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Is Britain missing the boat for Green Jobs?
Posted by Adam White (@theday2day)
Friday, 8th January 2010
It was announced this week that Gordon Brown will be launching a £100bn project to build Wind Turbines as a part of Britain’s plan to meet its renewable energy targets. The Crown Estate (the State Company which owns the British seabeds) has been taking bids from several consortiums for the project, which consist of some of Europe’s biggest energy firms.
The project could be a massive boost to Britain’s green revolution, with estimates suggesting one of the proposed sites could produce a massive 10GW, enough to power up to 10m homes!
This is undoubtedly one of the most important issues we are currently faced with, one that impacts not just upon our environmental policy, but also on the more comprehensive issue of the makeup of our economy and the lessons that have been learnt during the economic crisis.
This recession has shown us that our reliance upon financial services is extremely risky, and has left us dangerously exposed to the problems within international financial markets. Financial services account for more than 110% of our GDP, so it is no wonder that we have suffered a little longer than most G8 Nations, as we struggle to rebound from the problems caused by a speculative Banking sector with obviously inherent risks.
It would seem that Ed Miliband agrees with me, in his speech to Labour Party conference in summer he passionately told delegates that, “we’ve got to build an Economy on more than financial services alone”. He was also keen to point out that Climate Change is no longer just an environmental issue but is “also about the job your kid is going to do”. I couldn’t agree more.
One of the main goals, and achievements, of Thatcherism was to shift the focus of the British economy away from a skilled and highly unionised workforce and start the move towards an economy focused on financial markets with an emphasis on a strong service sector. This shift inevitably led to a massive decline in manufacturing, something more flamboyant voters love to point out to me whenever I go canvassing!
Manufacturing once accounted for more than 40% of economic output in Britain, it now accounts for less than 20%! It is clear that we can’t go on with business as usual in the financial sector, and if we are to shield our economy from the same negative impacts we have seen since the beginning of the crisis, then we need to diversify. The transmission to renewable sources of energy provides the perfect opportunity to do just that.
Ed Miliband made a strong point in his speech, that we are not just investing to combat Climate Change but we are investing in the jobs of the future, however it is so far unclear how much of this money is going to be doing that. One of the sites that are a part of this project, the London Array, is going to cost £2bn, with just £180m of that money being spent in Britain! E.on, one of the companies involved in the project, has said that there just aren’t any suitable British suppliers.
This has raised criticisms from Trade Unionists and Environmental campaigners, who have questioned why the Government allowed the Vestas plant (the only producer of wind turbines in Britain) to be shut down, when firms are complaining about a lack of British-based producers. Those who remember closure of the Vestas plant will remember that it inspired an interesting combination of campaigners duly dubbed the “red-green coalition”. These campaigners had different attitudes about what should be done, some suggesting Nationalising the company others arranging some kind of loan to the employees, so they could take control of the business and make it into our first real Green Co-operative, the latter being the policy I favoured!
When looking at how much of this money is being spent outside of Britain it becomes clear that we need a clear vision on how this spending is going to benefit our economy as well as our climate. If we don’t have the capacity to satisfy demand for green technology then we are in dire need of some strategic policy planning to determine how the Government can nurture home-grown business and meet this new demand.
Perhaps Lord Mandelson can start a discussion on this very matter; after all he has also been converted to the cause of reinvigorating Britain’s manufacturing industry. Remember that catchy punch line from his conference speech, “Less financial engineering, more real engineering”? Well Peter, now is the time, what are we going to do about it!
I hope people within the Party are going to cease the opportunity here, and start a debate on how we can both meet our targets to slash Carbon emissions and create the green jobs of the future. The Labour Party has shown over the last couple of years, in the face of Tory opposition, that we are the Party of State intervention that we believe in Government action to solve the problems facing our society, can we really expect that of the Tories? The Tories that opposed intervening in the economy, an act most economists agree would have almost certainly led to economic depression if successful? Of course not, the Tories would leave these problems to the market, as they always have done, and the market has already proven itself inefficient on this matter. If we don’t ensure we have a fully comprehensive policy on the green transition then we may well find that Britain has missed the boat for green jobs, something which I can safely say we can do without!
