Carbon Emissions: Taxation

(asked on 30th December 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what progress the Government has made on producing a sustainable long-term plan for carbon pricing.


Answered by
Anne-Marie Trevelyan Portrait
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 18th January 2021

The Government is committed to carbon pricing as a tool to meet our ambitious emissions reductions targets. In the Energy White Paper we announced that a UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) would be the UK’s carbon pricing policy from 1 January 2021. The UK ETS initially covers around one third of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and applies to the power sector, heavy industry, domestic aviation, and flights from the UK to the European Economic Area.

We recognise that meeting Net Zero will require us to build on this ambition. That is why in the next 9 months we will consult on how to align the UK ETS cap with an appropriate net zero trajectory. The cap will provide certainty about the UK’s decarbonisation trajectory over the long-term, giving businesses the confidence to mobilise the scale of capital investment necessary to deploy clean energy technologies.

We are also committed to explore expanding the UK ETS and will set out our aspirations to continue to lead the world on carbon pricing in the run up to COP26.

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