Huge investment has een pledged for a green transition but will the private sector get on board?
High tech projects like the Clydebank energy centre, taking heat from the Clyde, could be rolled out if enough private investment is available
The Clyde is a source of affection and sometimes inspiration for Glasgow citizens, but rarely a source of warmth. That's changing. A couple of miles from the COP26 summit, the Innovation District created around Strathclyde University features plans to replace gas heating with the warmth that can be drawn from the river, even on a cold day.
Clearly, that kind of moola is not going to come from council tax. Grants from Holyrood won't be enough. This is one of many projects where the challenge of climate change can only be met by unlocking private money. And lots of it. Some 450 financial institutions across 45 countries are signed up to making those funds available for the transition; asset managers, banks, pension funds are in there, including money they have already committed to backing companies with new products and technology, and building renewable power capacity, as well as much more investment required in the future.
"This can't be met from government budgets by themselves or from international financial institutions like the AIIB or World Bank," he says. "It requires the crowding in of private capital at a very large scale. Sian Sutherland is a London entrepreneur who set up A Plastic Planet, "to ignite and inspire the world to turn off the plastic tap". Leading one of the many pressure groups attending the COP, she told me of its campaign to highlight the 70% of fabrics in the world's clothing that are made from oil-based synthetic yarn.
"It's in my own executive remuneration, so it flows from the executive board all the way down through the organisation." As Britain's biggest business lender, NatWest is taking the message to 2 million customers, with both sticks and carrots: "We worked out our targets for the four main sectors: agricultural, automotive, oil and gas, and our mortgage book, and we're going through our book sector by sector, and saying: who has the right transition plans, who needs help, how can we measure it?""We set up a great partnership with Microsoft to help businesses measure.
"We want to reduce the amount of fresh cement produced. We want to use a lot of mineral by-products, like demolition waste, to make the product sustainable. Recycling will be a big part of our future, where we can make old buildings into new ones.
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