OnlineFirst - "Repositioning climate finance" by Sophie Webber and Gareth Bryant:

#climateinvestment #climateeconomy #ESG #derisking #greenindustrialpolicy

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X261428260

"Most importantly, while the UK’s recent progress on clean power is undoubtedly impressive, a truly transformative strategy to achieve net zero cannot stop at the power sector. A large share of the UK’s emissions come from transport and housing (30 per cent and 21 per cent respectively in 2024), so net zero must ultimately be about transforming how we move, build and live. A strong clean power grid provides a crucial foundation, yet it is only the first layer. It remains unclear how other carbon-intensive parts of the UK’s economy, including health, defence and heavy industry, will meaningfully decarbonise beyond plugging into a greener grid.

This is where the UK’s public finance institutions such the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund can play a crucial role if they are aligned with a clear mission-oriented framework. Deployed strategically and resourced sufficiently, they could accelerate net zero across the whole economy rather than through isolated initiatives in the energy sector.

Offshore wind can and should be a role model for a new approach to delivering on missions. But to deliver on this potential, the government must get public-private partnerships right and follow through on its promise to generate public value. And it must apply this approach not just to clean power, but to an intersectoral approach that decarbonises and creates opportunities across all parts of the economy."

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/02/clean-energy-reforms-must-also-improve-peoples-lives

#UK #CleanEnergy #Wind #Renewables #GreenTransition #GreenIndustrialPolicy

"Governments worldwide face mounting pressure to simultaneously expand domestic clean energy industries and accelerate decarbonisation. Recent policies combine subsidies for clean technology with various protectionist measures, including domestic content requirements and tariffs on imports. Yet, evidence from the solar sector suggests tariffs undermine rather than support climate objectives.

Since 2012, the US has imposed substantial tariffs on solar panels imported from China. The EU erected related trade barriers on solar panels before lifting them in 2018. More recently, the US and EU have imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. These actions illustrate a policy tension: even as governments commit to rapid decarbonisation, protectionist measures raise the cost of deploying the clean technologies needed to achieve climate goals. Recent research helps illuminate this conflict and points toward better policy approaches."

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/beyond-tariffs-better-approach-green-industrial-policy

#USA #China #GreenTransition #GreenIndustrialPolicy #Tariffs #TradeWar #Protectionism #BigOil #Decarbonization #FossilFuels

"In the age of ecological breakdown, there is a growing need for ‘green’ industrial policy. However, existing frameworks for green industrial policy fail to address unsustainable growth in energy and resource use in high-income economies. In this sense, they are not adequate to achieve core ecological objectives. This paper fills a gap in the literature by offering a progressive framework for green industrial policy that combines traditional green industrial policy perspectives with insights from ecological economics and literature on post-growth and degrowth. The framework has three key pillars: (1) scale down ecologically harmful industries and sectors to directly reduce energy and resource use; (2) organise production more around public benefit, with greater democratic control and guidance over investment and production; and (3) work towards global ecological justice and enable greater ‘ecological policy space’ for the global South to pursue industrial development. The paper argues that this progressive approach to green industrial policy is necessary due to the scale and urgency of the ecological crisis. The framework shows how productive capacity can be liberated and redirected towards more socially and environmentally beneficial ends, while also democratising control over the economy."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2025.2506655#abstract

#IndustrialPolicy #PoliticalEcology #PoliticalEconomy #GreenIndustrialPolicy #Degrowth