Industry and manufacturing are crucial to the UK economy, providing 9.3% of UK GVA, employing hundreds of thousands across the UK, and enabling clean energy, transport, and infrastructure. However, they are often carbon-intensive and under fierce international competition. Their decarbonisation is therefore crucial to meeting net zero, but also to their ability to harness the momentum of growing green markets and secure a sustainable commercial future.
Electrification, hydrogen, CCUS, innovation, and resource and energy efficiency will drive emissions reductions. However, a lack of industrial strategy has created uncertainty, hindering investment. Countries such as the US with the Inflation Reduction Act and EU with the Green Deal Industrial Plan, have gone much further and faster, and are now realising the benefits, leaving the UK behind.
The priority for the new government is establishing an environment conducive to investment in the low carbon technologies of tomorrow. The following 10 actions have been endorsed by a coalition of 18 organisations across business, academia, and civil society. Together, they would put UK industry and manufacturing back on track for a prosperous, low carbon future.
View the full briefing and complete recommendations here.
Ten priorities for clean industry:
- Set out an ambitious green industrial strategy that includes a plan for the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industry and manufacturing.
- Commission a supply chain and skills capacity assessment to identify the UK’s capability gaps and competitive strengths.
- Establish a roadmap for industrial electrification that sets out immediate-, medium-, and long-term actions to tackle high electricity prices, capex support and access to grid connections.
- Continue the current programme of reforms to UK carbon pricing.
- Maintain the momentum of CCUS and hydrogen development by continuing with the UK’s initial cluster projects.
- Consolidate and simplify innovation and resource and energy efficiency funding, with the aim of scaling-up decarbonisation solutions.
- Implement policies to accelerate the growth of markets for low emissions industrial products.
- Create a comprehensive plan for the decarbonisation of dispersed industrial sites.
- Set out a low carbon skills strategy to provide stability across the curriculum, private sector, and wider policy environment to drive a skills revolution and just transition in industry.
- Implement a new Resources and Waste Strategy to maximise the reuse and remanufacture of materials like scrap steel and packaging and deliver a truly circular economy.
