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 encouraging businesses to reduce unnecessary energy consumption.

The Clean Growth Strategy sets out our ambition to enable business consumers to reduce their energy usage by improving energy efficiency by at least 20% by 2030, potentially reducing carbon emissions by 22MtCO₂e over the fifth Carbon Budget.

At Budget, in November 2018, we announced up to £315M for an Industrial Energy Transformation Fund to support businesses with high energy use to invest in energy efficiency and decarbonisation measures. We also announced we would publish a call for evidence in 2019 on introducing a new Business Energy Efficiency Scheme, focused on smaller businesses.

We have introduced a more streamlined energy and carbon reporting framework to help businesses to reduce their carbon emissions and associated energy costs, which will come into force on 1 April this year. Under the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), all large businesses are required to audit the energy used by their buildings, industrial processes and transport to identify cost-effective energy saving measures. We are undertaking a comprehensive assessment of the impact and effectiveness of ESOS and will consider future reforms when the current phase ends in December 2019.

The Climate Change Agreements Scheme incentivises a wide range of industrial sectors to reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in return for a significant discount on the Climate Change Levy. And we have recently launched a new £18 million Industrial Heat Recovery Support Programme that supports the recovery and re-use of waste heat from industrial processes, and committed £8.8 million to promote innovative approaches to energy management using smart meters.

We are taking steps to build capacity and capability in the energy services market including through a £5.6 million competition to encourage innovation in aggregating and scaling up smaller energy saving projects across commercial and industrial buildings.

We are also working to ensure that those who lease premises to businesses continue to refurbish and improve the performance of their buildings. This included bringing new regulations into force in April last year which set a minimum energy efficiency standard for non-domestic rented buildings. On current plans, we will consult on proposals to go further in 2019. In parallel, we are clear that all new commercial and industrial buildings should be more energy efficient and are planning to review Part L of the Building Regulations in 2019.