to lead the world into a Green Industrial Revolution. This innovative programme sets out ambitious policies and £12 billion government investment to support up to 250,000 green jobs. It will accelerate our path to reaching net zero by 2050, and could unlock three times as much private sector investment by 2030.

The Prime Minister has also appointed my Hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs as the UK’s Net Zero Business Champion ahead of COP26. My Hon. Friend’s role is to encourage UK business to sign up to climate action via the Race to Zero science-based targets initiative, to champion the actions that UK businesses are already taking and to help UK businesses exploit the many opportunities of the transition to a low carbon economy.

As a result of my Hon. Friend’s campaign, 30 of the UK’s FTSE 100 companies have signed up to Race to Zero, and he is about to launch a national small business mass mobilisation campaign.