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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to meet their commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050.

The Government is committed to delivering on our world-leading target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions from across the UK economy by 2050. The Prime Minister has announced that 2020 will be a Year of Climate Action. In the run-up to the COP26 summit, we will be bringing forward ambitious plans across key sectors of the economy to meet our carbon budgets and net zero – including an Energy White Paper, Transport Decarbonisation Plan and Heat Roadmap. This will build on the £2 billion we have announced since setting the target and the commitments in our manifesto – from investing £9.2 billion in the energy efficiency of our buildings, to £800 million to deploy the first carbon capture and storage cluster in the UK, to planting an additional 75,000 acres of trees a year by the end of the parliament.

The UK’s success in the global economy will be rooted in innovation and cutting-edge technology. By driving technological change, we will create the high quality, highly paid jobs of the future, the Budget sets out plans to increase public R&D investment to £22 billion per year by 2024-25. The Government will invest that money in the people, ideas and industries that will cement the UK’s world-leading position in science and technologies ranging from nuclear fusion to electric vehicles and life sciences.