British businesses have stopped caring about going green
Key Points
- Only 30% of UK firms now rate sustainability a high priority, the weakest reading since NatWest started tracking the measure in February 2020.
- The figure has fallen in every major reading since 2022, when 41% of firms put sustainability near the top of their agenda.
- SMEs make up 99% of UK businesses and produce more than a third of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
- The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee opened a new inquiry into business energy costs on 17 July, with evidence closing on 18 September 2026.
- MPs say the government's new industrial electricity support scheme does not drive electrification or decarbonisation.
Only 30% of UK firms now rank sustainability as a high priority, the lowest level since NatWest began measuring it in February 2020.
The Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee put that number at the centre of a new inquiry into business and energy, which opened on 17 July and closes to written evidence at on 18 September.
MPs want to know how the government can drive national decarbonisation targets that the private sector must actually deliver, at a point when the private sector has moved the issue down its own agenda.
The committee is running the inquiry alongside a second one on warm and comfortable homes, covering the domestic retrofit programme.
A five-year slide
The decline runs consistently across the last five years. NatWest’s first tracker put the share of SMEs treating sustainability as a high priority at 44% in February 2020, falling to 41% by January 2022.
By late 2023 the figure had dropped to 35% for the year ahead, then to 32% for 2025. The latest reading of 30% continues that trajectory without interruption.
Firms consistently blame the cost of going green. Rising business expenses topped the list of obstacles in successive rounds of the survey, with manufacturing SMEs pointing to energy and raw material prices more often than any other sector.
Around two-thirds of small firms cited operating costs as the constraint on climate action, and roughly three in ten flagged uncertainty over government policy.
Small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99% of British businesses and produce over a third of national greenhouse gas emissions, which places a substantial portion of the decarbonisation task with firms that have deprioritised it for five consecutive years.
Short-term relief
The committee describes the new British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme as something other than a decarbonisation mechanism, framing it as short-term relief rather than a driver of electrification.
The EII Supercharger delivers meaningful relief to some energy-intensive industries, MPs note, but leaves many manufacturers outside its scope entirely.
The long-promised Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy remains unpublished, and the committee has already signalled doubt that it will provide the clarity or breadth industry needs.
Recent support packages for the chemicals and ceramics sectors offer a template the committee views as workable, linking help on energy bills to incentives for cleaner production.
What is missing, on the committee’s reading of the evidence so far, is any broader strategic framework applying that logic across manufacturing.
