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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans he has for introducing carbon pricing as a tool to decrease electricity generation from fossil fuels to meet the Government's 78 per cent emissions reduction target by 2035.

The UK has an ambitious carbon pricing mechanism through our new UK Emissions Trading Scheme, launched at the start of this year to increase our carbon pricing ambition over the EU scheme it replaces. The scheme includes the energy generation sector. The UK ETS will be the world’s first net zero carbon cap and trade market, and a crucial step towards achieving the UK’s target for net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We also have the Carbon Price Support mechanism for power generation. Emissions trading and the CPS have helped clean up our electricity generation and will be key to achieving the total phase out of coal by October 2024 and meeting the Government’s 78% 2030 emissions reduction target.