Using UK Green Building Experience in Astana, Kazakhstan
Our experience is that the UK’s green economy is enhancing both our international competitiveness and boosting our export prospects.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Minister Kapparov,
It is my great pleasure to be here today to help open this workshop on green building standards. I would like to thank the organisers: the Ministry of Environment and Water resources; the Scientific research and Education Centre ‘Green Academy’; the Urban constructors union; and CBRE for arranging this important event. Our experience is that the UK’s green economy is enhancing both our international competitiveness and boosting our export prospects. We now account for some 3.7 % of the global Low Carbon Environmental Goods and Services market, which is valued at £3.4trillion.
Our green goods and services market amounted to some £128bn in 2013. While the rest of the British economy remained virtually flat, sales in green markets grew by almost £6bn.
The group of industries classified as providing green goods and services employed just under 940,000 people. So we are talking here about an industry which is worth a lot of money and employs alot of people. It therefore seems obvious to me why any country would want to expand its involvement in this sector.
The UK has a strong competitive edge in building modern and environmentally friendly cities, through its world-class expertise in architecture, consultancy, design, IT and engineering. The green construction market therefore offers a number of export opportunities for British firms and companies.
The UK government has also introduced the Green Deal Scheme to support energy efficient upgrades to individual households. The Green Deal is the Government’s attempt to address energy inefficiency and enable homeowners to make significant savings on their energy bills.
We hope that UK expertise, international standards, and our research and training programmes will provide a platform for leading companies, British and Kazakh, to collaborate on green products, technologies and buildings. I wish you well over the course of the next three days. Rakhmet.
You can find other images of this workshop on Flickr