Government’s New Low Carbon Industrial Strategy’s “Narrow Vision Risks Putting the UK at a Competitive Disadvantage”
July 9th 2009

The Government will fail to achieve its “vision” of creating a low carbon, resource efficient economy led by UK businesses unless its forthcoming Low Carbon Industrial Strategy [1] is extended to set out a comprehensive framework for promoting the whole of the UK’s environmental industry – embracing the technologies needed to tackle contaminated land, waste, water and air pollution.

This is the message of a new report and lobbying campaign launched today by the Environmental Industries Commission [2] which is calling on the Government to urgently extend the Low Carbon Industry Strategy to set out a comprehensive framework for putting the whole UK environmental industry at the heart of what is already a $3 trillion global environmental market place (and growing rapidly at over 5% a year).

The purpose of the forthcoming Low Carbon Industrial Strategy will be set out Government support for areas of the low carbon goods and services sector “where the UK has the potential to take a leading global role”[3].

The new Government Strategy will embrace many of the policies (on regulation, R&D and export support) proposed earlier in 2009 in “EIC’s Green Jobs Growth Strategy” [4] – but it is likely to ignore successful and important sectors (waste, water and air pollution control technologies) of the wider environmental industry where British companies have the potential to “take a leading global role” - in favour of sectors that the Government’s own analysis [5] shows are less competitive and have a far lower growth potential. This will inevitably put the UK put at a competitive disadvantage in the race to dominate global environmental markets, forfeiting the potential to create thousands of new UK business and hundreds of thousands of green collar jobs.

Commenting on the launch of the campaign, EIC’s Policy Director, Danny Stevens, said: “EIC welcomes the Government’s new industrial activism and the development of a new Low Carbon Industrial Strategy setting out how the Government plans to support the development of a UK based low carbon goods and services sector. But a narrow vision risks putting the UK at competitive disadvantage by ignoring other key environmental technologies.”

“Climate change is by no means the only important environmental issue, and low-carbon is by no means the only important aspect of developing a green economy. There is a danger that the emphasis on “low carbon” will obscure other environmental and sustainability issues – forfeiting the huge economic opportunities they will be created by developing technologies to tackle waste, water and air pollution”

The UK’s future competitiveness depends on establishing a world-leading environmental industry, with thousands of new business, hundreds of thousands of new jobs and huge export potential. The Government needs to be serious about ensuring the UK’s environmental industry wins the lions’ share of future global markets - otherwise Britain will miss out and allow our international competitors to seize these huge new markets.”

--ENDS--

1. The Government’s ‘Low Carbon Industrial Strategy: A Vision’ can be accessed at

www.berr.gov.uk/files/file50373.pdf

2. EIC is the lead trade association for UK’s environmental technology and services industry, with over 300 Member Companies. EIC represents the main environmental sectors (climate change, water, air, contaminated land, waste, transport, etc). It has the support of leading politicians from all three major political parties, industrialists, trade union leaders, environmentalists, and academics. For further information visit: www.eic-uk.co.uk

3. The Government’s report ‘Investing in a Low Carbon Britain’ - which identifies areas of the low carbon goods and services sector “where the UK has the potential to take a leading global role” and, therefore, the areas a Low Carbon Industrial Strategy will support. http://interactive.berr.gov.uk/lowcarbon/

4. For a copy of EIC’s ‘Green Jobs Growth Strategy’ email danny.stevens@eic-uk.co.uk

5. The Government’s own report ‘Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services: An Industry Analysis’ identifies that the forecast growth in market value for two sectors of the wider environmental industry (waste management and water and waste water treatment) is greater than, for example, carbon capture and storage, one of the priority areas identified in the report ‘Investing in a Low Carbon Britain.’

The report goes on to identify emerging markets that the UK should prioritise in terms of market size and forecast growth. It concludes that the water treatment sector is a market that forecasts “high levels of growth in market value.” Carbon Capture and Storage, which has been identified as a priority for the UK, is not highlighted as a priority market.

The report also ranks CCS 17th out of 23 sub sectors in terms of forecast growth – below ‘Energy Management’ and ‘Building Technologies’ which are both given lower priority in the report ‘Investing in a Low Carbon Britain.’

6. For a copy of EIC’s report ‘EIC’s Vision for the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy’ email danny.stevens@eic-uk.co.uk

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