An Environmentally Conscious Approach to the Arc

Within our Sustainable Infrastructure strategy, my team are aiming to achieve this through a range of sustainability-focused investment theses including use of land to decarbonise our energy system with traditional renewables, battery storage or GH Bio Power, a business that takes used cooking oil and turns it into renewable energy.

We have also created, from scratch, a new solution that provides direct biodiversity and nature impact for anyone who needs it. We have partnered with the Environment Bank to launch a new infrastructure product, ‘Habitat Banks’ where we restore degraded habitats on a large scale, into areas rich in biodiversity. This will in turn create Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) credits, sale of these BNG credits is underpinned by a market for biodiversity net gain which is now part of planning law.

East Anglia is also the driest region of the UK, and it will be critically important to conserve and expand water services and availability as a result of climate change – the recent report from Water Resources East makes that very clear. Nonetheless, agriculture will remain a major land use, though its impact on the environment will undoubtedly reduce. This will be catalysed by wider societal changes driven by climate concerns, like a shift to more plant-based foods, innovation in farming practices and an emphasis on land providing ecosystem services. The good news is this will bring diversification opportunities for custodians of land.

The business model for habitat banks that we have constructed with Environment Bank is designed to do exactly that. It will allow farmers to keep farming and to include nature, whether producing biodiversity net gain or other ecosystem services such as flood mitigation or mineral storage, in their portfolio of products and to secure a long-term, guaranteed income stream for doing so.