Missing the boat?

According to the company – which provides incubation services to young cleantech businesses, funded by The Carbon Trust – Europe has slipped from first to third place in the investment league over the last two years. Incubator manager Dave Raval said: “In just two years, the continent’s level of VC funding (£79million) for low carbon technologies has been overtaken by the US (£444m) and China (£110m).” TTP has issued a call to arms to British and European VCs to invest now in innovative green projects, claiming the lack of early stage investment is putting British entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. Failure to invest, it suggests, risks the UK becoming the last port of call for emerging technologies in just five years. Raval cites a number of reasons for the slow down in investment, including management teams not having done it before, long development times with large cash requirements and a propensity for European investments to be smaller versus the US and China. “If Britain is to regain a green spend lead position, then all these issues must be addressed and support such as the Carbon Trust Incubation Programme, must be expanded rapidly to offer UK businesses the opportunity to meet the transatlantic competition.”