Blog: Does 'going green’ equal progress or is it a distraction?
Dr. Margaret Town went along to the recent RAEng event on "Greening UK energy: business opportunity or brake on growth?" Here are her thoughts...
A recent debate at the Royal Academy of Engineering offered the proposition that current and past government attempts to green the UK economy stifled innovation and rather than act as a catalyst to swell business and manufacturing, it stifled development and put the brakes on economic growth.
The question that came to mind during the debate was – is greening the economy more about business than survival?
If the former, then the proposition that going green is good for business must be answered in terms of how much growth there has been, or will be, as the UK reduces the carbon footprint. But it could equally be argued that the latter will not happen without the former.
In pure economic terms, measuring manufacturing output from the UK can be hard to define as in recent times less energy has been expended on creating an infrastructure for manufacturing and industry with more emphasis on house building and converting green spaces into supermarkets, warehouses and shopping centres.
What there is of a manufacturing industry in the UK represents over about 11% of the economy (60% of this is in overseas ownership). What remains is a mix of supply of goods and services.
Even where we see economic growth in areas of the UK economy that we see as emerging in response to the need to reduce carbon emissions or energy production that is no longer reliant on fossil fuels, there is a heavy reliance on subsidies and most of the manufacture and innovation relies on overseas contractors.
It could be argued that a perceived lack of innovation, research and development in the UK started with the Labour Government initiative to go ‘green’ without a long term strategy for growth or the investment to encourage industry to reduce the carbon footprint and innovate. Instead industry were given targets that they were expected to achieve within their own means.
Contrast this with Germany, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands -where they took the view that by investing heavily in industry, research and development and giving a commitment to continue to provide support for carbon reduction and alternative energy sources, -they cornered the market and now manufacture products for export and provide the infrastructure to install and develop their products.
Or, in other words, Europe developed an export market and invested in innovation whilst the UK simply made out of date machinery and transport more energy efficient.
But whilst industry in the UK has managed to reduce carbon emissions by around 30% the domestic market has seen an increase because there was no integrated strategy to align industry with other forms of carbon production.
This is not to say that the UK has failed to innovate or undertake research and development. There are about 52,000 small and medium enterprises that are working on research and development for carbon reduction in the UK. But this is a fragile market that relies on cash flow and overdrafts in a global recession. And that is before they begin to see the fruits of their labours.
The inference is that there is a glimmer of hope for the UK to be a main stream player in the development of the green agenda, but only if the government commits to a long term plan for growth over, say, 10 years and provide the finance to underpin innovation to give the confidence to private investors that ‘going green’ in the UK is worthy of investment.
[You can find out more about the event and watch a video of the event here.]
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