BEIS Bulletin- October 2021

New Net Zero Strategy for decarbonising the UK economy

Ahead of the COP 26 summit next week, the Government has published a Net Zero Strategy setting out how the UK will reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The Strategy sets out an economy-wide plan for how British businesses and consumers will be assisted in making the transition to clean energy and will support the creation of thousands of high-skilled jobs in new industries across the UK.

Measures in the plan include:

• bringing forward the deadline for decarbonising the UK’s electricity system from 2050 to 2035 to help build a more resilient energy sector that is less reliant on volatile global supply;
• an Industrial and Hydrogen Revenue Support  scheme to support industry to invest in cleaner energy and infrastructure; and,
• improving air quality by providing £2bn of investment to enable half of journeys in towns and cities to be cycled or walked by 2050, the removal of all diesel-only trains by 2040 and ending the sale of all new non-zero emission road vehicles from 2040.  

Further information is available in the press notice.

Heat and Buildings Strategy aims to improve home heating

To support the Net Zero Strategy, Ministers have set out a plan to reduce the cost of low carbon heating systems such as heat pumps so that they will be no more expensive to buy and run than gas boilers.

New grants of £5,000 will be available from April next year to encourage homeowners to install more efficient, low carbon heating systems through a new £450 million three-year Boiler Upgrade Scheme. These grants mean people choosing to install a heat pump will pay a similar amount to if they were installing a traditional gas boiler. 

This will significantly reduce the UK’s dependency on fossil fuels and exposure to global price spikes, whilst supporting up to 240,000 jobs across the UK by 2035. 

More information is available on GOV.UK.

COP26 business briefings

The Cabinet Office is hosting two briefing sessions for businesses in advance of the COP 26 summit. These briefing sessions are for any business around the world, whether they are coming to Glasgow or not, and are an opportunity to hear from senior UK officials on plans for COP, as well as how they can follow and support the activities going on throughout the week.

Businesses do not need to register in advance, they can simply dial-in to the session they wish to join – both briefings will be the same, so businesses only need to attend one. The briefings will be on:

• Wednesday 20 October, 9:00-10:00 BST. Businesses can join this session here
• Thursday 21 October, 16:30-17:30 BST. Businesses can join this session here