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PRINZ researchers and associates are discussing the latest UK government budget: A budget for (green) growth? Unfortunately, not yet …

Sometimes the innovation needed to deploy green technology and achieve green growth isn’t about the technology itself. In Prinz, we recognise that non-technical innovations are essential to green growth, and that qualitative research and case studies are critical to understanding the nature and extent of these innovations.

What are low-carbon jobs and where are they emerging? What skills are needed to fill these roles and are they already present in the labour force in the right locations?

Britain faces crises in energy and productivity, both of which have been crushing people’s living standards. However, neither is being addressed by the two leadership candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.

Decarbonising industry is a vital challenge in achieving net zero; a challenge that requires extensive innovation, and sometimes radical, transformation, often in processes and on sites that have seen only incremental improvements in productivity over decades.

Emerging PRINZ research shows that clean technologies are more risky and that the great recession has made R&D investors more risk averse. This led to a great compression: i.e. returns on R&D projects are less dispersed because investors are less interested in high risk high potential reward projects.

To address the climate change emergency we need further improvements in so called clean technologies. The cost and convenience of clean options has to come down via innovation. That’s why many governments are targeting public R&D subsidies on clean technologies.