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

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether clause 111 of the Energy Bill, which seeks to amend the definition of carbon removals in section 29 of the Climate Change Act 2008, would allow the meeting of emission reductions targets by the purchase of offsets or other traded instruments.

The clause does not have this effect. The intention behind clause 111 is to broaden the definition of “removals” of greenhouse gases beyond nature-based greenhouse gas removal methods (GGRs), such as tree planting, to include those achieved by engineered GGRs, such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage.

The Government does not currently intend to purchase offsets to set towards its carbon budgets, although it has retained the option to do so in the future if appropriate, as permitted by the Climate Change Act 2008.