Challenging a Green Recovery through the “Green Industrial Revolution” in the UK

Abstract

The UK has been fighting against the triple impact: climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit, all of which are shaking the country’s socieconomic fabric. As a means of coping with and recovering from these impacts, Prime Minister Johnson has set the idea of green recovery at the heart of national policy, and in his ‘Ten Point Plans’, published in November 2020, set out a strategy for social and economic recovery through a “Green Industrial Revolution”.

In recent years, the UK has made a series of radical moves in this area, including making renewable energy (especially offshore wind power) the main source of electric power (47% of the power mix), bringing forward the ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles to 2030, and legislating for a net zero greenhouse gas emissions target for 2050.

This paper looks at the UK’s climate change policy since the Climate Change Act, and examines how the Green Industrial Revolution is aiming for a socio economic recovery by 1) looking at how green recovery is interpreted and how it is being translated into policy, and 2) identifying the roles of three actors that put government strategy into practice on the ground: local governments, businesses, and the civil society organisations. In conclusion, the paper points out while the government succeeds in presenting a clear vision of economic recovery through the embodiment of climate change measures and the development of related industries, a series of challenges still remains, such as addressing the broader social and political dimensions of decarbonisation in future policies and strategies, and working with local authorities and civil society organisations in policy implementation.