As part of its COVID-19 economic response, the UK government has announced a National Infrastructure plan, which aims at developing national infrastructure to enable the country reaching its carbon neutrality goal. Key measures include:
• Significant investment in offshore wind and into modern ports and manufacturing infrastructure to expand the share of energy generation from
renewables;
• Providing up to £525 million to bring forward large-scale nuclear and invest in the development of advanced nuclear technologies;
• £1 billion to support the establishment of carbon capture and storage in four industrial clusters;
• Investing in hydrogen to scale up the UK’s capacity to produce both ‘blue’ and ‘green’ hydrogen;
• Investing £1.3 billion in charging infrastructure to accelerate the mass adoption of electric vehicles ahead of ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030;
• Enabling heat decarbonisation by supporting the roll-out of existing technologies like heat pumps and development of emerging technologies like
hydrogen;
• Funding to help England to meet its share of the Climate Change Committee’s recommendations to plant 30,000 hectares of trees a year in the UK; and
• Investing £5.2 billion by 2027 to better protect 336,000 properties and boost resilience of communities to the increased risk of flooding and coastal erosion resulting from climate change.