Submission to Energy and Climate Change Committee inquiry: Leaving the EU - implications for UK climate policy

Abstract

The UK has consistently played a leading role in supporting and delivering strong EU climate change action, including the creation of EU CCS development policy and supporting policies. • CCS deployment across multiple sectors is critical to meeting UK, EU and international objectives to mitigate climate change. The UK has a European-scale strategic asset in geological CO2 storage and subsurface industry expertise. • The EU Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) is a key policy for supporting CCS deployment. The UK has been instrumental in guiding its improvement and creating direct funding for CCS from New Entrants' Reserve scheme revenues and the forthcoming Innovation Fund. The UK's exit from the EU-ETS would be hugely disrupting and would result in the loss of access to these substantial funds. We strongly advocate that the UK remains within the EU-ETS and retains eligibility for the Innovation Fund. • EU climate legislation largely complements and supports the UK's domestic climate legislation. Continued collaboration and coordination on climate policy is necessary and will bring substantial mutual benefit. Misalignment of UK and EU climate mitigation objectives would damage low-carbon developer and investor confidence, and the UK Government should be mindful to avoid any uncertainty with respect to UK legislation, which has been framed with reference to EU legislation.