The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)

Leading the world in tackling climate change

Achieving net zero carbon emissions is a key departmental priority and we have set out actions we are taking across the economy to accomplish this.

We committed to set a legally binding target to end the UK’s contribution to climate change to net zero by 2050.

We have set out further actions we are taking across the economy to achieve net zero by 2050. These include adding around 6GW of clean energy to the grid by 2025 through the contracts for difference (CfD) scheme, enough to power over 7 million homes at record low costs.

We announced £27.8 million of Government funding to advance carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies in the UK, a crucial step towards the UK’s net zero emissions.

The UK was nominated to host the COP26 UN climate talks next year in partnership with Italy, recognition by world leaders of our strong global on climate issues.

UK emissions in 2019 were 42% lower than in 1990, while growing the economy by 72%. The UK has delivered fastest decarbonisation in G20 since 2000 according to PWC.

We committed £5.8 billion of international climate finance from 2016 to 2021, placing us among the world’s leading providers of climate finance, in addition to the £3.87 billion we provided from 2011 to 2016. The Prime Minister later announced the doubling of international climate finance spend to £11.6 billion.

Our international climate finance programmes are delivering real results on the ground and are catalysing wider change.

We published the Clean Growth Strategy: Leading the way to a low carbon future policy paper. This set out the strategy for decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy through the 2020s, benefiting the economy while meeting commitments to tackle climate change.

We held the UK’s first green GB week in 2018, a week to celebrate clean growth and raise awareness regarding how the public and businesses can tackle climate change.

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