Environmental Audit CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Greg Barker MP, Minister of State, DECC

GOVERNMENT 10% EMISSIONS REDUCTION TARGET

The Prime Minister’s target for central Government to reduce its carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months ended on 13 May 2011. Since then Cabinet Office has been working with departments to finalise the results.

I am delighted to inform you that we have achieved an overall reduction of 13.8% using weather-corrected data. I hope you will agree this is a significant achievement, testament to this government’s ambition to be the ‘greenest government ever’. Never before has central government achieved this level of reduction in such a short space of time.

Over the 12 months to 13 May 2011, government reduced carbon emissions from its office estate by 104,532 tonnes on the previous year (from a baseline of 764,141 tonnes CO2). The saving amounts to a reduction of nearly 238 million kilowatt hours in energy consumption, and we estimate that this will reduce government’s energy bills by £13 million this year.

When the data and the baseline are weather corrected, the total reduction is 103,316 tonnes against a baseline of 749,547 tonnes. As you will recall, weather correction is a data process which eliminates the effect of unusually warm or cold weather. It has been conducted independently of government, by BRE, and is an accepted industry method for ensuring that energy performance can be evaluated independently of weather fluctuations.

This target spanned 3,000 central government office buildings—everything from Whitehall headquarters to Jobcentre Plus Offices, HM Courts and Driving Test Centres. Over 300,000 civil servants played their part, and many made a personal contribution by changing their own behaviour, for example turning off lights and equipment when not needed. Further details on individual departments’ performance, how the target was achieved and the lessons learned in the process are available at www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk.

The Prime Minister announced the final result on the 10% target today in Prime Minister’s Questions. At the same time, he announced a new five year commitment to reduce central Government greenhouse gas emissions by 25%. This commitment builds upon the success of 10% and covers a wider scope of the Central Government estate and emissions from business related transport.

6 July 2011