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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what type of heating system is the primary source of heating in each building occupied by his Department and its agencies; and what fuel is used by those heating systems.

Identifying opportunities to decarbonise the department’s heating systems is already underway and the following breakdown of fuel sources has already been identified.

On the 93 sites that the Department provides heating:

• 53 are provided by gas
• 13 by electric
• 11 by other Government departments or local Government offices where we are a minority occupier in their buildings.
• 8 sites covered by service charges. This is the case in many small sites where we have a small office at a point of entry.
• 4 by oil
• 3 by biomass
• 1 by LPG

A number of Defra’s buildings will become part of the Government Property Agency’s (GPA) Government property model and GPA is leading net zero plans to decarbonise these buildings. Defra will support these plans where required.

The buildings that remain under Defra group Property’s remit will be decarbonised as much as possible by the department’s Spending Review plans and by bidding for funding from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. These plans include the deployment of air or ground source heat pumps to support or replace existing heating systems, a move towards electrical heating and a better use of building management systems to achieve zonal heating to avoid heating unoccupied parts of a building.

There is also some exploratory work underway to look at the viability of hydrogen fuel heating and power generation which could help significantly with the decarbonisation of the laboratory sites.

The department will not rely on carbon offsets as a means to decarbonise buildings, instead making the reduction of direct emissions the primary aim.