Britain falls behind in the race to win low-carbon trade

Tricia Holly Davis
Green business deals worth £300m between British and Chinese companies were unveiled in the People’s Republic last week by Lord Mandelson, the business secretary.
They were meant to illustrate Britain’s leading role in the £2 trillion global market for low-carbon goods and services, yet new figures reveal that we are being left behind by China and America.
Britain’s share of the global market for low-carbon products and services is only 3.5%, or about £63 billion, according to research from Mandelson’s department. America is the single biggest player with a 20.6% share, worth £377 billion, followed by China with 13.5%.
Thanks to huge domestic subsidy programmes — especially in China — the gap is widening. Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the accountant, said the market in the People’s Republic could grow to £600 billion a year, or 15% of forecast GDP, by 2013.
Jon Williams, a partner at PWC, said: “If we are going to catch up with China — and other nations such as America and India — we need to create a manufacturing base and prevent skilled workers from migrating abroad or to other industries.”
Over the past decade the opposite has happened. Britain has seen a 22% decline in the number of chartered engineers, a two-thirds decline in incorporated engineers and a 50% drop in engineering technicians. India is now the largest manufacturer of wind turbines while Britain’s only big turbine parts factory, owned by Vestas on the Isle of Wight, closed recently.
The UK’s poor standing will be a blow to Gordon Brown, who has touted the development of low-carbon industries as an important element of the recovery from recession.
The advance of America, China and India is not surprising given that they have big populations and are heavy polluters. China, home to nearly a fifth of the world’s people, builds more power plants each year than the total operating in Britain.
The fear, however, is that the British government is not doing enough to help companies build capacity to increase or even maintain our small slice of the pie.
In China the government is planning an unprecedented package worth £263 billion over the next few years focused on renewable energy alone. This comes on top of a £350 billion stimulus package aimed at combating the recession — a third of that pot was also earmarked for green investment. America, meanwhile, set aside a significant chunk of its $787 billion (£470 billion) stimulus package for the same purpose. By comparison the UK devoted about 15% of its comparatively tiny stimulus budget to low-carbon industries.
It’s an important point. Every 0.1% added to Britain’s global market share of green goods equates to growth of £3 billion for the domestic economy. Analysts say this needs to double if the country is to capitalise fully on the low-carbon economy. “The issue for the UK is not whether we can get in the low-carbon race but whether we can stay in the race,” said Rhian Kelly, head of climate change at the CBI.
Green Idea
Want to go on safari but feel bad about the carbon you would generate getting to Africa? The Uganda Wildlife Authority has the answer. Later this month it will launch a website to allow online gorilla tracking. For a minimum $1 donation, users can “befriend a gorilla” through sites like Twitter and Facebook and track them online. Find out how at uwa.or.ug.