Brendan O’Hara – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Brendan O’Hara on 2016-10-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Government is taking to tackle global climate change.

Mr Nick Hurd

The UK played an important role in securing the global climate Agreement reached in Paris in December 2015. The UK has started its domestic process to enable ratification of the Paris Agreement and will complete this before the end of the year.

The UK also played a key role in securing a major global climate deal to combat aviation emissions, reached at the 39th Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization on 6 October 2016.

We will provide at least £5.8bn from the UK aid budget between 2016 and 2020 as climate finance which will continue to support developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This should help promote green investment required to meet the well below 2 degree goal set in Paris.

Domestically we are delivering against the Paris climate deal through our UK Climate Change Act which commits us to reduce emissions by at least 80% by 2050. One of the first acts of this Government was to pass the fifth carbon budget into law – it is equivalent to a 57% reduction on 1990 levels by 2030.