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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment the Government has made of progress towards its 2020 renewable target in the (a) heat and (b) transport sectors.

The 2020 renewable energy target requires the UK to achieve 15% of final energy consumption from renewables by the end of this decade. This requires action to promote renewables in electricity generation, heating and transport. There is a binding 10% sub-target of transport fuels from renewable sources.

Our most recent report to the European Commission, published on 21 January 2016, sets out progress in renewables deployment over 2013 and 2014 across heating and cooling, transport and electricity sectors. We reported beating our target and reaching 6.3% of final energy consumption from renewables for 2013 and 2014 against an interim target of 5.4%.

We are making good progress towards the next interim target of an average of 7.47% of energy from renewables across 2015 and 2016. In 2015 8.3% of energy came from renewable sources.