ONS to Publish First UK Low Carbon R&D Spending Data Covering 2020 to 2024

The Office for National Statistics is developing new estimates of what UK businesses spend on low carbon and renewable energy research and development, with publication provisionally scheduled for 26 August 2026.

The UK low carbon and renewable energy economy generated £77.0 billion in turnover in 2024 — up 11.8 per cent compared with 2023 — yet until now there has been no dedicated official measure of how much of that activity is driven by business research and development spending. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced it is developing exactly that: a new statistical series, provisionally titled the Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy Survey, Research and Development estimates, UK: 2020 to 2024, scheduled for release on 26 August 2026 at 09:30.

The figures will cover UK business expenditure on R&D that supports low carbon and renewable energy innovation for each year from 2020 to 2024. That period spans the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy price shock of 2021 to 2022, and a sharp acceleration in net zero policy — making the data chiefly useful for understanding how business innovation responded to those pressures. ONS describes the estimates as “official statistics in development”, meaning they are being tested and refined and have not yet been designated as National Statistics.

To put the new series in context: UK businesses spent an estimated £55.6 billion on R&D across all sectors in 2024, accounting for around 70 per cent of total UK R&D expenditure of £79.4 billion. The LCREE R&D estimates will represent a subset of that figure focused specifically on low carbon and renewable energy activity — a slice that has never been formally measured before.

That gap matters for Kent. The county sits within a South East economy that includes offshore wind projects in the Thames Estuary, onshore renewables, energy efficiency retrofits, and logistics decarbonisation activity around Dover and other ports. Regional LCREE breakdowns aren’t yet published at county level, but ONS has explored methods for producing them, which could eventually give local authorities and economic partnerships in Kent a clearer picture of green investment in their area.

Compared with 2015, LCREE turnover across the UK had risen by around 91 per cent by 2024, and employment in the sector by more than 50 per cent. In 2020 alone — the first year the new R&D series will cover — the LCREE supported around 207,800 full-time equivalent jobs and generated roughly £41.2 billion in turnover, with England accounting for about £32.6 billion of that.

Some analysts have questioned whether current levels of low carbon R&D investment are sufficient to meet the UK’s legally binding net zero target of 2050, and whether the two-year lag between the data period and publication limits real-time policy decisions. There are also ongoing debates about how strictly certain activities — nuclear and some bioenergy projects among them — should be classified as “low carbon” within the LCREE framework. ONS says it is inviting user feedback on methods and classifications before seeking full National Statistics accreditation.