The best place in the world for green businesses
Making the UK the best place in the world to locate and grow a low carbon business
To capitalise on the growth opportunities from a move to a low carbon economy, we must create the conditions for the UK to be – and be seen to be – the leading location in the world for growing an innovative low carbon business, developing new low carbon products and services. In practice, this means having people with the right skills in the right place at the right time, a research base which supports ground breaking research, and the capacity to turn these into world beating technologies.
The UK is already establishing itself as a major player in the £3 trillion global market for low carbon goods and services. Our low carbon and environmental sector, worth £107 billion a year, represents 7.4% of our GDP. The sector is growing fast, even in the downturn, and is expected to employ over 1 million people by the middle of the next decade.
We also have a world class science and research base and a superb record for innovation: in 2007, the UK attracted 30% of all European venture capital investment in clean technology.
In the decades ahead, companies will make critical decisions about where to locate low carbon manufacturing and innovation. If we are to benefit, this will require strategic thinking from government to use the power of public procurement, public policy, and shape the regulatory environment, Britain’s infrastructure, its facilities for research and development and the skills of its workers to make the UK an obvious international destination for low carbon industry,research and development. It also means coordinated support for RD&D that is easy for business to access and navigate, and delivered efficiently.
Our Low Carbon Industrial Strategy will set out ways of ensuring that the UK is the best place in the world to grow a low carbon business and successfully attract new investment, not only as part of the short term economic recovery, but to contribute to long term job creation and growth.
UK workers across all sectors will need to gain the skills to work with new low carbon technologies and processes, or provide new services that will come with a low carbon economy. Often, these are not new skills, but new ways of applying a foundation of training in technical subjects.
The skills to use low carbon goods and services will be embedded into training across every profession, equipping businesses across the UK economy to move rapidly to meet demand for new services.
The Low Carbon Industrial Strategy will set out how the Government will work with leading employers and key strategic partners, such as the Sector Skills Councils, to stimulate demand, support business innovation and create the framework for developing low carbon skills in the UK workforce and securing jobs for the future. It will be particularly important to address the leadership and management issues that will deliver the culture change required in all sectors of the economy. Harnessing the talent and commitment of the entire UK workforce will be the key to success.
- How do we build the infrastructure, skills and research base we need to make the UK the world’s foremost destination for low carbon investment?
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It’s great to see the strong words on vision on this site, yet I despair at the gap between rhetoric and reality. We need to reclaim democratic engagement to ensure that people cannot hold onto positions of power and fail to deliver the radical changes that are needed. There are roughly 5000 days to take 80% of the CO2 out of our economy. There’s no plan.Yet.
Amend building regulations to increase the requirements for
- energy efficiency
- energy self-sufficiency
- local energy generation through renewables
That will help establish a market requirement for the development of products with increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
Ensure that there is no obstacle to planning authorities using s106 monies for the development of community-based energy generation or district power/heat systems.
To build the infrastructure, skills and research base we need to make the UK the world’s foremost destination for low carbon investment requires continued and expanded support for green chemistry and chemical engineering, industrial biotechnology and materials chemistry research and teaching. Science graduates should have an understanding of sustainable design and knowledge of how raw materials are sourced. We should be bold, clear and passionate about the UK’s ability to innovate towards a better but different future.
It seems to be well recognised that the low carbon economy will span many, if not all industries and that the creation of green jobs will take place in many professions. It must also be recognised therefore, that support for industry in moving towards a low carbon economy must be offered not just to the industry supplying the end “low carbon” product, but right through the supply chain where the enabling industry often sits less visibly. The chemical industries for instance will be a powerful enabler of low carbon technologies for other industries’ end products, but require innovation and infrastructure support just as much as the customer facing industry, and sometimes over a longer development cycle. Direct R&D support for the enabling industry will speed up low carbon technologies to market. Equally it should be recognised that if manufacturing industry fails to pull through the current recession there will be no industrial infrastructure to enable the transition to a low carbon industry. Consequently, support is needed now to ensure there is a base from which to build a viable low carbon economy. This support should include a clear understanding of the complex interactions within industries, and within supply chains (so that a domino effect isn’t created when one company fails), as well as where the UK has, and hasn’t, a competitive advantage. Where UK industry has a clear competitive disadvantage e.g. on energy supply and costs (as opposed to energy efficiency) then this should be understood and addressed. Otherwise the new green jobs will simply be environmental consultants flying around the world to help manufacturing bases outside the UK. Finally, it is important that the strategy, action plan, and incentives created by the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy must be underpinned by sound Life Cycle Assessment to ensure the right direction is set from the start, and thereafter remains consistent.
The arguments set out in this section apply equally to water efficieny measures, programmes and products. Retrofit jobs linking water and energy efficiency have huge potential in the low-carbon economy, as does the development of the UK water efficient products market, including through fiscal incentives such as VAT reductions but also through business support measures.
We have a commercially viable project that will be saving 177,000 tons of CO2 in year 1 and creating and securing employment in the rural economy. We have been ignored by DECC , when we contacted The Carbon Trust they said ” we are not interested” and I think very few people in goverment know anything about renewable energy that is not fed to them by foreign major power generators as their goal is the unending Nuclear gravy train.
We are forging head with private investment and with no help or assistance from Regional development agencies. The goverment opposition is just as patheticaly impotent. The German’s, Austrian’s, Dane’s and even the Swiss are laughing at our inability to grasp the opportunities available to even the simplest of renewable technologies with Germany having around 4000 Anerobic Digestors to our “8″ only 4 of which are commercially run. Pathetic…”!