Green Industries

As demand for renewables increases, Hertfordshire’s Enterprise Zone, Herts IQ, in South West Hertfordshire, is ideally placed to support businesses in newly-identified green growth sectors such as sustainable construction, enviro-tech and offsite manufacturing. Its founding partners Rothamsted Research and BRE are world leaders in agri-science and the built environment, enabling Herts IQ to attract and connect start-ups and scale-ups in these high-growth sectors to the clusters of clean tech companies already based here.

Hertfordshire, which is home to 1.2m people, is seeking to minimise its environmental impact by ensuring it has the policies and programmes in place to become more sustainable. By 2025,  the county has set a goal for Green Growth to be a prioritised growth sector in the county and by 2028, other priority growth sectors will be attracted to Hertfordshire through the low/zero carbon opportunities for their premises and operations.

Its population is expected to rise by up to 175,000 by 2031. This means at least 100,000 new homes and jobs will need to be created by 2036 to meet demand. Much of this housing and jobs growth is focused on two new Garden Towns - Hemel Garden Communities in the west, and Harlow and Gilston Garden Town in the east of the county. A sustainable transport link, the Herts Essex Rapid Transport (HERT) will connect the Garden Towns with ongoing connections to Harlow and Stansted Airport and rural communities.

Hertfordshire is also home to a large number of construction employers ranging from large multi-national organisations including BAM, Morgan Sindall, Clarion Housing, Willmott Dixon, Align (the organisation responsible for HS2), Kier, AECOM, Skanska and Volker Vessels as well as Hertfordshire Building Control, MCP Property Maintenance, Green Building Design and AVV Solutions who specialise in building restoration. 

In the heart of a house building hotspot, Hertfordshire has a strategic commitment to speed up the delivery of new homes using offsite manufacturing and other modern methods of construction to meet growing demand, particularly among younger generations. New vocational apprenticeships are now available via the county’s FE Colleges to help ‘green’ up the industry sector and create a future skills pipeline for sustainable house building.

With the net zero sector expanding rapidly across a range of industries and service such a Smart Construction; Sustainable Transport; Electric Vehicles; Alternative Fuels; Waste Management and Carbon Finance, Hertfordshire is well placed to unlock this growth. Hertfordshire LEP’s Clean Growth Strategy, Towards Net Zero, identifies the key drivers for change and actions required to develop a more sustainable economy and fully realise its green potential.