Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the article by Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins entitled The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2°C, published in Nature on 8 January 2015, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the research contained in that paper.

Defra is committed to understanding the sustainability of the major changes in energy infrastructure and use needed to meet climate change goals. We are currently leading the Sustainable Pathways to Low Carbon Energy (SPLiCE) research programme which aims to fill important gaps in knowledge about the environmental, social and economic consequences, both positive and negative, of different energy system components which could form part of a low carbon energy infrastructure by 2050. We will consider the results of Phase 1, which runs to June this year, to inform decisions on future research needs.