Owen, R., Lehner, O. M., Lyon, F., and Brennan, G., 2019, Early Stage Investing in Green SMEs: The Case of the UK, ACRN Journal of Finance & Risk Perspectives, 8 (1), 163-182
Early Stage Investing in Green SMEs: The Case of the UK
Robyn Owen, Othmar Lehner, Fergus Lyon, Geraldine Brennan
Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development,
Middlesex University London
Abstract
How might a Green New Deal be applied to the early stage financing of Cleantechs? Amidst rising interest and adoption of Green New Deals in the US, the paper explores the need for more focused policy to address early stage long horizon financing of Cleantechs. We argue that insufficient focus has been applied to early stage investing into these types of innovative SMEs that could lower CO2 emissions across a range of sectors (including renewable energy, recycling, advanced manufacturing, transport and bio-science). Adopting a resource complementarity lens and borrowing from transaction cost theory, we illustrate and build theory through longitudinal UK case studies. These demonstrate how government policy can scale-up through international collaboration public-private, principally venture capital, co-finance to facilitate cleantech innovation with potentially game changing impacts on reducing CO2 emissions in order to meet the Paris 2015 Climate Change targets.
Keywords: Green New Deal, Early Stage Cleantech, Low Carbon, SME Finance