PIRC’s new report The Green Investment Gap was today referred to in two articles by Fiona Harvey in the Guardian.
The first article, discussing expectations for the Budget, contained the following mention:
“The keystone of the government’s green investment policy must be a strong green investment bank,” added Guy Shrubsole, of the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC). …
According to the PIRC, the UK devoted £12.6bn to green investment in 2009-10, which was less than 1% of GDP and less than half of the sum it is estimated will be needed in annual investment to reform the UK’s energy infrastructure and meet greenhouse gas emissions targets. (It is also, according to the PIRC, less than the amount the UK spends annually on cosmetics and perfume.) The organisation said the bank would need to be funded with £4-6bn, to be effective.
The second article, reporting on what the Chancellor’s Budget had announced, also included this:
[Osborne] confirmed that the bank would have £3bn in funding, with £2bn coming from sales of government assets, as revealed by the Guardian previously. The £2bn, including £775m from the sale of the government’s stake in the high-speed railway line through Kent, is a doubling of the Treasury’s original commitment of £1bn from asset sales.
But Guy Shrubsole of the Public Interest Research Centre said this was not enough. According to PIRC research, the UK devoted £12.6bn to green investment in 2009-10, which was less than 1% of GDP and less than half of the sum needed annually to reform the UK’s energy infrastructure and meet greenhouse gas targets. PIRC found it was little more than the UK spends annually on perfumes and cosmetics.
