The chancellor George Osborne has outlined eight areas of technology in which he wants the UK to become a world leader

The UK will host the European Space Agency's headquarters for telecoms satellite monitoring, the chancellor George Osborne announced on Friday. The move is part of an extra £300m to be invested in space science research by the government over the next five years.

Osborne made the announcement at the Royal Society in London, in his first major speech on the Treasury's ambitions for science and technology. In the address, Osborne outlined eight areas of technology in which he wanted the UK to become a world leader.

He said he was "up for the challenge set by [the physicist] Brian Cox and others of making Britain the best place in the world to do science".

The UK's space industry – including satellite companies such as Astrium and Inmarsat – has grown at around 8% per year over recent years, despite the economic downturn. The sector provides £9bn to the UK economy and Osborne said his ambition was to grow this to £30bn by 2030.

"We are now at a watershed where space is transitioning from a celebration of science endeavour into a capability that impacts on our everyday lives," he said. "Live transmissions of news and sports are driven by satellite telecommunications, and satellites are bringing broadband to rural communities across the UK, while providing enormous export opportunities."

The European Space Agency site, at Harwell in Oxfordshire, will create an additional 100 hi-tech jobs, and the government would be willing to invest up to £240m per year (£60m per year of which is new money) over the next five years in Esa projects. Osborne said the package aimed to put Britain "at the heart of the European space programme".

The other priority areas for Osborne included information technology, in particular the increasing need for more efficient computers to work on "big data", where scientists collect and analyse enormous datasets in biology and elsewhere.

Also on his list were synthetic biology, regenerative medicine (which includes work on stem cells), agricultural science, energy storage, advanced materials (including nanotechnology and metamaterials) and robotics.

Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society, welcomed the chancellor's "very encouraging words" about the role of science in improving health and quality of life and its role in the economy. "Thank you for your very important speech, but please do not forget to put your money where your mouth is. We need to increase our base investment in science to the levels of our competitors."

In his speech, Osborne acknowledged that the economic competition faced by the UK was part of the reason for his interest in science. "Prosperity and the power it brings are shifting to new corners of the globe, to countries like China, India and Brazil," he said. "So as the prime minister has said, countries like ours are in a global race. That we face a choice: sink or swim, do or decline."

Despite Osborne's focus on science for growth, figures published earlier this week by the House of Commons library showed that departmental spending on science had fallen by 7.6% overall in the first year of this parliament. This is in addition to real-terms cuts in the core science budget, which is distributed to universities via the research councils. This was frozen in a previous comprehensive spending review but is being eroded by inflation.

Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said it was encouraging to hear the chancellor "talk about the importance of science with such enthusiasm. It is particularly gratifying that he acknowledges the parallel importance of curiosity-led and applied research, and the need for continued investment in science even in times of fiscal restraint."

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: "The commitment to new spending on scientific infrastructure is important, as is the new framework for capital investment, as part of the UK's push to be a modern, hi-tech economy."

Though Osborne's speech focused on areas of scientific research that were ripe for commercial applications and could provide future economic benefits, he acknowledged the importance of basic science.

"You do not necessarily become a scientist to boost GDP," he said. "Even though it is a very welcome consequence of much of what you do. We must leave room for original research and abstract intellectual inquiry. For even when it is abstract and theoretical it does not flourish in isolation."

He concluded: "We have great science in Britain. We are backing it and we will do more."