Green Stimulus for the UK Economy?
In a recent interview with The Independent, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown hinted that a slew of green initiatives will be announced as part of the Government's April 22 budget review, designed to drag Britain out of recession on a low carbon path.
Top of the list are new plans for electric and hybrid vehicles, which echo London Mayor Boris Johnson's pledge to make the city "the electric car capital of Europe" earlier this month. The Government is expected to announce trials of environmentally friendly cars in two or three cities and initiate talks with utilities companies to roll out a national network of roadside charging points.
Brown also said that the Government was considering a "scrappage" scheme to give consumers a £2,000 windfall when they trade their older, polluting cars in for new, lower emissions alternatives – a step called for by the UK's ailing automotive industry, which saw new car sales slide almost 30% in Q1 2009.
The news coincides with two European Investment Bank loans of £340m to Jaguar Land Rover and £373m to Nissan to fuel the development of green vehicles in their UK plants. But Brown's intent to deploy more low emission vehicles within the public sector should also act as encouragement to smaller, UK-based manufacturers, such as Smith Electric Vehicles and Modec, which are already seeing strong traction amongst high-profile enterprises such as DHL, Royal Mail, Tesco and UPS.
But aside from the automotive industry, what other environmental initiatives are the Government proposing? Well, Brown has promised to set a target of creating 400,000 jobs in "green industries" over the next five years, which loosely encompass "pharmaceuticals, healthcare, education, the creative industries, information technology, bioscience and advanced manufacturing".
Other plans are mooted to include greater support for the development of clean coal, guidelines for the installation of smart meters in every home in Britain, and relaxed planning rules to allow more wind farms to be built.
The latter measure will help to quell some of the ill feeling that the Department of Energy and Climate Change generated last month when it announced that the £50m well reserved for funding solar projects on public buildings had dried up three months early.
While not as far reaching as the US' stimulus package, the rumoured measures at least highlight a growing appreciation that green technology could act as a major catalyst for reviving the UK's economy, resurrecting Britain's once thriving automotive sector and reducing the country's dependency on the financial and services industries.
We'll be watching closely for the official budget announcement later this month.
Tags: electric vehicles, green stimulus, hybrid vehicles, jaguar land rover, modec, nissan, recession, renewables, scrappage, smith electric vehicles, UK
Posted by Luke Nava on April 14, 2009 at 9:07 AM
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