Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure that environmental permitting rules for back-up electricity generating plants are up to date and continue to reflect requirements of (a) environmental legislation and (b) the electricity system operator.

Electricity generating plants with a rated thermal input equal to or greater than 20MW are already subject to environmental permitting rules.

We will consult later this year on options to reduce pollution from smaller plants, including extending environmental legislation to set binding emission limit values on relevant air pollutants from backup electricity generating plants such as diesel engines, with a view to having legislation in force no later than January 2019 and possibly sooner. These limits would be likely to apply to generators or groups of generators with a rated thermal input equal to or greater than 1 MW and less than 50 MW irrespective of their number of hours of operation during any given year.

Defra will work with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to ensure that impacts of environmental legislation on electricity supply are suitably managed.