Mayor of London’s new £500 million fund to help with energy efficiency

A new £500 million fund has been set up by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to help hospitals, museums, offices, libraries, social housing and universities become more energy efficient.

The fund comes after a report from the Green Finance Taskforce found that many public sector organisations and small businesses want to install energy efficiency measures but lack the necessary finance. The fund has been set up through the European Regional Development Bank and Amber Infrastructure Group, and the Mayor has worked with various commercial lenders including Lloyds Bank, National Westminster Bank, Santander UK, Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and Tridos Bank. The fund will provide flexible funding options to help with installing or upgrading low carbon technology.

The funding could cover battery storage, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, decentralised energy, small-scale renewables, energy efficiency and low-carbon data centres. It follows on from the Mayor’s London Energy Efficiency Fund, which helped St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Tooting install a new power and heating system. It stores and recycles heat produced from generating electricity and will save the Trust £1 million a year in energy bills. Sadiq Khan said: “This is the largest fund of its kind in the UK that will help deliver the low-carbon, sustainable projects and infrastructure London needs to cut energy costs and reduce carbon emissions across our universities, hospitals, museums and small businesses.”