Regional economies: The role of industrial strategy as a pathway to greener growth

The government’s ongoing development of an industrial strategy provides an opportune moment to lay the foundations for a stronger and more secure domestic economy. This means good growth that unlocks and harnesses the potential of the whole country, delivering good jobs, prosperity and clean industrial renewal.

This report makes the case that regions like the North should have a key role to play in the development of a green industrial strategy to ensure that it draws on place-based strengths, and has the potential to deliver opportunity and optimism to places that have suffered from past deindustrialisation, feeling economically and politically overlooked for too long.

Getting industrial strategy right in our regions will be key in helping to reach three crucial outcomes:

1. achieving net zero
2. driving economic growth
3. rebalancing the economy.

This report argues for a pathfinding approach to green industrial strategy focussed on the future and our places’ potential, while harnessing local strengths. It sets out five lessons that should be key to evolving green industrial strategy in the UK into a place-rooted one that drives regional growth, a just net zero transition and stronger national prosperity.