Innovation and Growth Team
An innovation and growth team was established on 17 September 2009 to review the construction Industry to ensure it was 'fit for purpose' for delivering a low carbon future. The Emerging Findings (PDF, 1.6 Mb) were published on 17 March 2010. The Final Report (PDF, 4.8 Mb) and the Executive Summary (PDF, 1.1 Mb) were published on 29th November 2010.
Background
The review has looked at the strengths of and opportunities for the UK construction industry in a low carbon economy and considered how the UK can be a world leader in this sector. This review has been led by Paul Morrell, the Chief Construction Adviser and been undertaken by a mix of industry experts and those with wider business experience.
The report highlights four themes that government and industry need to engage on to rise to the carbon challenge:
- The potential size of the market – meeting the UK’s commitment to reducing carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions will affect every aspect of the built environment. The scale of the necessary change is considerable but there is much that could be done now, particularly with the existing building stock.
- Opportunities for SMEs – transforming the built environment to low carbon could provide the industry with a 40 year programme of work and act as a springboard to growth for more than 200,000 small businesses in the sector.
- The wider green economy benefits – the green economy represents an area of substantial potential growth for the UK. Creating a low carbon construction industry would develop skills and expertise that would be of great value to other sectors.
Stimulating demand – there would be little point in developing the necessary capacity and skills if the demand for low carbon was not there. Government and industry need to work closely together to identify the best ways to stimulate the market for low carbon and energy efficiency measures.
For more information about the IGT contact: constructionigt@bis.gsi.gov.uk
Additional documents
There are a number of supporting documents which have been produced during the IGT process.
For full details of the methodology and assumptions used to estimate the proportion of total UK CO2 emissions that construction can influence please download the methodology (PDF, 97 Kb) .
The full report of the 2050 Group (PDF, 267 Kb) .
