According to new data released by consultancy firm Innovas on behalf of the UK Trade and Industry (UKTI) the UK’s low carbon market defied the recession during 2009, beating expectations and growing 4.3% during the year to $168.5 billion, CIG has learned.
The recently released figures also indicate that over 900,000 people are now employed by UK businesses providing environmental goods and services.
A further sign of the rapidly growing strength of the carbon market was that the carbon market finance sector enjoyed the fastest growing rate of 7.9%, closely followed by the wind energy sector, growing 6.5% and the solar energy market at 6%, CIG was told.
Low carbon goods exports were also driven by the weaker pound, with the UK’s solar industry alone seeing exports grow by about 25% to over $1.5 billion for the year.
Europe has seen significant growth in the solar energy sectors over the past twelve months with the top three countries by demand being Germany, Spain and Italy. Spain is also a major wind energy technology consumer and hopes to rely on renewable energy for 22% of its total energy usage by 2020, CIG believes.
