If we know how to increase SME take-up of decarbonisation efforts and productivity this will help the country towards net zero.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have a critical role to play in the UK’s efforts towards decarbonisation. Any action these businesses take to adapt the way they work to address reducing their emissions may also be significant opportunities to raise productivity on the road to net zero. We’re keen to find out the appetite from SMEs to get support to increase their decarbonisation efforts and productivity.

What interventions are worth investing in to support SMEs to adopt new technologies, business models and ways of working? And which ones are already working and could be scaled?

In this project we’re posing a series of research questions to understand more about the scale of SMEs’ environmental impact and potential ways to reduce it. We’ll be looking to identify solutions to increase decarbonisation efforts, to understand the potential role of more experimental approaches and to highlight interventions that could increase take-up of solutions and boost productivity.

We will undertake a rapid evidence review – identifying peer-reviewed articles on intervention studies aimed at decreasing the environmental impact made by SMEs and how these interventions have increased the adoption of new technologies or ways of working. We’ll also be looking into existing evidence on how these changes could boost productivity, the best way to measure increased productivity and any experimental approaches that may be needed to scale solutions.

We’ll publish our findings and use this research as part of our ongoing work towards increasing opportunities for a greener, more productive economy through the adoption of green technology.