Carbon Trust and Siemens offer £550 million green finance

The Carbon Trust and Siemens have launched a joint partnership to provide £550 million to help UK businesses invest in low carbon technology over the next three years, the organisations announced on Friday. Siemens Financial Services will provide the finance and manage funding allocation while the Carbon Trust will offer its expertise in energy efficient technologies to assess the carbon energy and cost savings of any application. The new low carbon finance scheme is a first in the UK and will be open to all businesses from 4 April 2011. James Gearey, CEO of Siemens Financial said “ hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emission reduction that has been delivered through Siemens technology”. “A missing ingredient at present is access to affordable finance to enable business to make green investments. This new major finance facility will improve business competitiveness, cut carbon and boost green growth,” said Tom Delay, chief executive of The Carbon Trust. The initiative comes as Chris Huhne, energy and climate change secretary, set out the government’s plans on Friday for the move away from a dependence on fossil fuels. Huhne said the UK must act to shift its oil dependency to greener technologies to ensure a more stable, efficient low carbon economy.