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 reduce CO2 emissions by at least 80 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

The Government is committed to tackling climate change and to the UK’s Climate Change Act. Climate change remains one of the most serious long-term risks to our economic and national security. We have already made great progress towards our 2050 target to reduce emissions by at least 80%, compared to 1990 levels. Provisional statistics indicate that UK emissions in 2015 were 38% lower than in 1990, and 3% below those in 2014.

In October we published our response to the Committee on Climate Change’s progress report. In our response we set out the Government’s progress to date and the key actions we are taking to reduce our emissions to meet our carbon targets. We are now looking ahead to our emissions reduction plan which will set out how we will reduce emissions through the 2020s, keeping us on track for our 2050 target.