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Peter Mandelson Speech - Low Carbon Industrial Summit, Royal Society, London, 6 March 2009 - Building a low carbon Britain

DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENTERPRISE AND REGULATORY REFORM News Release (2009/51) issued by COI News Distribution Service. 6 March 2009

Thank you all for being here. Thank you of course to Richard and Frances of the CBI and the TUC for joining the government in launching this agenda. And thank you, Prime Minister, for taking our climate change message to Washington so effectively this week.

Inevitably, the backdrop for what we're doing today is the global recession. So there is a temptation to see the shift to low carbon through that lens - to see the huge opportunities in low carbon as greening the recovery, or a green job creation plan. The market and demand for low carbon goods and jobs and supply chain opportunities. A transformative shift - if we equip the UK properly to compete.

That's true and important and neither Ed nor I would disagree with that. But what we want to do with this Low Carbon Industrial Strategy is much more fundamental than that. This is about how the UK has to look in a decade's time.

It is about a transformative shift in our economy, and the industrial and business opportunities that will come with that if we equip the UK to compete for them.

We are on the edge of a low carbon industrial revolution. Everything is going to change. How you manufacture and the services you provide. The skills your employees and members will need. How we all save money in both the private and public sector through energy efficiency.

It doesn't matter if you're a corporate or a one-woman show looking to lower your energy bills, this will matter to you.

So the point we want to start at today is this: this transition to low carbon is an environmental or economic imperative. It is also inevitable. There is no high carbon future. We've regulated in the UK to make it inevitable through carbon targets, vehicle emissions targets and renewables targets.

What's not inevitable is that the UK will capture the full industrial and business benefits of this shift - here, and around the world. That will have to be something we pursue as policy. That's what today is about. That's why the idea of a low carbon industrial strategy was at the heart of our manufacturing strategy when we launched it last year.

Our premise is that the low carbon shift represents a huge economic opportunity for the UK in two ways.

First, the shift to low carbon offers billions of pounds of cost savings to businesses and the public sector in the form of energy and resource efficiency. The initial cost of the transition to energy efficiency pays for itself quickly and many times over.

Second, low carbon is already a £3 trillion industry which is set to double in size. We are already one of the world's most competitive producers of low carbon technologies and services. But these are starting strengths that others will race to match.

We have to build on them, ultimately by making the UK the best place in the world, to locate or build a low carbon business. To demonstrate or manufacture a low carbon vehicle. To recruit a low carbon venture capital expert or environmental consultant.

As we will discuss today, that has implications for skills, infrastructure, innovation policy here. It has implications for the ways we strengthen the UK's supply chain to serve new global and domestic industries. It will need leadership from the regions, who know their strengths and the lie of the land.

We need a strategic lead and vision from government that commits this country to change and in doing so sets the right frameworks for the private sector and uses public investment strategically. I've called this industrial activism. This is arguably its biggest test in the coming decade and beyond.

Ed will take us through the four areas where we believe the UK now needs a step change. I'll finish with the point I started with. Even though it has the potential to create tens of thousands of jobs in our country, this low carbon industrial strategy is more than just a green job creation scheme.

Low carbon is not a sector of an economy - it is an economy. While our daily focus is on the day to day reality of recession and how we get through it as quickly as painlessly as we can, we also have to be planning for the future. This strategy is about how we prepare the UK for the future, and just how the UK benefits industrially from that future.