2027 promises to be environmentally tough – 2026 offers a green opportunity to act first

2027 will be a challenging year environmentally. But while finance ministers and chancellors face pressures to meet rising defence and energy costs, investments in green-tech, clean-tech, or climate-tech, offer unignorable and increasingly profitable returns as part of a vibrant UK low carbon net zero economy set to be worth up to £1 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey  and the British Chambers of Commerce. The catalyst is green innovation – backed by RedCAT’s commercialisation track record for taking post-prototype breakthroughs through to full UK and international market success.

News – (see below)

♦  A new report looks at the findings of the first ever quantitative survey to better understand characteristics and causes of the equity finance market gap at initial, early-stage funding. 

♦  The Government needs a rigorous, data-driven approach to assess innovation policy and ensure public funds encourage regional innovation clusters and stimulate private investment, say MPs who note “major shortfalls” in innovation data, particularly regional data, that is essential to evaluate policies, identify improvements, and ensure money is targeted towards regional growth. RedCAT CEO Prof Miranda Barker OBE warns that Lancashire’s huge of design, engineering and advanced manufacturing expertise which could benefit the UK economy is being hampered by a lack of Government innovation commercialisation investment. Read more..

♦  Innovate UK’s new reset plan will help the next generation of highest potential tech businesses to thrive, “… deliver growth and improve lives and livelihoods”, and support the Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy. Read more..

But sitting on our hands is no solution – urgent action is needed NOW in 2026

– 2027 is expected to bring major warning signs that delay is increasingly dangerous

It is very tempting to wait and do nothing. Modern history shows that wars and financial crises do eventually pass. But trusting in fate might not be our best answer today.

Historically, we are a resilient lot well able to adapt, recover, and prosper when faced with adversity. Opting to act positively instead of sitting on our hands is our best strategy today – particularly as we have better options.

These include investing in – and reaping huge returns from – innovative green low carbon technology as both an environment solution for a world that, least we forget, is still warming rapidly, plus an enormous potential UK export market.

But it takes at least two to tango.

Lessons from the first big oil crisis

As energy prices tripled in the 1970s due to wars in the Middle East – Scandinavia, France and the Netherlands did act and moved into the green transition.

France made nuclear central to their power system. Scandinavians insulated buildings and used waste heat in homes. The Dutch built bike lanes. The Danes developed wind turbines.

The question for a net zero-oriented UK is what it is prepared to do rather than fixing the same issue over and over again?

Not-so-happy New Year 2027

A quick glance at what is hovering down the line from 2027 onwards shows why it is vital to act now … and why delay is a dangerous strategy.

It also highlights that choosing to focus on one crisis does not lessen the impact of others that ae just as potent. Hurting your foot doesn’t lessen your toothache even though it may temporarily mask the pain!

Therefore, an essential message for governments, chancellors, and investors is that current headline events at crisis points around the world must not be an excuse to let major future opportunities to slip away by default.

We cannot let this happen. Carpe diem – seize the moment, or action this day.

Fortunately, RedCAT can help in three ways.

RedCAT rescue

The first is by sharing RedCAT’s now well-proven commercialisation methodology which takes post-prototype innovation models – often from start-ups and university spin-outs – over the infamous Valley of Death funding gap to measurable wholesale and retail sales success in world markets.

The second is – by working closely with public and private sector funding partners – to scale up the RedCAT solution that is designed to work on not only a small but also an international scale.

The third is our own growing success in support for Lancashire innovators. To date, this has turned funding of £3 million into inward investments of £30 million, added 300-plus new jobs, and taken some 46 new products to manufacturing and markets – with an impressive £1:£10 ROI (return on investment).

A new view of how energy is created, used, and stored

One of the main focuses of green-innovation is a radically new approach to how clean-power is generated, used, and stored, in a new energy environment.

As our case studies show, implemented locally, regionally, nationally, and globally, RedCAT’s approach generates premium economic, environmental, community, and high-technology answers.

One of our main missions is to end the modern problem holding back a fantastic new and powerful industry. This is that there is now virtually no support for gifted innovators in an economy that urgently needs their new ideas and commercially-viable smart products.

Can the shortcomings of 2025 in Brazil be turned into vital gains going into 2027?

– Will it be RIP fossil-fuels this year?

COP 31 from November 9 to 20, 2026 will hopefully provide a further bite of the ‘phase out’ fossil-fuel cherry after a rally and rearguard action at COP30 by oil and gas producers only prepared at COP30 to ‘phase down’ the use of their main national assets.

Türkiye will be the official host and president of the COP31 conference, while Australia as President of Negotiations will lead critical discussions in a shared leadership model as part of a compromise agreement.

COP30 ended with no binding commitment to phase out fossil-fuels. Major oil-producing nations and emitters blocked efforts to include strong, explicit language to end fossil-fuel use despite strong support from more than 80 nations.

The First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels from 24 to 29 April 2026 in Santa Marta – promoted by Colombia and the Netherlands – aims to create a ‘coalition of the willing’ political space to coordinate the management of a fossil-fuels phase-out.

Six and a half months later, COP31 in autumn 2026 will also see urgent fresh efforts to advance plans to transition away from fossil-fuels in a fair and equitable manner.

Getting 2026 green ducks in a row while there is time

The spring 2026 Gulf energy crisis centres on oil and gas.

However, it underlines the wider need to end a century of fossil-fuel traumas and give the world a much better relationship with energy and its responsible use – particularly clean-energy.

What we do next in terms of green-tech development and deployment will be strongly influenced by broader energy events – some of them natural – waiting in the wings, plus continuing fossil-fuel supply restrictions in the Middle East.

El Niño to return with a vengeance

El Niño and La Niña are opposing phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a tropical Pacific climate pattern massively affecting world weather that is now seen as the largest global driver of year-to-year temperature fluctuations.

Record-high temperatures in recent years have led scientists to ask whether global warming is accelerating. They also warn that high temperatures offer a taste of the future world if the long-term limit of the Paris Agreement to keep rises to below 1.5C of preindustrial averages is breached.

When the ocean is warmer, El Niño boosts global temperatures temporarily. La Niña is more benign. However, the current La Niña is expected to end in April before a new El Niño forms in the northern autumn, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Record high temperatures and their devastating effects are expected to extend into 2028 – the year of the next US presidential election.

Big risk assessment gap

The world needs a comprehensive, risk-based approach to climate change.

In the view of a group of experts led by the Met Office, this is needed to help governments, citizens, and businesses understand the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Science assessments alone with no risk element are not enough for decision-makers.

Without faster global action, climate change impacts will be increasingly severe, affecting millions of people, and potentially undermining global stability, they warn.

But despite the huge consequences, no internationally coordinated global risk analysis has ever been conducted.

World walking blindly into a “super-heated future”

Professor Rowan Sutton, Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, worries a key opportunity might be missed.

“Humanity still has the opportunity to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and shape a more prosperous, liveable future”. This would “… enable political leaders and citizens to fully understand what is at stake and motivate us all to seize that opportunity – while we still have it,” he continued.

Professor Peter Stott – the paper’s other lead author – adds, “The world stands at a crossroads in global efforts to reduce emissions. Bridging the current gap in global risk assessment is an urgent priority”.

As examples, policymakers may be aware that sea level rises need more flood defences, but not that parts of a large city like London may have to be abandoned, or that tens of thousands of people might die in if conditions in specific regions exceed human tolerance.

Oppressive heat. Species extinctions. Pollution-choked skies.

– The high cost of doing nothing v the reasonable costs of green-tech innovations

In the case the message has not gone through yet, UN experts have painted a lurid picture of what the Earth will potentially look like at the mid-century point if humanity, collectively overwhelmed by other crises, opts to take a lazy laisse faire attitude to climate change.

In its report “Without big changes, this is what the environment will look like in 2050”, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) sets a grim vision of the decades ahead.

Half as bad again as today

By 2050, annual greenhouse gas emissions could reach 75 billion tonnes – a circa 50% jump from 2026. Destabilising the climate, they could cause heatwaves affecting nearly everyone – some 9.2 billion people.

Well before then, large-scale interventions – and particularly the worldwide introduction of green-tech products and services scaled up commercially and industrially across the Global South and Global North – are one of our most promising mitigation and course-correcting tools.

Some like it hot … but not this hot

The seventh edition of the “Global Environment Outlook 7” offers a troubling scenario which can be avoided with meaningful action.

“With a whole-of-government, whole-of-society effort humanity can still turn the ship around,” says UNEP’s Maarten Kappelle. “But if countries continue to drag their collective feet, billions of people will face an uncertain future, especially those in the developing world.”

Worrying warnings – from 2027 onwards

Additional warnings include a paper from Columbia University in New York predicting a first taste of a 1.7°C world next year. As well as the El Niño/La Niña cyclical pattern, pollution is thought to have masked the effects of past CO₂ emissions from coal plants, industry, cars and shipping by some 0.5°C.

Reductions in atmospheric pollution are proving to be a double-edged sword.

The Columbia estimate of 1.7°C above 1880-1920 levels is at the high end of predictions. However,  Europe’s Earth observation programme services and others also expect a record-shattering 2027.

According to Carbon Brief, the last three years have smashing records faster than models predicted events “outside the expected envelope” from Antarctic ice shelf melting to North Atlantic marine “heatwaves”.

Warming has accelerated over the past 10 years with temperatures rising faster since 2015 than in any previous recorded decades. Earth warmed by circa 0.35°C (0.62°F) in the decade to 2025, compared to just below 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015 .

Separate research suggests sea-level increases have been underestimated too.

Missing report unearthed

Meanwhile, the Green Alliance has accessed a report by the Government and joint intelligence committee which notes that, “Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions. Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse (irreversible loss of function beyond repair).

The National security assessment on global ecosystems says ecosystem degradation is widespread, with all critical ecosystems on an early pathway to collapse.

Removing barriers to innovation outside traditional hotspots

– Poor decision-making without key data

The Government needs a rigorous, data-driven approach to assess innovation policy to ensure public funds encourage regional innovation clusters and stimulate private investment, say MPs.

Innovation is central to the Government’s economic growth mission, or so they say. This is belied by the amount of funding they are putting into innovation commercialisation (very little) and its “unashamedly place-based” Industrial Strategy, leaving out non-mayoral areas like Lancashire.

RedCAT CEO Prof Miranda Barker OBE DL says “Lancashire offers a huge amount of design, engineering and advanced manufacturing expertise. But its potential to benefit the UK economy is no being hampered by the lack of Government innovation commercialisation investment.”

Data shortfalls

But they note “major shortfalls” in finding and sharing innovation data, particularly regional data. Without clear metrics for investment, outputs, and local impact, it is “impossible” to evaluate existing policies, identify improvements and ensure money is targeted to drive regional growth.

The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee welcomes the publication of departmental R&D spending plans and outturn data, and the call to publish reports on R&D support for regional innovation, plus the development of performance metrics rather than high-level objectives (See article: UK Parliament News and also Insider Media – 13 March 2026.

Focus on the regions

The report finds that untapped potential for innovation-driven activity through the UK’s geographic cluster system can only be unlocked with a more data-driven approach because clusters are based on sustained investment, infrastructure and skills concentration that only good data can identify.

The committee also highlights barriers to accessing public R&D funding that face innovators outside traditional hotspots. A portal matching innovators to funding is needed.

Innovate UK’s reset will support the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy,

– Backing for the most promising deep-tech businesses

With a focus on the highest potential companies and a holistic approach to tailored support, a strategic reset by Innovate UK will help the next generation of tech businesses “to deliver growth and improve lives and livelihoods”.

It will also become a ‘trusted due diligence engine for the UK’s deep tech ecosystem’ so investors can be ‘confident when it backs a company that the hard technical work has already been done, speeding up access to capital.”.

Six priority sectors known as the IF-8 sectors, are : – advanced manufacturing; clean energy industries; creative industries; defence; life sciences; and digital and technologies which include artificial intelligence; advanced connectivity; cybersecurity; engineering biology; semiconductors; and quantum.