Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether the Government’s aid and development strategy will distribute funding to offset the energy support monies spent on fossil fuels abroad between 2010 and 2018 to countries affected by the consumption of those fuels.

Countries need reliable and sustainable supplies of energy if they are to tackle poverty effectively by growing their economies and creating jobs, and delivering essential services. UK aid increasingly supports renewable energy projects. Since 2011, the UK has provided 33 million people with improved access to clean energy, avoided 31 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and installed 2,000 MW of clean energy capacity.

The Government has announced that the UK will double our international climate finance to £11.6 billion between 2021/22 and 2025/26. A significant proportion of this funding will be invested in clean energy, including up to £1 billion in developing and testing new technology in areas such as energy storage, innovations in renewable energy and technologies for industrial decarbonisation. This funding for innovation is targeted at supporting the clean energy transition in developing countries, by creating and demonstrating new technologies and business models to deploy them.

In the 2019 Green Finance Strategy, the Government committed to aligning the UK's Official Development Assistance with the goals of the Paris international climate change agreement, including our support for energy. The UK keeps its balance of support for overseas projects under constant review to ensure alignment with government priorities, including on climate change.