Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which provider supplies energy to his Department; how much CO2 was emitted through his Department’s energy consumption in the latest period for which figures are available; whether the criteria his Department uses to selecting an energy supplier includes how environmentally friendly the supplier is; and what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce CO2 emissions from its energy use.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) uses theEnergy Suppliers listed below:

The energy used by the FCO across its UK estate is procured using the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), apart from Fuel Oil at Wilton Park.

We endeavour to use renewable and low carbon heat where feasible, however due to operational reasons other fuel-oils are needed to supplement these.

In 2018/19 the FCO's UK energy consumption accounted for 7357 tCO2e. A focus for the FCO is to reduce the electricity consumption across its estate through a roll-out of energy efficient user IT equipment, moving towards a virtualised data centre environment, as data centre electricity accounts for around 30% of total FCO UK electricity consumption, and more widely looking into the feasibility of renewable and low carbon energy and heat across its estate.

The carbon emissions figure quoted above represents CO2 emitted from energy consumption for the FCO's UK operations, in line with our reporting for the Greening Government Commitments targets and in our annual sustainability report.