Yesterday I had the privilege of joining a panel at a Demos event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool: “Opportunity Knocks: How can government and business nurture a green tech revolution?”. I shared the platform with Luciana Berger MP, Arne de Kock Senior Commercial Manager at Shell UK (there representing Shell Springboard) and John Lewis of 2D Heat.

It was a pretty lively discussion, and here’s a precis of my contribution, firstly from Government:

1. Vision: We need a compelling, dramatic, positive and engaging vision of the low carbon future, economy and country we are trying to create. It needs to be ‘sizzling’ obviously.
2. Regulation: Not the sexiest idea tucked into the suspender of change, but hey, Feed in Tariffs, Low Carbon Enterprise Zones, and the use of low interest loans by the Carbon Trust have helped drive innovation such as retrofitting of LED lighting (something we’re doing here at Futerra).
3. Reskilling: Why don’t we take the presumably quite technically minded 3000 staff to be laid off by BAE Systems and retrain them? We could use their expertise in developing clever ways of blowing things and people up and aim it in a slightly more constructive direction. Likewise for all those experienced offshore engineers, lets get them building wind turbines, wave and tidal power stations rather than oil and gas platforms…
4. Investment: Show. Me. The. Money. Or ‘cold folding’ as we call it in Norfolk, we need to invest some serious money, not cut the funding of crucial emerging technologies such as wave and tidal power. There is a serious risk of massive opportunity cost to the UK economy if we fail to develop, capitalise and export these technologies.
5. Prioritise: We have to do this. Let’s be decisive and put it at the heart of Government strategy. Let’s get the Treasury onboard and let’s kickstart a revolution…Government’s always love those…