UK green spending worst of major European nations

Despite the country’s claims to be a ‘world leader’ in green energy and transport, figures show UK green spending bottom of the table of the five biggest Western European economies, behind France, Germany, Spain and Italy. The analysis was based on the IEA’s Government Energy Spending Tracker, which looked at capital spending between 2020 and 2023.

Greenpeace found that Italy spent over three and a half times as much as the UK on low carbon and energy efficient transport, a total of $47.8bn compared to the UK’s $13.1bn, with Germany spending almost 3 times as much ($38.1bn). France, a country with a nearly identical population size as the UK, spent almost twice as much on green spending as a whole per capita ($952.40) compared to the UK ($494.43), which also came bottom of the list when it came to fuels and technology innovation. 

“It’s clear that despite the government’s bluster, we are utterly failing on the world stage when it comes to green investment,” said Greenpeace UK climate campaigner, Georgia Whitaker. “Not only are the US and China leaving us in the dust in the race on green technology, we’re also doing terribly compared to our European neighbours.