Climate change minister Nick Hurd has reasserted the government’s commitment to business sustainability after it was called into question in the House of Commons.
In a question put before the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s ministerial team yesterday, Labour MP Kerry McCarthy lauded the potential of the ‘circular economy’ to create as many as half a million jobs while helping decarbonise the economy.
She moved on to question why such an approach was not brought into the government’s recently released industrial strategy, adding: “It is disappointing that there is little mention of resource efficiency, low-carbon growth and sustainability in the industrial strategy. Can the Government reassure me that they are taking this seriously?”
However Hurd refuted McCarthy’s sentiments and insisted that sustainable growth was one of the central tenets of the new strategy.
“One of the clear pillars of the industrial strategy is a commitment to clean growth, within which are some explicit references to our desire to explore the opportunities attached to higher resource and energy productivity,” he said.
Helping businesses reduce energy bills is a key aim of the strategy and the government said at the time that it would work towards the production of a “roadmap” for energy bill reduction in the following months.
Energy efficiency technologies have also been placed at the centre of a review of how to decarbonise the UK’s energy sector at lowest cost.
However no specific details have yet been released regarding support for businesses aiming to decarbonise their operations. The document set to contain those details – the Emissions Reduction Plan – has been continually pushed back and last week the government refused to commit to a specific timeframe when contacted by sister publication Solar Power Portal.
