>>[Professor Paul Ekins] In order for the
economy to go in a greener direction towards a green economy, it requires very committed
government action. Green economies don't happen by themselves. Indeed, the fact that we're
not in a green economy is largely the result of unguided, undirected market forces. So
government needs to take a strong lead. Markets are very important, and a major part of our
report is how market forces can be harnessed to move towards a greener economy.
>>[Will McDowall] I think it's been a really important time to do work of this kind, because
the green economy is something that is clearly important, and our work shows that. And yet,
at a time when the economy is fragile, people tend to move focus to shorter term issues,
and that's fine, but actually we need to think about the long term, even when we're in difficult
economic times. And in fact, it's often a good time when interest rates are low to think
about how to channel investment towards a green economy. And in fact, as our report
shows, there are opportunities to stimulate and strengthen the recovery through green
economy policy. >>[Will McDowall] One of the things that surprised
me was some work that we did looking at invention and innovation in green technologies in specific
industries. And slightly alarmingly, we found that in the automotive sector and in the aerospace
sector, both very important sectors economically for the UK, we had lower rates of green innovation
than many of our major competitors. So that I think is a warning sign for the UK that,
as the world moves in a greener direction, we need to up our game in these key sectors
and ensure that they're moving in a green direction too.
>>[Professor Francesca Medda] The UK is at the forefront of certain very interesting
innovations, particularly the production of energy, but also infrastructure like transport.
This fantastic, new application -- also financial application -- that we have here in the UK,
which at this moment are sometimes just a pilot, just a niche, can be a great way to
set up beyond the limit of the country. >>[Professor Ekins] There are really two main
points to put across. The first is that we're not talking about a few niches in the economy
that you might be able to label green. We're talking about a whole new direction for the
economy that involves all sectors becoming greener. And I think the three core concepts
that we developed in our work, thinking about this as to how we defined 'greener', was that
they would lead to or make more likely a stable climate, so we're talking about a low carbon
economy, a high environmental quality, so we're talking about low levels of pollution,
and resource security, so increasing resource productivity and less reliance on raw materials,
the supply of which might become insecure in the future.
>>[Professor Medda] From our perspective, the biggest policy recommendation is to create
a diversified portfolio of supporting business from the point of view that we are saying
of creating support for the bottom half, so any kind of start up system, smart city and
so on, they are related to green economy, but also larger policy initiatives. Consider
for example security and safety for energy, flood defence, all these things are national,
they have to be considered at a national level. >>[Professor Ekins] So what I would like to
see as a result of this report is greater political commitment, because of an understanding
of the benefits of a green economy, greater political commitment to go in that direction
which is reflected particularly in the manifestos of the political parties at the next election.
And that's always been something of a yardstick by which we were going to judge the success
or otherwise of this report: the extent to which we could actually look at the manifestos
of the political parties and say well, hopefully we've contributed something towards that.