Going Green Could Add £20 billion to UK`s Economy by 2015

iframe>

UK`s Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has just reported that UK has a good chance of becoming “a global front-runner in low-carbon products and services”, which could result in an addition of £20 billion to the annual GDP.

CBI`s report “The colour of growth – Maximising the potential of green businesss”, includes a list of 10 recommendations for the British Government. This includes stimulating new consumer markets, ensuring right incentives and regulation to drive demand in markets such as the Green Deal.

The CBI is calling for a political leadership that has a more coherent, strategic policy framework, which focuses on building long-term confidence.

“[…] Of equal concern is the string of sudden and unexpected policy changes that have taken place over the past two years, including the increase in the North Sea oil and gas tax, the removal of revenue recycling from the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) and the cut to the solar photovoltaic feed-in tariff.”

The solar FIT-scheme will be lowered by a quarter, from 21p to 16p per kWh, 1^st of August this year. This means that domestic solar will become more expensive and less attractive for people looking to generate their own electricity with solar panels. The new FIT-scheme and other unexpected policy changes pose instability and concern for the green market.

The report expels the myth that we have to choose between growth and green, but green is an intrinsic part of growth and inevitably will become a central part of the British economy.

“We can have green growth, but it`s not a given that we achieve it. We need a coherent strategy and a government that recognize that green growth isn`t always going to be easy.” says Director-General of the CBI, John Cridland. He further adds that the many different departments and initiatives are disjointed in terms of green growth and don`t always deliver.

According to the report, a slowdown of the green business economy potential could lead to losses in net export of £400m in 2014 and 2015. Everybody needs to look at decarbonizing their products and services.  This includes retailers, banks, insurance offerings and pretty much every other business out there.

For more information read John Cridland`s speech or see his interview here.

 

Mathias is studying Environmental Engineering and writes about solar panel prices in his spare time at EnergyInformative.org.

This entry was posted in Blog, Guest Blogs and tagged solar panels, UK polotics. Bookmark the permalink. ← Government complicates Energy policy Listed Buildings and the Green Deal →