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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to (a) reduce unnecessary use of plastics and (b) encourage the use of mobile phone apps and other technologies by energy suppliers.

The Government set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan our commitment to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by the end of 2042; my rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs set out in our Resource and Waste Strategy how we will do this. These proposals are subject to consultation, which will close on 13 May.

The UK is building a sustainable plastics industry through research and innovation. The Department is working through UKRI and closely with industry is providing up to £60 million through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to establish the UK as the world’s leading innovator in smart sustainable plastic packaging, and gathering international experts to tackle marine plastic waste through the Commonwealth Marine Plastics Research and Innovation Framework. These activities will ensure that we produce, consume and treat plastics sustainably.

The Government is working with Ofgem, the energy regulator, on various initiatives to improve data quality and data access in order to enable the wider use of new technologies in the energy market. A key part of this is midata in energy intervention, which will provide customers a secure way to quickly and easily give accredited third parties access to their energy data; encouraging consumer engagement and driving market innovation and competition. The future energy retail market review is looking at measures to reduce barriers to innovation and open up the market to new types of propositions.

In addition, BEIS has recently launched the Smart Energy Savings (SENS) competition which will provide up to £4.4m of funding to support the development and trialling of products and services that use smart meter data to help consumers manage their energy use.