The Environmental Audit Committee has launched a Green Finance inquiry to scrutinise the government’s plan to develop “world leading green finance capabilities”.
The government’s Clean Growth Strategy sets out how more than £2.5bn will be invested by the government to support low carbon energy innovation from 2015-2021. The strategy says it will accelerate clean growth by developing world-leading green finance capabilities.
The committee’s chair, Mary Creagh, said: “The UK needs billions of pounds of public and private investment to decarbonise the economy and upgrade our transport, energy and industrial infrastructure. The government says it wants to be a global leader in green finance. We will scrutinise its plans in the Clean Growth Strategy, look at the Bank of England’s proposals on disclosure of climate-related financial risk, and examine what will happen to UK climate investment if we leave the European Investment Bank.”
The inquiry will examine:
- the measures set out in the Clean Growth Strategy;
- whether the Green Investment Group, formerly the Green Investment Bank, is fulfilling commitments made by its new owners Macquarie;
- the UK’s future relationship with the European Investment Bank;
- how company reporting on climate liabilities and risks could be encouraged;
- whether the Government’s policies are likely to deliver the levels of investment needed to meet the UK’s national and international environmental commitments
Call for evidence
The committee is interested in how investment in longer-term sustainable development can be incentivised across the economy. It is inviting written submissions on some or all of the following points:
- How can the structure of incentives across the investment chain be changed to promote long-term sustainable development?
- Is the government’s level of ambition on green finance – and the mechanisms it sets out in the Clean Growth Strategy – sufficient to generate the investment needed for the UK to meet its environmental commitments?
- How will the Clean Growth Strategy feed into the work underway by the World Benchmarking Alliance on how an SDG index could be established?
- Is the Green Investment Group (GIG) fulfilling commitments made by Macquarie to ensure the Bank ‘remain[s] one of the leading investors in green infrastructure in the UK and Europe’?
- How will leaving the EU affect the UK’s ability to leverage investment into low-carbon and environmentally friendly projects in the UK?
- What options are there for the UK’s future relationship with the European Investment Bank? What would be the implications for green investment in the UK?
- Given the work being carried out by the EU’s High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance, where should the UK’s newly created Green Finance Taskforce concentrate its efforts?
- How effective are the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ (TCFD) recommendations likely to be at moving investment into ‘clean’ sectors?
- The Government has said it will ‘encourage’ publicly-listed companies to adopt the TFCD’s recommendations on climate risk disclosure. How could it do this? Is a voluntary approach sufficient?
The deadline for written submissions is 12pm on 3 January 2018. Submissions should be made using the form on the inquiry page on the EAC site.
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