Last year the Square Mile’s leading financial institutions tripled their investments in low-carbon projects, per a new report from the Corporation of the City of London, to north of $2bn.
This is good news, albeit the number itself feels like it should be higher. It is, though, some $2bn more than anybody from Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil have stumped up, and that’s rather the point.
The energy transition requires investment in two things: transition (obviously) and new, greener, cheaper technologies.
The first we’re very good at: the so-called oil majors are turning even their own outsized profits in recent years into new, more energy-efficient ways of extracting ‘old’ fuels from the ground.
The second we’re slowly getting there. None of that happens without the world’s leading financial institutions; none of that happens without them having the balance sheet to do it.
With which we turn to the election, albeit not the circus we’re set to see in Clacton for the next five weeks. One policy we know Labour is pursuing is a tightening of the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas, extending the ‘one-off’ raid launched by the Conservatives after the pandemic.
There’s a pleasingly Starmer-ish tone to the policy: he is a man who prides himself on running things and running things well, so of course he’s going to have a tweak and a play with it to make sure it’s as efficient as it might be in hoovering up revenue from those who dare to keep the lights on.
But the policy itself is a crap one: deterring investment in the very fuels we need to power the transition to a lower carbon future.
Labour’s senior figures have made a concerted effort to get business onside.
They are unlikely to u-turn on the windfall tax. But they shouldn’t make a habit of the politics of envy.