Last month, the ‘Invest in Cornwall’ organisation came to Soho Square in London to showcase the English county’s green credentials. As well as exhibits from the well-known green Cornish attraction the Eden Project, there were stands from local firms such as energy efficiency specialist Somar and wind power business Cornwall Light and Power, a subsidiary of Alternative Investment Market-quoted Renewable Energy Generation.

Coinciding with Invest in Cornwall’s visit to Soho, the organisation published the results of a survey it had commissioned. According to this survey, some 34% of business leaders think “Britain has a significant role to play in the development of a global low carbon economy”. However, 69% felt that politicians in the main UK political parties only use the concept of renewable energy for political gain.

If the politicians in Britain have merely been paying lip service to the concept of developing sustainable sources of energy, and growing businesses that can bring them about, then the country is likely to miss out on the opportunity to become a world leader in clean technology.

Elsewhere around the world, regions are looking to grow clusters of clean energy businesses, as well as centres of research in environmental technologies. In the US, for example, several leading politicians from around that country are competing to turn their particular State or city into the Silicon Valley of the world’s cleantech industry. Meanwhile, Denmark’s Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster network is an initiative designed to make that city a key cleantech centre.

Of course, Cornwall sees itself as playing a similar role in the UK - and it has good reasons to tout itself as a cleantech cluster.

The county already hosts the Wave Hub, a project that is being used to test a number of wave power technologies off its coast. It is also the one place in the British Isles where there is real potential to develop ‘enhanced geothermal systems’, in which very hot rocks below the earth’s surface can be manipulated to transfer heat and generate electricity. Add to that the many wind energy schemes that exist in the county, and you have a range of skills that can be built upon to add to Cornwall’s geological and geographical advantages.

Unfortunately, Cornwall does not quite have all the advantages that it needs to guarantee success.

One world-renowned centre of the technology industry already exists in Britain: Cambridge. Home to many information technology companies, electronics designers and biotech businesses (as well as several cleantech firms), there are two key factors that have helped to create what is called the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’: a world class university and the city’s proximity to London.

Cornwall does not have a university of its own, although a campus of Exeter University is located there. But perhaps a more important issue is the county’s distance from the financial centre of London. Persuading venture capitalists and other London-based investors to travel 250-plus miles to see firms located there will be tough.

Jon Mainwaring