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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of new jobs that will be created as a result of the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050.

As my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out in his speech on 30 June, we intend to build back greener. Many of the actions we need to take to reach our UK climate targets - net zero - will support our economy to recover from COVID-19, generate new economic opportunities and support new green jobs. The UK has shown that growing our economy and cutting emissions can be achieved at the same time – growing our economy by 75% while cutting emissions by 43% over the past three decades.

There are already 460,000 people employed in the low carbon economy and its supply chains across the UK. By one estimate, the UK low-carbon economy could grow more than four times faster than the rest of the economy by 2030 and support up to 2 million jobs. As one example, the recently announced £2 billion Green Homes Grant will upgrade more than 600,000 homes across the country, save households hundreds of pounds a year on their energy bills and could support up to 80,000 green jobs.