What to do about a thing like a Green Bank ?
March 22, 2010
So the UK Conservative party want to build a Green Investment Bank to consolidate all the funding functions currently held by bodies such as The Carbon Trust and the Marine Renewables Deployment Fund.
Fair enough, seems like a good idea. Use ISAs to fund it ? Again, no objections there.
Here’s what it needs to be successful;
A strong research department.
That’s it. Nothing else. Just a set of market savvy investment analysts to make sure that the technologies and projects that are being invested in are not complete trash. It won’t be able to afford the best brokers or indeed the best analysts, but then its aim is not to outperform the market. It would be good for the country if it did, home-grown profits count double in this game, but there is no shareholder imperative to work against (or indeed with) so fiduciary responsibility is replaced by electoral responsibility.
The analysts need to have cross-sectoral visibility so that they are not working against each other but apart from that nothing special needs to be in place, except some independent oversight to build confidence in the market that these are kosher companies with realistic chances of commercial success.
Of course if the worst happens and all its investments come to nought, that could be a lot of cash that the govt has to refund to the ISA holders, but presumably there will be some form of hedge against catastrophic loss.
We’ll have to wait and see what Labour’s equivalent looks like when the last pre-election budget is announced on Wednesday, but Reuters is reporting a £2bn investment fund with half from assets sales and half from private investment. I’m sure that there will be more detail than that, but if Alistair Darling’s announcement conforms to the leak, sorry briefing, then it really isn’t very imaginative. Its just another pot of cash with another set of criteria. £2bn isn’t enough to kick-start any major infrastructure projects (the super grid is estimated at around £30bn, the high speed rail at £30bn and each of the 8-12 new nuclear reactors is supposed to be around £5bn (very roughly)), so you have to ask where is this money aimed at ? We’ll find out on Wednesday I suppose.
