Carbon Reduction Targets - 12th December 2017

12:13 The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)

The UK was the first country to introduce legally binding emissions reduction targets through the Climate Change Act 2008. We have made excellent progress towards meeting our targets: we met our first carbon budget and are on track to exceed the second and third.

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12:14 Joan Ryan

Does the Minister agree that the clean growth plan will not meet the fifth carbon budget on its own? Does he therefore agree that the plan is wholly inadequate and that, as the Committee on Climate Change has said, it should not be the plan?

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12:14 Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)

The Labour manifesto in the summer committed to 60% of our heat and power being produced from zero-carbon or renewable energies. When will the Government match that ambition from the Opposition?

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12:14 Joseph Johnson

Our clean growth strategy is rightly ambitious, and the Climate Change Act allows us to be flexible in our means of achieving the goals that we have set out. As I have just said, we are ahead of our targets on the second and third carbon budgets.

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12:15 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

In the recent Budget the Treasury, I assume following consultation with the Minister’s Department, pulled the plug on all future support for renewable energy deployment except for the already allocated near-term support for offshore wind. Does the Minister himself support such action, and does it help or hinder the UK’s progress towards meeting its carbon reduction targets?

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Joseph Johnson

As I have said, our position is that we have met our first carbon target, and we are on track to exceed the second and third. The Government are taking this agenda exceptionally seriously. In fact we are leading the world on it, having legislated with the Climate Change Act and put clean growth at the very heart of this country’s industrial strategy.

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