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Green Finance House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Green Finance Twelfth Report of Session 2013-14 Volume I Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Additional written evidence is contained in Volume II, available on the Committee website at www.parliament.uk/eacom Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 26 February 2014 HC 191 Published on 6 March 2014 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £20.00 Environmental Audit Committee The Environmental Audit Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider to what extent the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development; to audit their performance against such targets as may be set for them by Her Majesty’s Ministers; and to report thereon to the House. Current membership Joan Walley MP (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent North) (Chair) Peter Aldous MP (Conservative, Waveney) Neil Carmichael MP (Conservative, Stroud) Martin Caton MP (Labour, Gower) Katy Clark MP (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran) Chris Evans MP (Labour/Co-operative, Islwyn) Zac Goldsmith MP (Conservative, Richmond Park) Mark Lazarowicz MP (Labour/Co-operative, Edinburgh North and Leith) Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion) Caroline Nokes MP (Conservative, Romsey and Southampton North) Dr Matthew Offord MP (Conservative, Hendon) Dan Rogerson MP (Liberal Democrat, North Cornwall) [ex-officio] Rt Hon Mrs Caroline Spelman MP (Conservative, Meriden) Mr Mark Spencer MP (Conservative, Sherwood) Dr Alan Whitehead MP (Labour, Southampton, Test) Simon Wright MP (Liberal Democrat, Norwich South) The following members were also members of the committee during the parliament: Richard Benyon MP (Conservative, Newbury) [ex-officio] Ian Murray MP (Labour, Edinburgh South) Sheryll Murray MP (Conservative, South East Cornwall) Paul Uppal MP (Conservative, Wolverhampton South West) Powers The constitution and powers are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152A. These are available on the internet via www.parliament.uk. Publications The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/eacom. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this volume. The Reports of the Committee, the formal minutes relating to that report, oral evidence taken and some or all written evidence are available in a printed volume. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Simon Fiander (Clerk), Philip Aylett (Second Clerk), Richard Clarke (Committee Specialist), Andrew Wallace (Senior Committee Assistant), Anna Browning (Committee Assistant), Sayeda Begum (Committee Support Assistant) and Nicholas Davies (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Environmental Audit Committee, House of Commons, 14 Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NB. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6150; the Committee’s email address is [email protected] Green Finance 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 The need for green finance 5 Commitments and mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions 5 Green finance ‘gap’ 7 2 Providing information to direct finance 9 Risk appetite 9 Regulatory certainty 11 Providing investors with information to assess risk 15 Carbon ‘bubble’ 15 Carbon reporting 17 Fiduciary duty 18 3 Government funding and support 21 Green Investment Bank 21 Ability to borrow 24 Energy efficiency 25 Community energy 27 Sources of funding 30 New sources of finance 32 4 A green finance strategy 34 Conclusions 36 Recommendations 38 Formal Minutes 40 Witnesses 41 Published written evidence 42 List of additional written evidence 43 List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament 44 Green Finance 3 Summary Responding to climate change is perhaps the biggest global challenge of the 21st Century, and the transition to a low-carbon economy will require investors to take account of the reality of a carbon-constrained world. This shift is happening, but there are obstacles to overcome—stock markets are currently over-valuing companies that produce and use carbon (a ‘carbon bubble’ consisting of fossil fuel assets which will have to be left unburned in order to cut emissions to the levels required to limit climate change), and there is a green finance gap with investments currently running at less than half of the level needed to deliver the decarbonisation implicit in national and international emissions reduction targets. The UK, with London at its heart, is a world leader in finance, and there are great opportunities to lead on low-carbon investment. The Government must play a central role in concerted international efforts to address climate change and ensure that markets price- in the cost of carbon. More must be done to secure the required levels of green investment in areas such as low-carbon energy generation, energy efficiency, and transport. The Green Investment Bank has made a good start, making investments which will contribute to filling the gap in the required level of green investment. The Bank needs to be able to borrow to significantly enlarge the scale of its work. The Government must declare in Budget 2014 that the Bank will be permitted to borrow in 2015–16 as originally planned, to demonstrate continued commitment and ambition. Robust regulatory frameworks, policy certainty and ongoing commitment to green investment is vital. Over the past decade, successive governments have helped to build political consensus around the existence and urgency of climate change. The Government should support binding national renewable energy targets in the EU, as it is an important driver of the transition to low-carbon energy generation. The Government has taken steps to help establish a more stable regulatory environment through its Electricity Market Reform and should look to avoid further regulatory change, such as its restructuring of the Energy Company Obligation. The Government’s Community Energy Strategy addresses a number of the concerns raised during our inquiry and includes provisions likely to boost local schemes. We are, however, concerned that recent proposals from the European Commission may slow the transition to a low-carbon economy. The Government should work with the Commission to ensure proposals to reduce the threshold for small-scale feed-in tariffs are not carried through because they risk undermining the viability of community schemes. Priority needs to be given to securing early State Aid approval for the Green Investment Bank to invest in community energy and ensuring that all local authorities have the tools and resources to play a full part in making such schemes a widespread and successful part of the UK energy mix. Increasing the flow of green finance is a responsibility divided between different Government departments and other entities. The Government needs to do more to 4 Green Finance accelerate progress and monitor impact. It has a range of ways to help co-ordinate its efforts between departments, including the advice of the independent Committee on Climate Change. Working to a single strategy would create greater certainty and a more favourable investment outlook. The Government should re-visit and expand its strategy on Enabling the Transition to a Green Economy to evaluate progress and identify areas for improvement. This would bring together and align: • the UK’s position in international negotiations on emissions reduction and climate change; • action to deliver our carbon budget commitments and Climate Change Act obligations; • the Industrial Strategies; • the National Infrastructure Plan; • the Green Investment Bank’s role and the scope of the projects it supports, and the Infrastructure Guarantee programme; • opportunities to take advantage of and direct EU funding towards green infrastructure; • green-proofing Government grants, including the Regional Growth Fund and Local Enterprise Partnerships; • community energy; and • funding for adaptation to climate change. Green Finance 5 1 The need for green finance 1. Governments agree on the need to de-carbonise the global economy. The challenge is how to achieve this. In this report we look at the actions the UK Government is taking to promote low-carbon investment to contribute to the reduction in global carbon emissions needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. It looks at what actions the Government is taking to provide stable and attractive conditions for green finance, as well as how it uses its own funds to support green investments. 2. The UK, with London at its heart, is a leading centre of global finance, and there are great opportunities for the UK to lead on low-carbon investment. We launched our inquiry with a seminar in the City of London in July 2012 to hear directly from investors what they saw the opportunities and barriers around green finance to be.1 We then took detailed evidence from campaigners, analysts and investors, including pension funds and asset managers, the Green Investment Bank and those involved in community energy projects. We also took evidence from Michael Fallon MP, the Minister for business and energy. Commitments and mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions 3. In 2010, governments confirmed, in the Cancun Agreement at the UN climate change conference, that emissions should be reduced to avoid a rise in global average temperature of more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with the possibility of revising this down to 1.5°C. In 2012 international agreement was reached to draw up a binding UN global climate change deal by 2015 and to extend the Kyoto protocol until that deal comes into effect. Governments will meet again later this year in Lima to work towards the details of a deal in Paris in 2015. 4. The EU’s and the UK’s emissions reductions commitments reflect that wider undertaking. The Government’s commitments are set out in the Climate Change Act: to ensure that emissions are reduced by 80% by 2050, relative to 1990 levels.
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