Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the process for ensuring that all Departments’ policies comply with the overall aim of carbon reduction and monitoring their implementation.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The UK is a world leader in climate action and clean growth, having reduced emissions faster than any other G7 nation since 1990. Achieving our ambitious net zero target is a priority for the Government.
The UK’s Clean Growth Strategy, published in 2017, was informed by all relevant departments, and describes the policies and proposals that will decarbonise the entire UK economy through the 2020s and beyond. My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister is chairing a new Cabinet committee focused on tackling climate change, discussing how departments can go further and faster in meeting our legally binding 2050 net zero target. We will be setting out further plans in key sectors such as transport, heat and buildings this year.
As policies and proposals are developed and implemented, their contribution to reducing emissions and helping us to meet our statutory emissions targets is quantified and published by BEIS in updated “Energy and Emissions Projections”. These projections enable us to monitor progress towards meeting the UK’s carbon budgets and are used to inform policy and analysis across government.
More broadly, all regulatory impact assessments for new policies include consideration of their impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.