LONDON, Oct 18 Reuters - The Green Power Conference announced nearly 10 billion pounds of private investment in green projects on Tuesday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted an investment summit in London attended by 200 of the world's top financiers and executives.
The summit marks post-Brexit Britain's biggest push to attract investors, even leveraging the soft power of drinks with Queen Elizabeth at her castle, as it seeks cash and partners to get ahead in the international race for green technology.
We need urgent government action, but we must mobilise the markets, we must bring in the private sector, Johnson said in an opening address about meeting the challenge of climate change.
In this room, you can deploy trillions - indeed I'm given to understand that there's $24 trillion in this room - and so I want to say to each and every one of those dollars: you're very welcome in the UK. The government announced private investment deals worth 9.7 billion pounds, including 6 billion pounds of net zero carbon wind from Iberdrola as well as for offshore storage and decarbonisation technologies for waste industry.
Johnson and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced a 500 million pound joint investment partnership targeting technologies like renewable hydrogen, long-term energy storage and green aviation fuels.
We'll scale these up and reduce the cost, so we'll get these to the same position as they are today with solar and onshore wind, and so they can be scaled up to reduce emissions, Gates said, speaking alongside Johnson.
How to explain the need for investments in Britain, Johnson adapted the 'Greed is Good' catchphrase of Gordon Gekko, the fictional banker from 1980 s film Wall Street.
Green is right, green is good; green works, he said.
Attendees at the event at London's Science Museum included JPMorgan Chase Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink and bosses of GlaxoSmithKline and Darktrace.
Officials hope the summit will bring a new wave of investment over the next 12 months. More than 100 private meetings were set to take place in exhibition halls adorned with planes, spacecraft and other artefacts of Britain's engineering history.
After the conference, attendees will travel to Windsor Castle for a reception attended by King Charles V and other senior royals.
Johnson's green credentials are under fire two weeks before it hosts the U.N. COP 26 climate summit, where Johnson will try to broker a complex global deal to stall rising global temperatures.
He played down fears that some important players, including leaders of China and Russia, wouldn't attend COP 26. China's climate envoy will attend the summit, but it has been reported that President Xi Jinping won't.
The government announced last year it would prioritise green technology and climate goals in the economic recovery of Britain following the COVID-19 pandemic.
That gambit is central to Johnson's political agenda, too: he was elected in 2019 with a pledge to create post-industrial regions and regenerate higher-skilled jobs.
The new investments are on top of 5.85 billion pounds which the government agreed last week, since Johnson started his plan in November.