The Carbon Trust invests additional £18m into cleantech sector

20 October 2009

The Carbon Trust is to invest up to £18m in additional Department of Energy and Climate Change funding into the UK clean energy sector.

The £18m will be invested by Carbon Trust Investments over the next 12 to 18 months, and represents more than a quarter of the UK’s entire venture capital clean energy investment of £66.5m last year. Investment will focus on companies that offer prospects of a strong commercial return and where the UK has potential to become a global leader.

In offshore wind and wave technologies, Carbon Trust analysis has found that the UK could generate up to £70bn for the economy and almost 250,000 jobs by 2050.

Ed Miliband, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said, ‘This cash injection will help safeguard the new generation of promising renewable technologies. Supporting green start-up companies with this capital means innovative ideas for low carbon energy will be able to make it out of the lab and into the future energy mix.’

Carbon Trust Investments is the venture capital investment subsidiary of the Carbon Trust, which recently backed Plaxica, an Imperial College spin-out developing next generation biopolymers, and smart-grid management technology provider RLtec.

Tom Delay, chief executive at the Carbon Trust, said, ‘The UK is a real hot-bed of cleantech innovation and the sector has the potential to create significant economic value for Britain but it needs urgent support. In the current environment, even the most promising companies are finding it hard to attract the funding needed to turn bright ideas into commercial success stories. With this new funding boost, we are confident that the tide will now begin to turn.’

The Carbon Trust is an independent body set up in 2001 by the UK Government to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisations to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies.

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Tags: policy

This story was published on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Europe, energy efficiency, policy. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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