The Green New Deal Group has launched a new report this morning. This is a summary:
Jobs in Every Constituency
A Green New Deal Election Manifesto
Background
To return a sense of hope for the future and economic security for all, the government and all political parties need urgently to consider embracing a ‘jobs in every constituency' Green New Deal infrastructure programme. The Green New Deal group came together in 2007 because as economists and environmentalists we were all convinced that a huge economic downturn was imminent and that one answer to it would be a Green New Deal to fund infrastructure that could help tackle climate change and generate large numbers of jobs and business and savings opportunities in every constituency. How to achieve this was detailed in our first report in 2008.[i]
Much has changed since then to improve the potential for a Green New Deal. The impacts of climate change are now ominously clearer, and the political response globally has mostly become more positive, despite Donald Trump. The Paris Agreement of November 2016 has resulted in all 197 signatories of the treaty taking action, with more than 1,500 climate laws and policies in place.[ii] The agreement commits governments to ratchet up targets in the years ahead. To assist this, there have been huge cost reductions and increases in availability of renewables, particularly solar, battery storage and off shore wind in recent years. All China's new electricity demand in 2015 was met with wind and solar.[iii] In 2016, almost 90 per cent of such new power in Europe came from renewables.[iv] More than 10 million people now work in renewables for the first time, 3.4 million in solar alone.[v]
However the world still produces some 80% of its energy from fossil fuels. To speed a UK shift away from this, the Green New Deal group has tended to emphasise the ‘Jobs in every constituency' approach, in the expectation that that it will widen general public support for the shift to a jobs rich decarbonisation future. This is also timely given that the Brexit vote has begun to force politicians to at least talk about policies that could help the ‘left behind'. There is now much more discussion of the state's role in improving the UK's infrastructure. The most radical and potentially helpful change has been the use of quantitative easing (QE) by the government to bail out the financial services sector. If QE was instead used to help fund a Green New Deal it could provide part of the answer to the first question always raised about any proposal for large scale change, which is ‘how are we going to pay for it?'
The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal would result in a nation-wide carbon emissions reducing infrastructure programme focusing on:
- Making the UK's 30 million buildings super-energy-efficient to dramatically reduce energy bills, fuel poverty and greenhouse gas emissions;
- Accelerating the shift to renewable electricity supplies and storage, given their dramatic drop in price worldwide and increased availability;
- Tackling the housing crisis by building affordable, highly insulated new homes, predominantly on brown field sites;
- Transport policy that concentrates on rebuilding local public transport links;
- Properly maintaining the UK's road and rail system;
- Encouraging electric vehicles for business and personal use and sharing.
This is labour intensive, takes place in every locality and consists of work that is difficult to automate. It also contributes to improving social cohesion and environmental sustainability.
This massive work programme in energy and transport would tackle many existing problems in our society. It would provide a secure career structure for decades. This would require a significant numbers of apprenticeships and the range of long-term jobs provide increased opportunities for the self-employed and local small businesses. This growth in local economic activity would in turn create other jobs to service this increased spending.
In terms of funding, the up front cost of this massive infrastructure programme is likely to eventually run into more than £50 billion a year.[vi] This could be met by traditional government borrowing at present low interest rate, plus the use of ‘Green Quantitative Easing' to help rebuild local economies. (This would exploit the ability of the government to create new money without any cost to taxpayers, which has only so far been used to save the financial services sector.) Additional finance could come from fairer taxes and the creation of savings opportunities in local authority bonds and green ISAs, not least to create intergenerational solidarity between savers (who tend to be from older generations) and younger people who would benefit from the jobs created.
It has been estimated that at least £500bn of investment in new low-carbon infrastructure is required over the next 10 years to transform the UK economy, of which £230bn will be required for energy efficiency alone.[vii] Transport for the North (TfN) has stated that investing between £60bn and £70bn in the north of England's antiquated road and rail network between 2020 and 2050 could add almost £100bn in real terms of economic benefit to the UK, along with 850,000 new jobs. Across the country small and relatively cheap transport improvement measures would include improving stations and bus services, park and ride facilities, through to bus priority and cycle lanes, traffic calming schemes, car clubs and bike hire schemes [viii]
These enormous sums would need to be used judiciously to ensure a realistically timetabled, carefully costed, and hence non-inflationary, nationwide initiative to train and employ a fairly paid ‘carbon army' to work on this nationwide infrastructure programme.
A Manifesto for Jobs in Every Constituency
The government should commit to a detailed programme explaining how to generate jobs in every constituency, using for example the energy and transport proposals in the Green New Deal. This would require extensive consultation with local government, businesses and communities to establish what such a programme should look like on the ground.
The government should commit to a massive training programme resulting in a huge range of skills to provide the ‘carbon army' of workers needed to bring about a low-carbon future. A carbon finance sector would also be needed to publicise, advice and put into practice the range of large funding packages necessary.
The government must then explain how this approach would both mitigate the effects of any future global economic downturn and help compensate for the expected trends in automation. It must also make clear that a key advantage to such an approach would be to help meet the UK's obligations under the Paris Agreement to curb carbon emissions.
The full report
The report on which this manifesto is based is available at https://www.greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/GNDJobsReport9-18.pdf
Signing this manifesto
If you would like to support this manifesto by becoming a signatory to it email hinescolin@gmail.com and please circulate it to anyone you think might be interested.
Endnotes
[i] https://s.bsd.net/nefoundation/default/page/-/files/A_Green_New_Deal_1.pdf .
[ii] https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3031265/paris-agreement-all-197-signatories-now-taking-national-climate-action?utm_source=Greenhouse+Morning+News&utm_campaign=63f4d809db-Greenhouse_Morning_News_April_30th_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_990f8eae78-63f4d809db-123979689
[iii] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.use.comm.fo.zs?end=2015&start=1960
[iv] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/09/new-energy-europe-renewable-sources-2016
[v] http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/1486824/more-than-10-million-people-now-work-in-renewables-irena
[vi] https://www.greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Green-New-Deal-5th-Anniversary.pdf
[vii] https://www.e3g.org/docs/Accelerating_the_transition_to_a_low_carbon_economy_The_case_for_a_Green_Infrastructure_Bank.pdf
[viii] https://bettertransport.org.uk/sites/default/files/research-files/Improving%20local%20transport%20helps%20the%20economy%20-%20experience%20from%20the%20LSTF.pdf
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[…] This letter was in the Guardian this morning, referring to the new Green New Deal report: […]
China comment is incorrect. Link you attached is from 2016 and more recent link on the Greenpeace website refers to a “dramatic surge” in carbon emissions in China in 2018.
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/05/30/china-co2-carbon-climate-emissions-rise-in-2018/
China does love green projects, but because the are great ways to spend on infrasructure investment, create jobs etc. They pay lip service to environmental goals. The number of new coal-fired power stations built in the last two years is vast and negates any claim they make as to green credentials.
[…] This letter was in the Guardian this morning, referring to the new Green New Deal report: […]
Good report, a change in numbers and the substitution of EU for Uk & most of it could apply to the EU. However, the ECB would put its face against any funding involvement. That said, the Euro group could always force the issue.In terms of detail: the IEA has been consistently wrong on everything to do with renewables. Bloomberg New Energy Finance and (oddly) Lazards (covering the USA) are far closer to the current reality with respect to RES costs.
I agree 100% with this: “the importance of prioritising energy efficiency and the increased use of renewables in constructing and refurbishing every UK building”. Local councils should be involved from the quality control point of view (and funded to be so involved). With respect to “smart meters” these, in & of themselves make no difference what so ever to saving energy. In-your-face home energy monitors do (example: Alert Me & the British Gas project). Furthermore, one does not need a smart meter to install a home energy monitor.
As for transport, I agree a move to EVs is needed. Charging is only a problem for homes with no garage or drive which thus implies some form of on-street charging. I have endless studies showing that charging EV at the home and work (or in a car park) is quite sufficient for the daily commute or shopping trip etc. 90% of cars travel on average 40 miles per day – EVs typically have a range of +80 mile)
The £500bn looks to me spot on. HS2? political viagra – abandon and focus on small scale improvements – as suggested (but that would not help Wezzie politicos). The proposals for funding look sensible.
Thanks
This is of course all good news, but we must not let the car lobby grab the agenda by letting them convince us that electric cars will solve all our problems. Electric cars carting around the weight of a battery will have their minor place in the transport system of the future. But their inefficiencies must be remembered.
The future is electric trains, electric trams, bikes, and electric bikes. And of course city planning must cater for this.
If you need convincing, just look at what they are doing in many European cities.
You don’t see the sort of traffic jams we have in many of our cities, in Berlin, for example. Here they have well planned, safe, cycle routes, and cyclists with their bikes in trams and trains.
It is a well known fact that Germany has the highest car ownership in Europe, but has the lowest car usage. It speaks for itself. Plan good, reliable, cheap public transport, and decent cycle routes, and people will get out of their car.
Here, most planning is done through the windscreen of a car, and everything else must take second place. There are of course some exceptions, but I am sure you get my meaning.
Electric propulsion is the future, but electric cars should only be a minor part of the solution.
This is a reply to Mr Lucas.”just look at what they are doing in many European cities” … erm no. Brussels is amongst the most polluted of Euro cities & planning is brainless – I know – I live there.” Germany has the highest car ownership in Europe, but has the lowest car usage” – emissions from transport have remained stationary since 1990 – resisting all gov legislation to reduce them. Yes, there are bikes lanes & such like in Bx, yes the Dutch do a good job wrt cycling. But generally speaking I do not see a situation in mainland Europe that is notiecably better than the UK – “one man one car” still rules.
Example: Brussels is in the process of banning old cars from the city to reduction pollution. OK – but if you stand on any of the main arteries in the period 0700 – 0900hrs 95% of cars are +/- new to 5 years old. So that worked out well didn’t it.
Addressing pollution caused by commuting would require non-transport measures such as commune-based telework centres – where people (who have office jobs) could reach through walking/local bus/cycling etc. It has been demonstrated to work well 9in Ansterdam) but there is zero discussion at an Eu level. pity.
[…] To return a sense of hope for the future and economic security for all, the government and all political parties need urgently to consider embracing a ‘jobs in every constituency’ Green New Deal infrastructure programme. The Green New Deal group came together in 2007 because as economists and environmentalists we were all convinced that a huge economic downturn was imminent and that one answer to it would be a Green New Deal to fund infrastructure that could help tackle climate change and generate large numbers of jobs and business and savings opportunities in every constituency. How to achieve this was detailed in our first report in 2008.[i] […]
Very sensible stuff in the report and plenty to expand on. I favour work done in this fashion having an international service element, connected to democratising armed services etc. I would also want a more radical business plan and costing. But heck, have shovel will travel.
Agreed…