Boris Johnson outlines £4bn investment

Boris Johnson has unveiled a £4bn investment plan as part of a 10-point plan aimed at helping it achieve net zero by 2050 - but it was immediately criticised by some for being too little.

Covering clean energy, transport, nature and innovative technologies, the proposal will allow the UK to press on with eradicating its contribution to climate change in the next three decades, which the government said was particularly crucial in the run up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow next year.

The government claimed the £4bn was part of a wider package of £12bn of investment that is aiming to create and support up to 250,000 green jobs in the UK, and spur over three times as much private-sector investment by 2030.

Johnson said: ”Although this year has taken a very different path to the one we expected, I haven’t lost sight of our ambitious plans to level up across the country.

”My 10-point plan will create, support and protect hundreds of thousands of green jobs, whilst making strides towards net zero by 2050.”

The government also reaffirmed its commitment to the built environment restating that it would next year pour £1bn into making new and existing homes and public buildings more efficient, extending the Green Homes Grant voucher scheme by a year and making public sector buildings greener.

>> Julia Park: A green homes revolution or total mayhem?

>> Also read: ‘Not quite the green industrial revolution’: Architects react to PM’s net zero plan

 

The 10-point plan

  1. Offshore wind: Producing enough offshore wind to power every home, quadrupling how much we produce to 40GW by 2030, supporting up to 60,000 jobs.
  2. Hydrogen: Working with industry aiming to generate 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes, and aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade.
  3. Nuclear: Advancing nuclear as a clean energy source, across large scale nuclear and developing the next generation of small and advanced reactors, which could support 10,000 jobs.
  4. Electric vehicles: Backing our world-leading car manufacturing bases including in the West Midlands, north east and north Wales to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, and transforming our national infrastructure to better support electric vehicles.
  5. Public transport, cycling and walking: Making cycling and walking more attractive ways to travel and investing in zero-emission public transport of the future.
  6. Jet Zero and greener maritime: Supporting difficult-to-decarbonise industries to become greener through research projects for zero-emission planes and ships.
  7. Homes and public buildings: Making our homes, schools and hospitals greener, warmer and more energy efficient, whilst creating 50,000 jobs by 2030, and a target to install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028.
  8. Carbon capture: Becoming a world-leader in technology to capture and store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere, with a target to remove 10MT of carbon dioxide by 2030, equivalent to all emissions of the industrial Humber today.
  9. Nature: Protecting and restoring our natural environment, planting 30,000 hectares of trees every year, whilst creating and retaining thousands of jobs.
  10. Innovation and finance: Developing the cutting-edge technologies needed to reach these new energy ambitions and make the City of London the global centre of green finance.

>> Live today:| A net zero conversation with Jerry Tate

 

The new investment includes a promise of an extra £200m of new funding to create two carbon capture clusters by the mid-2020s, up to £500m in hydrogen technologies and £525m to help develop large and smaller-scale nuclear plants.

The government has also promised significant investment to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles. The UK car industry already manufactures a significant proportion of electric vehicles in Europe.

This includes £1.3bn to speed up the rollout of chargepoints for electric vehicles, £582m in grants for those buying zero or ultra-low emission vehicles, and nearly £500m to be spent in the next four years for the development and mass-scale production of electric vehicle batteries.

Interested in Net Zero?

Today and tomorrow, Assemble Media Group, Building Design’s publisher, is hosting a free event, Net Zero Live.

It kicks off this morning with Jerry Tate, founder of Tate Harmer Architects, talking about the need to tackle embodied carbon.

Just some of the other topics that will be discussed through the two-day programme are delivering net zero from construction techniques through to operational use, designing for embodied carbon from material specification through to repair and maintenance and what clients want from costs to impacts and understanding planners’ agendas.

Highlights include three live panel discussions, a key note interview and the exclusive release of the first three parts of Building Boardroom’s nine-part report on net zero, which includes insight from six leading clients.

For more information and to register click here.

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