Businesses in north of England ask ministers for help to hit net zero
Business leaders in the north of England have written to the prime minister, chancellor and energy secretary asking for help to reach net zero.
Big names including Drax, Siemens, Peel, Manchester airport, the CBI and all 11 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) in the north signed a letter urging the government to prioritise green growth in the north.
The letter called for a meeting to discuss investment that would close “regional disparities by creating hundreds of thousands of highly skilled new jobs and building healthy, resilient communities”.
The north already generated 50% of England’s renewable energy and was decarbonising 13% faster than the country as a whole, the group said.
The business leaders signing the open letter were ambitious to go even further, they added, arguing that the north of England could help the UK take advantage of the huge economic opportunity the global transition to net zero represents.
A report last year by the 11 LEPs in partnership with Nature North, Transport for the North and the N8 research group found that green investment in the north could unlock £6bn of prosperity. It identified areas that could be further developed, such as offshore wind capabilities in the North Sea and the Mersey Tidal Power project, as well as nature projects such as the Great Northern Forest, which will ultimately plant at least 50m trees across the north of England, and the Great North Bog, an ambitious peatland restoration initiative that will restore nearly 7,000 sq km of upland peat.
The business leaders welcomed a £20bn commitment to carbon capture, utilisation and storage outlined in the budget and in the Powering Up Britain policy paper released last week.
The paper, setting out how the government would
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