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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what progress his Department has made to date on meeting the Renewable Energy Directive obligation of 20 per cent renewable sourced energy by 2020; and what estimate he has made of likely progress towards that goal by 2020.

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.

We have met the Directive’s interim targets, and are currently progressing in line with the trajectory set out in the Directive. We are making good progress towards the next interim target of an average of 7.47% of energy from renewables across 2015 and 2016, and in 2015 8.3% of energy came from renewable sources.