Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry has said that she is “confident” that the UK will meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets in the timeframe given. She was responding to a question during a Commons Science and Technology Committee evidence session on Tuesday 23 April. MPs highlighted the Committee on Climate Change predicting that the UK will not meet the budgets, to which Perry responded that there has been an acceleration of policy delivery and a reduction in technology cost, as well as an increased focus due to the publication of the IPCC Special Report. She also said that the government had not yet factored in the carbon reduction effects of the Future Homes Standard which was announced in the Spring Statement. Additionally, earlier on in the same session, witnesses from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and UK Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Research Centre said that CCS needed to be deployed on a large scale by the 2030s to help the UK achieve net zero by 2050.
