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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment the Government has made of the potential contribution of (a) machine learning and (b) artificial intelligence to the reduction of carbon emissions.

The Government commissioned Energy Innovation Needs Assessments (EINAs), published in November 2019, looked at the role of different technologies in the UK’s future energy system. The EINAs highlighted that AI, machine learning and digital technologies are likely to play a key role in decarbonisation and the UK achieving Net Zero, and we are taking those findings into consideration when planning future innovation support.