I recently wrote an article for East Anglia in Business magazine about how the skills gap is a huge issue in our move to a low and de-carbon economy (and let’s be honest, the latter is what we must be doing). Speaking to businesses around the county and region through my work with Anglia Ruskin University, it shocks me how little knowledge there is within SMEs about how they can be part of this Greentech revolution. Central and regional government talk about how this will be the future of business, and how the UK will be a Greentech leader, and yet the amount of funding going into it is in the tens of millions of pounds. It needs to be far more, and funnelled through training opportunities, innovation support and direct grants to enable business to move from high, to low or no carbon (for instance supporting small independent fuel retailers to transition to being EV charging hubs, or gas heating companies to installing and maintaining heat pumps). There is lots we can do, but its clear to me we need to do it faster and in a more joined up, and accessible (to SMEs) manner.
