Financing the Transition: A strategy to deliver carbon targets

When the UK Government published its Low Carbon Transition Plan amid the most severe economic downturn in decades, many of us were encouraged to see that initiatives to tackle climate change and decarbonise our economy were being put forward as part of the solution to our economic troubles.

Yet at the same time, following months of constraints in capital availability, we were hearing that renewable energy projects were experiencing difficulties in raising finance, leading to project delays and failures. This raised the question: given the scale and urgency of the low carbon transformation, how will it be financed? And perhaps more importantly, given the need to raise funds on an unprecedented scale, what are the key policy measures that could mobilise the private sector to commit to financing the low carbon transition?