Green Finance Taskforce Report
Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:36 pm
On 28 March 2018, the Government's Green Finance Taskforce published a report titled Accelerating Green Finance.
The report makes many recommendations to the Government for delivery of the public and private investment needed to meet carbon budgets and related environmental and resilience goals, and maximise the UK’s share of the global green finance market. These recommendations to Government include the following:
- Government and the City of London should establish a new Green Finance Institute brand under which strengthened and rebranded Green Finance Initiative capacity is established
- Private sector, academia and Government should establish a Centre for Climate Analytics
- Introduce Green Building Passports for residential and commercial properties by 2020
- Complete research in 2018 to understand the opportunities and costs of using a range of fiscal measures to boost demand for energy efficient retrofits in 2018, and pilot fiscal measures alongside mortgage products from 2019
- Provide short-term incentives to pump prime the green consumer loans and green mortgage markets
- UK lenders should work towards promoting awareness and mainstreaming a consideration of green factors into all their mortgage lending decisions
- Issue a Sovereign Green Bond
- Publish a National Capital Raising Plan explicitly designed to align UK infrastructure planning with the delivery of the Clean Growth Strategy and the 25 Year Environment Plan
- Boost demand from public bodies and their pension providers for diverse place-based low carbon investments
- Set up Clean Growth Regeneration Zones
- Establish a national resilience unit to coordinate and champion climate resilience and ensure Government investment is ‘future proofed’ to climate change
- Raise awareness of green finance opportunities among Local Authorities
In relation to the last point, the report says that "many local authorities remain unaware of the range of finance available to support low carbon energy programmes. To overcome this barrier, a series of regional workshops could be run for senior decision makers on ‘Financing the transition’ bringing together local and national funders and specialist low carbon energy
investors."
"Awareness should also be raised of the fact that renewables are falling in cost and becoming cost-competitive
with traditional forms of generation. Local Government has the potential to access these cost benefits by becoming buyers of
electricity from privately funded renewable projects using power purchase agreements (PPAs) and so supporting investment by providing price stability for contracted output. This can be done in a manner to ensure low costs to the public sector by holding competitive auctions to supply renewable electricity to the public estate, including local Government offices, universities, chools and hospitals."
To read the full report, see:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... rce-report
The report makes many recommendations to the Government for delivery of the public and private investment needed to meet carbon budgets and related environmental and resilience goals, and maximise the UK’s share of the global green finance market. These recommendations to Government include the following:
- Government and the City of London should establish a new Green Finance Institute brand under which strengthened and rebranded Green Finance Initiative capacity is established
- Private sector, academia and Government should establish a Centre for Climate Analytics
- Introduce Green Building Passports for residential and commercial properties by 2020
- Complete research in 2018 to understand the opportunities and costs of using a range of fiscal measures to boost demand for energy efficient retrofits in 2018, and pilot fiscal measures alongside mortgage products from 2019
- Provide short-term incentives to pump prime the green consumer loans and green mortgage markets
- UK lenders should work towards promoting awareness and mainstreaming a consideration of green factors into all their mortgage lending decisions
- Issue a Sovereign Green Bond
- Publish a National Capital Raising Plan explicitly designed to align UK infrastructure planning with the delivery of the Clean Growth Strategy and the 25 Year Environment Plan
- Boost demand from public bodies and their pension providers for diverse place-based low carbon investments
- Set up Clean Growth Regeneration Zones
- Establish a national resilience unit to coordinate and champion climate resilience and ensure Government investment is ‘future proofed’ to climate change
- Raise awareness of green finance opportunities among Local Authorities
In relation to the last point, the report says that "many local authorities remain unaware of the range of finance available to support low carbon energy programmes. To overcome this barrier, a series of regional workshops could be run for senior decision makers on ‘Financing the transition’ bringing together local and national funders and specialist low carbon energy
investors."
"Awareness should also be raised of the fact that renewables are falling in cost and becoming cost-competitive
with traditional forms of generation. Local Government has the potential to access these cost benefits by becoming buyers of
electricity from privately funded renewable projects using power purchase agreements (PPAs) and so supporting investment by providing price stability for contracted output. This can be done in a manner to ensure low costs to the public sector by holding competitive auctions to supply renewable electricity to the public estate, including local Government offices, universities, chools and hospitals."
To read the full report, see:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... rce-report