The country already stands to lose £4.3bn by 2030 as its share of the European green tech market is slipping away.
“I am genuinely worried the current government is losing the race on green growth,” said CBI Director General Tony Danker in an interview with the Financial Times.
CBI members frequently raise the same fear. And now the CBI has conducted analysis to highlight how the lack of action from the government on green growth risks leaving the UK behind – because international competitors are busy making big commitments to go after the prizes on offer.
Between 2020 and 2022, the UK’s share in European electric vehicle assembly and battery production fell by 1 percentage point. If there is no change in UK production shares before 2030, the UK will have lost £3bn in projected value in total across both areas. For hydrogen electrolysers it fell by 4 percentage points, equivalent to the loss of £1.3bn.
This is stunning to many who rightly felt clean energy was ours to own.
After all, the UK was the first major economy to commit net zero targets into law – and more firms aligned to the UN’s Race to Zero are headquartered in the UK than any other nation (almost 70% of the FTSE 100).
But we can still win the race on green growth. Our proposed solutions – from building on our strengths, spending smartly and confronting planning regulation – are at the heart of the CBI’s Green Growth business campaign running throughout 2023.
