Speeches

Royston Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the UK meets its renewed target of zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Andrea Leadsom

The Government believes we will need to take the step of enshrining the global goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of the century, agreed in Paris, into UK law. The question is not whether but how we do it.

The Government also remains committed to its existing Climate Change Act target of an at least 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on 1990 levels. Our working assumption is that we will publish our Emissions Reduction Plan by the end of 2016, which will set out our proposals for meeting our Climate Change Act targets.