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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment his Department has made of the contribution to the economy of UK-based energy generation; and what recent estimate he has made of the number of jobs supported in the UK by that industry.

As set out in table 1, the energy sector directly contributed 2.3% of GDP, or £40.2 billion, to the UK economy in 2016 and directly employed 178,000 people. Further jobs are supported indirectly, for example, an estimated 152,000 were employed in support of UK oil and gas extraction, while the ONS separately estimate that the low carbon electricity sector employed 40,500 in the supply chain.

Table 1: Contribution to GDP and direct employment of the UK energy sector in 2016

Source: Tables 1 and 2 of https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/631147/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2017_dataset.xls