Government to encourage electric products to be manufactured at home

The UK government will spend £80m supporting the manufacturing of new electric technologies within the UK. 

According to the government, the UK is a ‘world leader’ in developing electric innovation. However, these products are usually manufactured abroad.

To help tackle the problem, the government has launched the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to accelerate the UK’s ability to deliver the next generation of electric vehicles, hybrid generation aircraft, smart grids, and consumer products.

The fund involves an £80m investment to support the development of supply chains in the UK in order to support the manufacturing of these technologies within the UK.

They hope the fund will provide investment opportunities for industries in the UK to move away from fossil fuels and new electric products.

The program will help businesses across numerous sectors to work together to capitalise on the UK’s strengths in this new technology.

According to the government, electrical manufacturing is expected to create £5bn of new business by 2025 and up to £80bn by 2050.

Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation has set aside £30m from the fund to invest in a series of ‘flagship’ regional centres to develop prototypes and scale-up power electronics, machines, and drive technologies.

This funding will support between two and four regional centres which will be led by one organisation.

The winning organisation will then be expected to raise a further £82m in industry investment to maintain the centres for ten years.

In related news, in June this year, innovate UK, joined forces with ENGIE to discover and fund innovative projects that can speed up the development of solutions to decarbonise, digitise and decentralise energy and help achieve a sustainable energy transition.

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