The Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) has attacked yesterday’s emergency budget as a missed opportunity to provide green industry with a vital boost.

 

The EIC is the lead trade association for the UK’s environmental technology and services industry, with over 270 Member Companies. EIC represents the main environmental sectors including climate change, water, air, contaminated land, waste, transport.

 

Danny Stevens, Policy Director at the EIC said:

 

“In the run up to yesterday’s budget the UK’s environmental industry was optimistic that the Government would today lay the foundation for low carbon and sustainable economic growth, driving investment in new high growth green businesses, helping to create new jobs and putting the UK at the forefront of a £3tr global market place for environmental goods and services. Sadly, this afternoon it is left ruing a missed opportunity.

 

“Reductions in public spending and the urgency with which the Government has committed to tackling the budget deficit severely restricted the tools the Treasury had at its disposal to drive investment in green industries. Even so, today the Chancellor sidestepped the most effective tool he has – using the tax regime to put an effective price on pollution. By failing to translate environmental damage into immediate price signals today’s Budget simply reinforces the huge market failure that continues to allow the exploitation of our environment free of charge – cost of pollution is borne by the British public, not by the polluter.

 

“Putting a fair and predictable price on environmental damage means developing market mechanisms that price in the true environmental costs of doing business. This could have been achieved at a low cost to the Treasury through innovative funding mechanisms such as Tax Increment Financing; mobilising private sector investment through, inter alia, an Environmental Investment Institution; and targeted fiscal and monetary incentives for green technologies.”

 

Click here for details of the upcoming Holyrood magazine Environmental and Clean Technologies conference being held in Edinburgh on Tuesday 26 October.