This post is by Colin Hines, convenor of the Green New Deal group and was originally on the Green Alliance blog. It is reproduced with his permission:
Linking tackling of the coronavirus crisis with solving the climate crisis is now being called for on all sides, from the UK's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to the IMF.
The need for such an approach to become an urgent political and public priority, and hence succeed, was highlighted by the recent ominous warning from Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), of the possibility of a business as usual, post lockdown surge in carbon emissions.
The only way to avoid this is if tackling climate change is seen as the best way to rescue the economy from the effects of the virus. The key question is what initiatives can dramatically reduce carbon emissions whilst clearly benefiting a huge range of people in all parts of the country.
Energy efficiency can also tackle the jobs crisis
It requires policies that are popular with the public and they must be seen to clearly address the burgeoning unemployment crisis country wide, providing secure long term jobs, particularly for younger people. The CCC's emphasis on making all homes energy efficient by 2050 will help to achieve that since it would require up to 20,000 homes and buildings to be transformed every week for the next thirty years.
A huge number and range of jobs are required to install, service and update this massive retrofitting programme. The roles needed include plumbers, electricians, carpenters, builders, solar PV roof fitters, engineers, building scientists and researchers. Also to ensure local expertise, safety and community acceptability, the involvement of local authorities, unions and neighbourhood groups will be vital.
Finally, a national skills and training programme will be necessary for both young people and older workers in need of reskilling. These should be both college and industry-based and rigorously designed to ensure a high standard of both installation and programme management. This will involve a large expansion of relevant departments in further education colleges, technical colleges and universities.
Such a nationwide ‘jobs in every constituency' project would also boost domestic manufacturing. An inadequately recognised job generator is the fact that gas heating in more than 20 million homes will need to be replaced predominantly by heat pumps, that's hundreds of thousands required annually. This points to the need for the government to make bailing out the manufacturing and steel industries conditional on devising detailed feasibility studies into how they will provide for this huge decades-long domestic market.
Scotland is ahead of the game
This incredibly ambitious programme will of course need time to build, but it need not start from scratch. The government should look to what is already happening in Scotland which has a comprehensive energy efficiency programme designated as a national infrastructure priority, addressing as it does the climate emergency, fuel poverty and the need to increase economic activity everywhere.
The practicalities of achieving these goals across the whole of the UK were recently addressed in the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group's comprehensive roadmap, Rebuilding for resilience, which showed how the nation could quickly expand its existing energy saving capacity and which training programmes and funding mechanisms would be necessary to do so.
Of course, a key question that will inevitably be asked is how will such an enormous country wide initiative be paid for? The government's response to the coronavirus has been to turn on the spending taps, possibly to the tune of £300 billion. Expanding this to tackle climate change is made easier by the government's ability to borrow money at negative interest rates. Green quantitative easing could also help to ensure that we can pay to make 20,000 buildings energy tight every week. Over time there will also be higher tax takes from the industries and workers newly involved in such an enormous programme.
The final difficulty is introducing such a huge programme in the time of coronavirus. Ross Armstrong, managing director of Warmworks, the managing agent of largest energy efficiency scheme in the UK (Warmer Homes Scotland), has already agreed an approach with the Scottish Government as to how that scheme, which has helped almost 20,000 homes across Scotland over the last five years, can be restarted to allow safe working and appropriate physical distancing. Warmer Homes Scotland will resume work in people's homes from this week and help thousands of homes over the coming months to save energy and money off their bills.
As as we wait for a vaccine, now is the time for national and local government to prepare for a new nationwide energy efficiency programme. Warmworks' experience in Scotland indicates that a programme of this type could be up and running within a year, creating jobs, skills and apprenticeships across the country.
Such a programme, that can improve home comfort and lower bills for so many, as well as providing jobs for decades in every MP's constituency, especially for the young, would provide much needed hope for the future. It will help put the nation back to work, our homes and businesses on track to a zero carbon future, and place tackling climate change back where it belongs, centre stage.
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Can some of the money for this proposed programme come from Electricity companies? As a large portion of our elec. bill is for the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). The purpose of ECO is to install energy efficient measures in domestic homes.
I will be candid and say I have no idea – but I very, very much doubt it
Like all “pay fors”, there will be a sizeable proportion of the population who do not want to, or can not afford to pay this ECO. And they resent bitterly that its been added to their electricity bill.
They will vote for the political party who says they will reduce this, by maybe cutting back on green endeavours.
Bottom line.
The GND should be fully funded by the government. If the additional money released into the economy due to GND spending causes overheating, then tax’s should be increased. These tax could be increased on Electricity and would replace the ECO. However, since electricity enables the most green / carbon free power, I would suggest this would be a very bad idea. We need to encourage more electricity consumption (which can be powered by wind turbines / solar), not adding levies on it to push people to using something else .
Agreed
Absolutely a top priority for government intervention in the form of a GreenNewDeal. Private investment would be boosted if we implemented a Corbon Fee and Dividend policy, set to rise 10% pa every year, so as to guarantee rising savings for financial payback. And let’s not forget that UK pays to import gas at cost of £8.5 billion every year (mostly from Norway which has become fabulously wealthy as a result). Not to mention oil from the Middle East, which could be avoided by switching to electric cars. Its time to create UK jobs and make big national savings on fossil fuels in the process.
Richard – are you familiar with this campaign/petition? If not, is it one that you would endorse and be happy to get involved in/with. I ask just out of curiosity.
https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/
We’re creating a movement calling for the trillions of pounds invested in our UK pensions to build a better world.
WHAT’S THE ISSUE?
There’s £3 trillion in UK pensions. This money is owned by all of us, and is invested to build our savings for the future. But from fossil fuels to tobacco, exploitation to extraction, these investments are often contradicting our values. That’s why we’re calling for our money to be invested in building a future we can be proud of, economies we can rely on, and an environment we can thrive in.
We HAVE to build a better world post-Covid & this will make the biggest difference. Wherever your pension is, you can choose one that invests in companies you BELIEVE in, (not tobacco or destroying rainforests!) It’s possible to be proud of your pension.
https://twitter.com/emmafreud/status/1277893760182030337
They also partner with Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) – is this an organisation you could work with? A4S seems well placed to help/support in pushing/promoting CAN and Sustainable Cost Accounting.
Or, I am missing something here and in reality these are the very organisations and campaigns that are doing more harm than good.
I am aware – since yesterday
I think their demands are too timid but I have signed
A4S is very much the establishment on this – but I would be more than happy to talk
There is an opening for Sustainability and Accounting Manager at (A4S) in London. For anyone that is interested, click on link below to apply:
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1892399836/
I think you should apply Richard? Why not? Throw yourself into the mix.
I know you are way too senior, over qualified for the role and have much more to offer than is required in terms of experience, knowledge, skills etc. It is obvious that you posess all the qualities they have outlined in abundance.
But I think you are the ideal candidate to shake things up at A4S and could be the individual to steer them in the right direction.
12 Month Fixed Term Contract
A4S’s purpose: Our purpose is to transform finance to deliver a sustainable future.
About the role: The Sustainability and Accounting Manager will be part of a fast-moving and innovative team. The role will focus on the design and delivery of practical tools, guidance materials, case studies, workshops and other outreach materials. You will be based within the Knowledge and Technical team but will collaborate closely with other A4S team members across all of our programmes. Your key areas of responsibility will include:
Developing practical materials to help finance teams to embed sustainability into their decision making, such as guides, case studies, online content and tools
Providing technical input and content to projects across the team, researching new areas at the intersection of sustainability and finance
Creating and delivering outreach materials including presentations, speaker notes, workshop and webinar materials
Building and managing a global portfolio of practical examples
Providing technical oversight of the commitments process for all CFO Leadership Network members
Delivering content in webinars and workshops
You will come into contact with a wide range of stakeholders in this role and you must be comfortable interacting at a very senior level and be at ease building professional working relationships.
The role will also provide a variety of opportunities to develop new skills within a dynamic team environment. These will include technical, operational, communication and project management skills.
About the successful candidate: You must have excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to represent complex ideas and materials in a simple and engaging format. You will have experience writing impactful collateral, such as practical guidance, workshop materials, papers, briefs and reports. An understanding of the use of digital formats to communicate information would be an advantage.
Educated to degree level, you will need to be a qualified accountant, ideally with previous sustainability experience. You must have a proactive and flexible approach to your work and excellent attention to detail. You should be able to work autonomously and as part of a team, and be able to build strong relationships with a wide range of individuals, globally.
This is a unique opportunity to make a significant impact across the global finance and accounting community.
Eric
It’s interesting but nit appealing
My interests are much wider than that role would permit
And it would silence this blog
Richard
I know that this is mainly about energy efficiency, but the GND must obviously include transport, and the increasing mention of electric cars as an answer must be a debunked, on grounds of resources, and the added pollution they will cause. (Extra PM2.5 particles, more lethal than tailpipe emissions, produced from brakes and tyres.)
The near future transport revolution must obviously be green.
Burning fossil fuel will have ended.
Transport, especially in towns and cities, will produce zero emissions, not only tailpipe emissions but also the more lethal PM2.5’s, produced by tyres and brakes.
It has been shown in various studies that vehicle emissions have caused major health problems for our citizens.
See today’s Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/air-pollution-likely-to-make-coronavirus-worse-say-uk-experts
Electric propulsion will be the normal. Some of this will be in the form of battery propelled vehicles, but the majority must come from mains powered vehicles.
The only way of doing this, with zero emissions, is to put these mains powered vehicles on rails. With battery powered vehicles feeding passengers to the main railed routes.
This is nothing new, and is being done, increasingly in towns and cities, all over Mainland Europe.