London Low Carbon Market Snapshot (2023)

This report was produced by kMatrix Data Services Ltd and provides an update for the financial years - 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21.

This report provides an update on the 2019 London Low Carbon Market Snapshot and quantifies the size and composition of London’s Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services. It provides a 14 year time series for the dataset along with a 2023 update to the London Low Carbon Market Snapshot. The data is presented at a London, sub-regional and local authority level.

The Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services sector in London continued to grow year on year between 2007/08 and 2019/20 before contracting due to the impact of the pandemic.  In 2007/08 total sales in the sector were worth £20.9bn, in 2019/20 they were worth £50.0bn and in 2020/21 they contracted to £42.9bn due to the impact of the pandemic. This meant that the sector had shrunk to just below the £44bn of sales seen in 2018/19.  

Those Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services sector sales were generated by 302,021 employees across 17,054 companies in 2019/20 before those numbers also contracted because of the pandemic to 269,714 employees working in the sector across 16,376 companies in 2020/21.  

Sales in London’s Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services grew by over 11 per cent a year in the years prior to the pandemic, between 2017/18 and 2019/20. Then in 2020/21 London’s sales contracted by 14 per cent as a consequence of the pandemic; this was the first year that sales had not increased by at least 4 per cent in the sector since the time series began in 2007/08. 

The next report will be published early in 2024 and will provide data for the first two years after the onset of the pandemic, those being 2021/22 and 2022/23, and will give an indication of how the sector has responded to the impact of the pandemic.