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06
June
2024
|
18:51
Europe/London

A Very British industrial policy: Green finance and the City-Bank-Treasury control of Net Zero

James Jackson has published an article in Geoforum which provides insights to the development of green finance in the UK and highlights how green finance has become British industrial strategy since 2017 and important to the UKÇà¹ÏÊÓƵ™s Net Zero transition.

A glass jar filled with coins and a plant

In 2017, the UKÇà¹ÏÊÓƵ™s Industrial Strategy was thought to have marked an unconventional moment in British politics, as the state began to explicitly Çà¹ÏÊÓƵ˜pick the winnersÇà¹ÏÊÓƵ™ necessary to both grow and decarbonise the economy. 

This article demonstrates that a more conventional view of this moment can be found in the pages of the Green Finance Strategies where, contrary to the assumption that a green transformation requires developing domestic capacity in emergent technologies, the UK has instead chosen to be the financier of them. 

It draws on a novel dataset to find another instance of Çà¹ÏÊÓƵ˜Treasury ControlÇà¹ÏÊÓƵ™, in which large scale investments in low carbon sectors was eschewed to instead 'green' the financial expertise located in the City of London, thereby making green finance British industrial policy. 

Instead of any industrial transformation of the UK political economy, the pursuit of green finance belies the fact that any such transition, and by extension Net Zero, is shaped by the City-Bank-Treasury nexus' desire to preserve the prevailing economic model with as few adjustments as possible.

You can read the full article .