Environmentalists and industry welcome UK’s Clean Growth Strategy

The government’s long-awaited Clean Growth Strategy, which aims to set out how the country will meet its commitments to reducing the environmental impact of industrial and domestic activities — especially those related to energy usage — while still encouraging economic growth has been greeted warmly by industry and environmental groups as a “very significant shift” and “worth the wait”. The strategy sets out what policies the government aims to use to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 57 per cent over the next 15 years.

The Clean Growth Strategy has had a long and chequered gestation. It began as a carbon plan, which morphed into an emissions reduction plan, and has changed again since the closure of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the rolling of energy policy into the overview of business secretary Greg Clark with the creation of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Now more closely aligned with the government’s overarching industrial strategy, the Clean Growth Strategy and stresses the opportunities presented by environmentally-friendly technologies. “The low-carbon economy could grow at 11 per cent a year between 2015 and 2030, four times faster than the projected growth of the economy as a whole,” Clarke writes in his foreword to the 165-page document BEIS has published setting out the strategy.