Insights Paper: The Role of a UK NIB in a Green Recovery

by | Dec 1, 2020

Last week the UK Government announced the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). It is a key next step in the Government’s Green Finance Strategy that launched last year – a strategy that also led to the establishment of the Green Finance Institute.

Through the use of guarantees, debt, equity, and hybrid products, the NIB will play a crucial role in mobilising much-needed private capital to deliver the Prime Minister’s Ten-Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, underpinning a long-term economic green recovery in the aftermath of Covid-19.

At the Green Finance Institute, a technical sectoral focus guides our work and we have identified housing, transport and nature as being sectors beyond clean energy that will be key for transitioning the UK to net zero, creating jobs and building back a resilient and healthy economy.

The NIB has the opportunity to finance innovations and infrastructure within these sectoral pathways that remain challenging for private sector investment at present by acting as a risk mitigation vehicle and co-creating new investable asset classes.

In the following Insights Paper, we share our initial guidance on the NIB’s potential focus for investment based on our work in these sectors identifying barriers and co-designing both innovative financial mechanisms and the enabling policy, fiscal, regulatory, data and analytics tools.

The Insights Paper also draws on our recent report, the State of Green Banks 2020, with the Rocky Mountain Institute and the National Resources Defense Council.

The Paper can be accessed by clicking the link below:

Green Finance Institute Insights Paper: The Role of a UK National Infrastructure Bank in a Green Recovery