Companies: Carbon Emissions

(asked on 19th July 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department intends to require large (a) private and (b) public companies to make disclosures on Scope 3 emissions.


Answered by
Anne-Marie Trevelyan Portrait
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 22nd July 2021

The Government supports the role of corporate transparency as an important part of delivering net zero. Indeed, the UK has led global efforts in introducing measures to increase corporate transparency, and in 2013 was the first country to make it compulsory for quoted companies to include global emissions data for their entire organisation in their annual reports; and in April 2019, these reporting requirements have been extended with the introduction of the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting Regulations, increasing tenfold the number of businesses required to publicly disclose their direct energy use and carbon emissions in annual reports.

Many businesses already measure and report their indirect/Scope 3 carbon emissions information under a range of voluntary schemes, and as part of the recently published consultation on Mandatory Climate-related Financial Disclosures, we sought views on whether Scope 3 emissions reporting should remain voluntary. The consultation closed on 5 May, and we are now considering carefully all of the responses to the consultation and a response will be published by the end of the year.

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