Kevin Brennan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how much public sector funding was spent on facilitating higher risk green investment in each of the last five years; and what estimate he has made of the likely spend of this type in each of the next five years.
Anna Soubry
Government funding for green innovation is provided for private sector led technology R&D through grants, procurement approaches and to a lesser extent equity interventions. Additionally, DECC, Research Councils and InnovateUK are involved in European programmes that can leverage significant funding from the EC while ensuring cross border collaboration.
Government spent ~£1.3billion on low carbon innovation for the period 2011-15. In addition, the Low Carbon Networks Fund which is funded by network operators is expected to allocate ~£440m over the period 2010-15. See table 1 attached:
Separately, the British Business Bank has three main programmes for supporting early stage technology investment, including in the clean technology area: the Enterprise Capital Funds targeted at early stage venture capital investment; the UK Innovation Investment Fund (UKIIF) which supports creation of viable investment funds targeting UK high growth technology-based businesses; and the Venture Capital Catalyst Fund, launched in 2013.
As part of the recent Spending Review, it was announced that the department for Energy & Climate Change will double its innovation program to £500 million over the next five years.
UK Green Investment Bank plc (GIB) also invests in innovative green projects, though it does so on fully commercial terms and is focused on technologies ready for deployment at full commercial scale and capable of attracting additional investment from mainstream finance providers. Details of all GIB’s investments to date can be found on the company’s website.
