NEWS STORY

11 March, 2009

BERR launches new vision for a Low Carbon Industrial Strategy

On Friday 6 March, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) announced its Low Carbon Industrial Strategy Vision.

The vision sets out the scope and ambition of the Government's plans for a transition to a low carbon economy and how it will transform our whole economy.

BERR hopes the strategy will create opportunities in a variety of sectors, supporting the UK's recovery from the current downturn and providing for a more secure long term future.

The idea is to provide not only commercial opportunities and job growth from new low carbon technologies and processes, but to encourage huge cost savings though increased resource efficiency.

Four key challenges lie at the heart of the strategy:

  • Energy efficiency to save businesses, consumers and the public services money
  • Putting in place the energy infrastructure for the UK's low carbon future - in renewables, nuclear, Carbon Capture and Storage and a 'smart' grid
  • Making the UK a global leader in the development and production of low carbon vehicles
  • Ensuring our skills, infrastructure, procurement, research and development, demonstration and deployment policies make the UK the best place to locate and develop a low carbon business and make sure international business recognises that.

This publication marks the start of an intensive consultation period prior to the full strategy being launched in the summer

Aldersgate Group Chairman and Enviros Strategy Director, Peter Young, welcomes the strategy. He said:

"This vision begins to grasp the size of opportunity for driving our economic recovery from a leadership position in the race to develop a successful low carbon economy. I particularly welcome the signal for joined up government heralded by the statement ‘this will require strategic thinking from government to use the power of public procurement, public policy and shape the regulatory environment’. By intelligent use of all these levers we can indeed create the best place to start the low carbon industrial revolution in a fiercely competitive global market."

For more information on the strategy, view the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy Vision or visit the website http://interactive.berr.gov.uk/lowcarbon/