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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November 2018 to Question 189542, on Carbon Budgets: Climate Change, and with reference to the Committee on Climate Change’s assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the UK’s decarbonisation pathway, whether it is mandatory that the committee includes an assessment of the costs incurred by continued high carbon emissions.

We have asked the Committee on Climate Change to consider the costs and benefits associated with the range of possible scenarios they recommend and to provide a comparison with the costs and benefits of meeting our current long-term target. When assessing costs, consideration will be given to the impacts, both positive and negative, of innovation and global deployment of technologies. The assessment of benefits will take into account costs avoided.