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Green finance centre for Leeds and London The government is to make available £10m funding for new green finance research hubs in a bid to position Leeds and London as “global centres for green finance.” The new UK Centre for Green Finance and Investment will begin work in April 2021. The physical hubs will open their doors several months later, led by a number of UK institutions including the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds and Imperial College London. Energy minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said the UK won’t reach its net-zero target without “mobilising private capital and unleashing the power of the free market,” adding the new hubs will encourage financial services to “turn the tide of their investments and focus on sectors and companies that have a smaller environmental footprint.” The hubs will provide data and analytics to financial institutions and services such as banks, lenders, investors and insurers around the world to better support their investment and business decisions by considering the impact on the environment. The UK Centre for Green Finance and Investment will provide banks with the latest environmental and scientific intelligence to help companies of all sizes anticipate and adapt to the risks posed by climate change, the government said, adding that the research will also help to create new products and services that tackle climate change. It is hoped the two hubs will attract and develop new green finance talent from around the world.
GREEN HOMES GRANT
Treasury takes back unspent funds The government’s Green Homes Grant scheme will continue in England during the next financial year. But the intention remains that all unspent grant money allocated for this year -reckoned to be worth over £1,000m - will be returned to the Treasury at the end of this month. This leftover sum would not be ring-fenced for any future energy saving programmes. The scheme offers subsidy grants of up to £5,000 to individual householders, covering up to twothirds of the costs of installing a limited range of renewable energy and energy-saving devices. A fortnight before the March 3 budget, headlines in the Times newspaper had announced that Chancellor Rishi Sunak (right) would be announcing the scrapping of the entire scheme from this April. This prompted an outpouring of protests from a wide variety of sources. These included the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, the
Trades Union Congress, the entire environmental movement, insulation and solar industry businesses, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, plus a range of newspaper editorials. It also incurred the wrath of the Committee on Climate Change’s influential chairman, Lord Deben. Most concentrated upon the fact that only 30,000 homes had yet been improved. Last July, Sunak had promised that his £2bn programme would benefit 600,000 homes and generate some 100,000 jobs. In the end, in his budget speech,
Sunak made no reference at all to the scheme. This means that the £320m budget he announced last December for the scheme for the financial year 2021/2022 is set to go ahead. According to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the main reason why so many fewer homes would benefit than anticipated from this “Build Back Better” scheme - which he touted to the United Nations - was because of lack of consumer demand, largely owing to COVID-19 fears. Others have ascribed the slow progress to incompetent administration, the limited range of accepted products, and the scarcity of registered installers. Business Department officials had rejected proposals to utilise existing accreditation schemes overseen by established trade associations. Instead, they insisted that any installers wishing to participate would be required to join the previously obscure Trustmark scheme.
Trevelyan takes the reins as Kwarteng moves up The promotion of energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng to the Cabinet as Business Secretary of State has led to the appointment of a new minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan (left). She now oversees Business, Energy and Clean Growth. A graduate of Oxford Poly and then a chartered accountant with PwC, Mrs Trevelyan became an MP in 2015, winning Berwick upon Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, who had held it for 42 years. Her previous Ministerial experience was as a Defence Minister, and then as Secretary of State for International Development. Last year she was put in charge of adaptation and resilience policies pertinent to the COP26 in Glasgow.
She left the Cabinet last September when that Department was closed, but returned this year as a Minister of State, an unusual demotion. Prior to her appointment, she was a vocal supporter of gas fracking, and of Brexit. Also heavily involved as an energy minister is the former MEP for north-east England (including Berwick) Lord Malcolm Callanan, particularly as there are many members of the Upper House concerned about energy saving policy The Labour team is headed up by Doncaster MP Ed Miliband, party leader between 2010 and 2015. He is supported by Southampton MP Dr Alan Whitehead, a former buildings minster, and Greenwich’s Matthew Pennycook, a former chairman of the influential parliamentary. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group, PRASEG. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson is Richmond upon Thames MP Sarah Olney, and shadowing energy and climate change for the SNP is Kilmarnock’s Alan Brown.
First UK homes fuelled by hydrogen set for to be built in the north east The UK’s first homes with household appliances fuelled entirely by hydrogen are set to be built in Low Thornley, Gateshead, providing the public a glimpse into the potential home of the future where no carbon emissions are released. The two semi-detached homes, funded with the help of the UK government’s Hy4Heat Innovation
programme, will open in April 2021, showing how hydrogen has the potential to be used as a clean replacement to natural gas in the home. The hydrogen houses are intended to have a three-year lifespan, but potentially longer, up to ten years. They are not intended to be habitable, but to showcase the use of hydrogen-
fuelled applications in a real-world domestic setting. The hydrogen house project is aligned with a larger scheme detailed in the Prime Minister’s Ten point plan which also includes establishing a Hydrogen Neighbourhood, and to the development of plans for a potential Hydrogen Town before the end of this decade.
The houses will use 100 per cent hydrogen for domestic heating and cooking in appliances including boilers, hobs, cookers and fires. Unlike natural gas, which is responsible for over 30 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions, hydrogen produces no carbon at the point of use, with the only by-product being water.
06 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | MARCH 2021
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