Introduction
The UK is committed to moving to a greener economy. As part of this, in 2012 the government established the UK Green Investment Bank plc (GIB) to help address a lack of private investment in the green economy needed to meet the UK’s climate change obligations. GIB was designed to provide public money to, and encourage private investment in, green infrastructure projects such as windfarms and waste and bioenergy projects. The government set up GIB as a public company, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—now the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (the Department)—as the sole shareholder. In June 2015, the government decided that it could not afford further public investment in GIB, and announced it was considering a sale and other means of bringing private capital into GIB. In March 2016, it launched a process to sell GIB. UK Government Investments (UKGI) ran the sale process. Government sold GIB in August 2017 to a consortium led by the Australian banking group, Macquarie, for £1.6 billion.
14 March 2018