This letter from my Green New Deal colleague, Colin Hines, is in the Guardian this morning:
Jeremy Corbyn's speech had three crucial and interlinked components: the need to transform the economy, to prioritise improving conditions in the “left-behind” areas, and a call for a “green jobs revolution in every nation and region”. But your editorial (27 September) made the common mistake of emphasising wind and tidal schemes to help disadvantaged areas. Important as these green energy sources are, the real potential for jobs in every constituency lies in making the UK's existing 28m dwellings and 2m commercial and public-sector buildings energy-efficient, with renewable technology such as solar PV fitted where feasible. There are, for example, 8m homes with solid walls which are without any effective insulation, and nearly 40m smart meters still need to be installed.
The majority of this work has to be done locally and has the advantage of being hard to automate or relocate abroad; it also requires a wide range of activities and skills that are likely to be needed for decades. It will therefore inevitably help improve job opportunities for the “left-behind” communities, with resultant knock-on economic benefits for the communities where these workers live and work. Owen Jones (Labour needed a reset button — and it got one, 27 September) asserted that Jeremy Corbyn's crucial identification of climate change as the greatest crisis facing humanity made it a bread-and-butter issue. Equally the role of a green revolution in jobs in improving the lives of those in leave-voting areas could well make it a bread and Brexit issue as well.
Colin Hines
Convenor, UK Green New Deal Group
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I agree with this.
You cannot beat reinvestment in existing infrastructure as a means of creating jobs.
You also invest to save money in the long run which the schemes mentioned above will produce.
The way we run infrastructure these days (social and physical) seems to be about extracting as much value as possible and then whisking it away to give to rent seekers.
This is how we transfer wealth from the many to the few and why we have public squalor and private affluence.
A suggestion for a small contribution to the solution at no cost to the public purse. Revise the regulations and practises for grade 2 and grade 2* domestic properties. Thousands of these were listed in ‘drive by’ inspections in the 1980’s they are denied double glazing even in cosmetically identical frames to the originals. My own home’s listing reads something like mid 19th century stone built, terrace in a vernacular style fronted by a dwarf wall topped with railings. Not exactly an architectural star. Local lore has it that my house was built from the demolition rubble of a finer house that burned down in the 18th C. Every window in the house is different, the originals were replaced by the estate that owned the village in the 60’s prior to listing. No inspection was made of my property. My neighbour lives in a house built at the same time by the same builders using the same stone from the same local quarry to a very similar design, it is not listed. Any attempt to create a sympathetic but thermally advantageous change is met with an official’s pursed lips and shaking head. The answer is always, NO – what was the question?
I would guess that there are many instances of regulation, perhaps instituted by well meaning people, that no longer fit the challenges we now face. Surely it must be obvious to even the most boneheaded jobsworth that arbitrary blanket listings will not protect buildings from climate change. Conservation by all means but prioritise conserving the planet.
Interesting point
Sensitive updating of Grade 2 buildings (and there are very many of those) to improve insulation should indeed be reviewed.
It’s absurd to think that in order to keep the past alive, we must jeopardise the future. Those very houses were added to and modified very many times before we created the administrative regulations which now make them untouchable.
Solutions exist, now there needs to be a change in regulations as you rightly point out.
Good letter good points. Just finishing a (renewable) power to gas (hydrogen) paper which points to the need to convert the UK from natural gas (methane) to hydrogen. Such a move will also create large numbers of fairly paid jobs with prospects & has considerable synergy with the need for the (urgent) renovation of Uk building fabric.
One this subject (building fabric) I’d like to make a point. Back in the late 1960s the area electricity board MANWEB (state owned) asked itself a question: what should be our relationship with our customers: the asnwer was to help them use electricity more efficiently and effectively (private companies do not have a monopoly on enlightened thinking)
This led the company to build a new headquarters in Chester (circa 1971) as an example of the efficienct and effective use of electricity. Until it’s demolition by Scottish Power in 1994 the building was the most energy efficient in Western Europe. It required little energy input until outside temperatures were down to minus 4 centigrade – heat came from bodies and strip lighting. The point is that few commercial building built now could match this energy performance. One of the reasons they struggle is the “steel and glass” fetish amongst architects. key points; high performance buildings have been around for a long time, government owned companies are capable of enlightened thinking and following such thinking up up with action. In that respect, the Uk of today, could learn a great deal from the UK of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Mikwe Parr says:
“MANWEB (state owned) asked itself a question: what should be our relationship with our customers: the asnwer was to help them use electricity more efficiently and effectively (private companies do not have a monopoly on enlightened thinking)”
In this particular case the very opposite is true. The privatised companies have every incentive NOT to reduce customer consumption, because that is where their profit comes from. Furthermore the pricing discount systems favour those who are the high end users. It’s an insane aspect of energy policy.
It was folly to privatise generation, and out and out theft, and folly, to privatise the distribution grid. (Except of course as a piece of political chicanery)