UK Green Finance Strategy
11 July 2019
The Green Finance Strategy (GFS) sets out several plans for increasing finance for energy and environmental investment. A Green Finance Institute has also been launched, jointly backed by the City of London and UK Government with the aim of championing green finance in the UK and abroad.
New proposals include:
- Reviewing how operational (rather than modelled) energy use can be measured and utilised as a measure for new build projects
- A forthcoming consultation on amending minimum energy efficiency ratings in the non-dom private rented sector
- A forthcoming consultation on requiring financial lenders to help householders that they lend to improve their homes’ energy performance
- Publishing a new update to publicly available EPC data and doing this more regularly
- Considering how to take advantage of the support in principle for Pay As You Save schemes (the idea behind the failed Green Deal)
- Pushing uptake of the new PAS 2035 and PAS 2030 standards that were published in June 2019 and link to the new Trustmark quality scheme
- More Government-initiated investment funds that begin with Government funding for impetus and then leverage private funding. This will include:
- A new clean growth venture capital fund, beginning with £20m from Government and targeting another £20m from private sources (which in the context of the challenge and scale of initiatives to date does not sound that significant)
- The previously-announced EV Charging Infrastructure Investment fund (£200m Government investment) and Industrial Energy Transformation fund (£315m Govt investment)
- More availability of finance for the public sector
- Creation of a Shared Prosperity Fund (capital not stated) to tackle inequalities between communities
- Incentivising environmental measures in developments such as biodiversity gain
- The new Green Finance Institute will consult stakeholders to address barriers to green finance
- A specific focus on the maritime sector with an event at International Shipping Week
- Launch of a £5m Green Home Finance Innovation Fund, an 18 month pilot for ‘green home finance products that have sustainable business models, [and] will incentivise energy efficiency retrofit’.
- Formal reviews of the UK’s progress in greening its financial system, and progress against the specific actions of the GFS, by 2020 and 2022 respectively.
For more information download the summary document