UK government

Subscribe to UK government via RSS

The roadmap introduces sustainability disclosure requirements for UK companies and reveals further developments in relation to a UK Green Taxonomy.

By David Berman, Paul A. Davies, Nicola Higgs, Michael D. Green, Anne Mainwaring, and James Bee

On 18 October 2021, the UK government released a report titled “Greening Finance: Roadmap to Sustainable Investing” (the Roadmap), which is intended to encourage UK businesses and investors to have regard to climate and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in their decision-making processes. The Roadmap follows the government’s 2019 Green Finance Strategy, which set out a suite of policies to assist in aligning UK financial flows with a low-carbon planet.

The government states that it views the task of “greening the financial system”[1] as composed of three fundamental phases. The Roadmap addresses the first phase: informing investors and consumers and addressing the information gap in relation to environmental and sustainability  issues between corporates and investors.[2] Notably, the Roadmap also introduces sustainability disclosure requirements (SDR) for UK companies and reveals further developments in relation to the UK Green Taxonomy (Taxonomy). In addition, the Roadmap identifies proposed timeframes for further developments on each of these topics.

Strategy positions UK as a world leader in the hydrogen space, supporting 9,000 plus jobs and unlocking £4 billion in investment by 2030.

By Paul Davies, John-Patrick Sweny, and James Bee

On 17 August 2021, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published the UK’s first Hydrogen Strategy (the Strategy). The Strategy sets out the government’s roadmap for achieving its ambition of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, as identified in the Ten Point Industrial Revolution Plan released in November 2020, with government projections indicating that 20-35% of the UK’s energy consumption could be hydrogen-based by 2050.

Forecasts suggest that by 2030, hydrogen could play an important role in decarbonising certain highly polluting industries that are unsuitable for electrification, such as chemicals, industrial furnaces, and long-distance or heavy-duty transport, as well as replace natural gas in powering around three million homes a year. The Strategy clarifies the government’s view that developing the UK hydrogen sector will achieve the twin goals of reducing the UK’s carbon footprint in line with the UK’s net zero commitments, whilst stimulating significant job creation and economic growth in the industrial sector.