Recommendation 28

The Department pointed to the cost-benefit analysis it prepared as part of government’s consideration for legally adopting the Sixth Carbon Budget, and also its financial resources (expressed as capital and operating expenditure limits) set against different targets including net zero and contained within its Outcome Delivery Plan.101 The Department told us that it was possible for it to make aggregated calculations of how much money it and other departments were assigning to net zero objectives.102 We asked if costs and spend against net zero could be collated and tracked in the same way the NAO has captured Covid-19 costs through its publicly available Covid Cost Tracker. HM Treasury told us that it was looking at the best way to attribute costs and give a clear account of what is being spent in a way that would be meaningful and helpful, but it and the Department recognised that net zero costs may not always be clearly identifiable as such.103