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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of carbon dioxide was emitted in the Sheffield City Region in (a) April and (b) December 2020.

While the Government does account for carbon dioxide emissions at the regional and local authority level, estimates of these emissions following the introduction of Covid restrictions last year are not yet available. For 2018, the latest year available, carbon dioxide emissions for the Sheffield local authority area were estimated to be 2,200ktCO2. Total carbon dioxide emissions for the Yorkshire and Humber region in 2018 were estimated to be about 10% of the UK’s total.

As the Government continues to take the steps necessary to reduce our carbon emissions in line with our climate commitments, the Sheffield City Region, and the Yorkshire and Humber region more widely will play an important part in reaching net zero by 2050. For example, as part of the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution, working with industry, the UK is aiming for 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030. This could see the UK benefitting from around 8,000 jobs across our industrial heartlands and beyond.

The Government is also determined for the UK to become a world-leader in technology to capture and store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere, with an ambition to remove 10MT of carbon dioxide a year by 2030, equivalent to all of Humber’s industrial emissions today. This is supported by an extra £200 million of new funding to create two carbon capture clusters by the mid-2020s, with another two set to be created by 2030. This increased investment totals £1 billion, helping to support 50,000 jobs, potentially in areas such as the Humber, North East, North West, Scotland and Wales.