Consultation: the UK’s Market for Low Carbon Industrial Products
Carbon Balance Initiative welcomes the opportunity to respond to the UK Government’s technical consultation on the policy framework for growing the market for low-carbon industrial products. We recognise the urgent need to create a durable low-carbon industrial base in the UK, both to secure the future of British industry and to maintain its export competitiveness in an increasingly decarbonised global economy.
Our recommendations include mandatory reporting, green procurement, and product standards to create long-term, predictable demand growth for British low-carbon materials. Taken together, we argue these measures can support competitiveness, innovation, and the UK’s pathway to net zero.
Our recommendations included:
A phased but binding transition to mandatory embodied emissions reporting in industrial products by 2029. Voluntary measures alone are insufficient to achieve the scale of industrial decarbonisation required to meet the UK’s carbon budgets, or to provide the certainty and investment confidence that UK industry needs.
Integration of green procurement guidance into the Government Buying Standards, accompanied by a clear timeline for making these standards mandatory within this parliamentary term. We propose a twin-track framework for expanding low-carbon product policies: a fast track for sectors ready for immediate implementation, and a development track for high-emission but complex sectors that require further data collection.
In the longer term, the Government should adopt mandates or quotas for near-zero-emission materials to create predictable demand growth and accelerate industrial transformation. To overcome weak market and policy signals that create a first-mover disadvantage for firms investing in cleaner production, these measures should be complemented by upstream regulatory tools, such as a Carbon Takeback Obligation (CTBO), to simplify accounting and strengthen demand for low-carbon materials across the value chain.
We endorse the use of ResponsibleSteel Decarbonisation Progress Levels (DPLs) and the Low Emission Steel Standard (LESS) for steel classification, and the Universal Classification and GCCA Global Ratings for concrete. This approach would enable integrated ecolabelling systems linked to embodied carbon data and align UK reporting with EU and international standards - reducing administrative burdens and protecting UK export access to low-carbon markets