Government to spend £315m cutting industrial emissions

The government will spend £315m to help decarbonise industry and cut emissions.

The Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) will provide funding for businesses with high power use to cut their carbon emissions by investing in efficiency measures.

The first phase of the funding will be launched in Spring 2020 and will provide various businesses with around £30m, the second phase will then follow in 2021 with the rest of the money.

The government has said that they hope this investment will shrink industrial emissions by around 2 million tonnes between 2028 and 2032, which they claim is the equivalent to taking nearly 200,000 cars off the road every year.

According to the government, eight industrial sectors (cement, ceramics, chemicals, food and drink, glass, paper, iron and steel, and oil) currently emit around two-thirds of all industrial carbon emissions.

The government state that a number of businesses in various sectors are already taking steps to reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint.

For example, Nestle uses high-temperature heat pumps for heating and cooling during the chocolate manufacturing process and has successfully cut energy costs by nearly £150,000 every year.

Manufacturer Ibstock Bricks are using brick-building robots to help make repetitive manufacturing processes more efficient as a result they have halved emissions output for every brick produced.

The funding will be used to enable more businesses to take steps like this to increase their energy efficiency.

Business, Energy and Clean Growth Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said: ‘The UK is already cutting emissions faster than any other major economy and we’re the first to legislate to end our contribution to climate change entirely.’

‘Eliminating emissions from industry is key to achieving this, but doing so does not have to mean compromising our business success. That’s why we’re bolstering our investment in clean growth.’

‘Ensuring energy-intensive businesses are equipped with the latest low-emission technologies will not only help our transition to net-zero but will also ensure that these companies are more agile and competitive going forward, creating new skilled and well-paid jobs.’

Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth head of policy, has said in response to this report: ‘Too much of the UK’s emissions reductions since 1990 have been through industry moving overseas. We need to keep the industry in the UK and ensure it is clean and green.’

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