Bob Wigley says green funding ‘can be much better spent‘: “His report proposes the abolition of nine low-carbon quangos and the creation of a green investment bank to help promote financing for renewable energy …
His ideas include changing stamp duty so that if people buy a house that’s suitable for a solar panel on the roof but don’t install one within six months, they’d pay an extra 1pc of tax.
Similarly, he would put carrots and sticks into the business-rate system, levying penalties for companies deemed not to be energy-efficient and providing discounts if they are.
“There are about 7m homes in the UK that are suitable for photovoltaic panels,” he says. “If you adopted a scheme like the one I’m thinking about you could probably have all those homes fitted with panels within two parliaments.”
His proposed green investment bank would be 49pc government-owned, with the rest held by banks, insurers, private equity houses and infrastructure funds. It would fund green investment alongside the private sector and provide long-term certainty by offering to buy completed infrastructure projects at a fixed return.
Worth reading whole article.
