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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Government is taking to use the UK's potential economic recovery from the covid-19 outbreak to accelerate a transition to a carbon neutral economy.

In his speech of June 30, the Prime Minister made clear that in recovering from COVID-19, we must build back better, build back greener, build back faster, and to do that at the pace that this moment requires. Our economy must be greener, more sustainable, and more resilient.

The UK has shown that growing our economy and cutting emissions can be achieved at the same time. We have grown our economy by 75% while cutting emissions by 43% over the past three decades. The UK has over 460,000 jobs in low carbon businesses and their supply chains and many of the actions we need to take to reach our target of net zero emissions by 2050 will support jobs and growth across the UK.

The Government announced an ambitious support package for our low carbon economy at the Spring budget, including £800m fund for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and £1bn in support for ultra-low emission vehicles infrastructure. In his 30 June speech, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced further measures including up to £100m of new funding to research and develop Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology; a Green Recovery Challenge Fund of up to £40m to kick start a programme of nature-based projects to address the twin challenges of halting biodiversity loss and tackling climate change; and, recommitting to planting 30,000 hectares of trees every year by 2025.

On July 8, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered an economic update setting out the next stage in our plan to support the UK’s recovery from the pandemic. The Government announced an additional £3 billion green investment to create thousands of green jobs and upgrade buildings. This includes £50m to demonstrate innovative approaches to retrofitting social housing at scale, to start the decarbonisation of social housing over 20/21; a £2 billion ‘Green Homes Grant’ to help people improve the efficiency of their homes accelerating progress towards net zero, while supporting jobs and reducing energy bills; and, £1 billion investment over the next year in a new Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme to upgrade public sector buildings, including schools and hospitals, making them fit to help meet net zero with energy efficiency and low carbon heat measures.

We will continue to build on this even further and deliver a stronger, greener, more sustainable economy after this pandemic. The Government will continue to set out further measures as part of its green agenda in the run up to COP26 in November 2021.