​Kemi Badenoch, the government trade secretary, has spoken at a green conference to say that investment in clean and renewable energies will help to future-proof the UK's economy and create a more positive future. She spoke at the Green Trade and Investment Expo in the North East of England.

Badendoch said that she saw trade requiring a three-pronged approach to ready the UK for forthcoming challenges at a global level. She went on to explain that clean energy and renewable investment were key, in order to:

1. Innovate in green energies and grow these industries to tackle climate change

2. Ensure UK energy security of supply

3. Create skilled and well-paid jobs in tomorrow's industry, to form the heart of Britain's new 'green' approach to trade

This, she added, would be facilitated by generous funding from the private and public sectors, including international investment.

Future and more detailed announcements are expected to follow, including confirmation that Flogas will be investing £50 million to update its LPG terminal at Avonmouth and to future-proof the entire operating site to handle hydrogen and biogas. This would open up the UK renewable fuel market and offer a potential supply chain on a global scale.

The Trade Secretary explained that the economy always needed investment and trade to grow, to create jobs and to ensure people had money to spend. But it could also tackle other societal and environmental problems on a global scale by focusing on investment in renewable sources. She called on leading green technologies to create thousands of jobs in tomorrow's growth industries, adding that £20 billion in green energy investment had already been secured in the past two years from around the world, creating more than 11,000 new jobs in the process.