The opening speech from the UK Green Business Awards 2025
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the UK Green Business Awards 2025!
More environmentally friendly than Ed Miliband's heat pump,
More eagerly anticipated than President Trump's next tariff u-turn,
Promising more green on green action than a Green Party leadership race,
The UK Green Business Awards are the sustainable economy's most prestigious awards!
These awards are now so coveted, you're all missing the finale of Race Across the World just to be here. Please, no spoilers.
Tonight, we're proud to bring together 100s of businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors who are striving every day to build a net zero and nature positive economy.
That net zero economy grew 10 per cent last year to over £83bn, employs almost a million people, and is one of the UK's premier growth engines. Not bad for a bunch of tree-huggers.
Your success is evident here this evening.
This year's awards have a record number of entries, finalists, and categories, that speak to the remarkable breadth and vibrancy of the green economy.
Apologies if the ceremony is now almost as long as the Oscars, but there are so many brilliant projects and companies that deserve recognition.
From cutting edge start-ups and social enterprises to corporate giants and global investors, these awards showcase the inspiring organisations that are proving the net zero economy's critics wrong.
You know the ones - the MPs and columnists who were wrong about the financial crash, wrong about austerity, and are now wrong about climate change.
The people who ignore how global clean energy investment will reach a record $2.2tr this year.
How a quarter of cars sold globally are now EVs.
How governments around the world - including ours - remain committed to the net zero transition.
Yet despite this progress, the past 12 months have been some of the toughest in recent memory for those working to tackle the climate crisis.
The US President is the world's most famous climate denier.
America is quitting the Paris Agreement for a second time.
And it's a close run thing whether it's the wildfires or the US military that poses the biggest threat to Los Angeles.
The only industry growing under Trump are the podcasts debating the precise definition of the word fascism.
On this side of the Atlantic, people who really should know better look at Trump's biosphere-trashing playbook and decide they want to cosy up to the moral void.
Misinformation about the cost of decarbonisation is now everywhere.
Each day sees fresh attacks trying to blame net zero in general and Ed Miliband in particular for pretty much everything.
In the space of a few months, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have demolished the political consensus on the importance of climate action.
The next election will now be a de facto referendum on the UK's net zero targets.
Can you imagine? A referendum on a topic of huge importance where no-one has thought through the implications? Didn't we try that once already?
These are not serious people.
And yet, based on current polling the bunch of climate-denying chancers who gave us a failed Brexit project and then praised Liz Truss for delivering the best Conservative Budget since the 1980s could form the next government.
Meanwhile, last week brought news concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide passed 430 parts per million for the first time in 15 million years.
Just think on that for a second.
When man first walked on the moon, CO2 concentrations were 325 parts per million.
In 2001, they reached 369 parts per million.
Now it is 430 parts per million and emissions are still rising.
We're living in a climate that is unprecedented in human history, leading to ever more intense storms and unreliable harvests.
And it will get worse.
Some mornings you check the news and it all fills a bit 1930s-y, just this time there's also a collapsing biosphere to contend with.
I've spoken to many in this room and across the green economy about the daunting nature of this current moment.
There is a palpable sense of frustration - and at times even despondency - at the inability of political and business leaders to get a grip on the scale of the threat.
To recognise how the food, energy, and economic security challenges that dominate geopolitics are rooted in destructive fossil fuel reliance and escalating climate impacts.
And yet, there is comfort to be found in these conversations, in this community.
Many of you are competitors, but there is a shared mission here, and there is strength in that solidarity.
For what it is worth, when writing about these borderline existential challenges every day three truths help me keep despair at bay.
Firstly, we've been at this a long time.
This is the 15th year we've hosted an awards for the green economy.
This autumn, BusinessGreen will mark its 18th birthday.
In that time, the audience has grown beyond expectations and the sector has reached a level of maturity that far surpasses anything Elon Musk can muster.
I was lucky enough to see a recent performance of the play Kyoto and was reminded how people have been making the case for a sustainable economy for decades.
Leaders like the late, great John Prescott and his colleagues at that Kyoto Summit helped lay the foundations for the progress being made today.
We owe it to them to build on their work and create our own legacy.
The second truth is no one ever said this would be easy.
Decarbonising an industrialised economy inside 30 years was always a task of gargantuan proportions.
One of our esteemed judges, Lucy Shea, recently described climate action as "parenting the future".
Like parenting, it is an experience that is joyous and life-affirming, as well as utterly exhausting and at times downright miserable.
There were always going to be setbacks, but what else are you going to do? Give up?
Thirdly, and most importantly, we are winning.
Look around you at the amazing companies in this room - and those you had to beat to become a finalist.
Back in 2010 at the first edition of these awards, the judges were impressed if companies had recycling bins in the office.
Now the green economy is dominated by multi-billion dollar industries delivering technologies that prove a clean, healthy, and prosperous economy is possible.
Governments around the world are still committed to net zero.
Today's Spending Review was far from perfect, but with funding for public transport, energy efficiency, and nuclear, it underscored how Ministers are serious about climate action, despite constant media attacks.
Global emissions may still be rising, but the link between economic growth and emissions has been severed.
Clean technologies are eating into fossil fuel demand and threatening to turn coal mines and LNG terminals into stranded assets.
UK emissions are now at their lowest level since 1872.
A peak in global emissions is coming.
Change is happening and the likes of Trump and Farage cannot stop it.
Physics does not care about their feelings.
The current sense of chaos has triggered a battle of ideas - but thankfully your ideas are better.
Your technologies are better.
You are in the business of better.
Who wouldn't want a car that is cheaper to run, an all-electric building that is more comfortable to work in, or a community with access to nature?
And that is why these awards are so much more than a party in a brewery.
They showcase what is possible - and what needs to be done.
Sadly, it's in the nature of awards that you can't all win.
As I say every year, if you miss out on an award this evening, please… be cool.
And remember you are doing work of historic importance.
You should be rightly proud of your achievements.
You should talk about your achievements.
And you should never apologise for them.
The main purpose of tonight, beyond the chance to celebrate with friends and colleagues, is to say thank you.
Thank you to all our finalists.
Thank you to our judges who read through hundreds of inspiring entries.
Thank you to the BusinessGreen team for the huge amount of work that goes into hosting these awards.
And a massive thank you to our sponsors: Aviva, Axis, Bute Energy, Chronos Sustainability, Ecotricity, Enfinium, EQUANS, Osborne Clarke, ScrewFix, Sustainable Ventures, and Viridor.
BusinessGreen's reporting and analysis is only possible through the support of those partners and subscribers who believe in our shared mission.
We can't thank you enough.
It's been a challenging 12 months, but this community is up for the challenge.
We know - as a previous incumbent of the White House put it - that "we are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it".
That's our place in history.
We know the goal and we know the means to reach it.
We know every quarter that passes is one per cent of the time left to build a net zero economy that is happier, healthier, and more prosperous for all.
We will continue to strive to get there - because it is a mission to make the world a safer and a better place.
There is no alternative.
I hope you enjoy this evening's dinner and our wonderful host, the comedian Ahir Shah.
And congratulations once again on being a finalist at the UK Green Business Awards 2025!
Thank you.
