{"id":14069,"date":"2012-02-09T10:05:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T10:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14069"},"modified":"2012-02-09T10:05:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T10:05:29","slug":"green-todays-quantitative-easing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/02\/09\/green-todays-quantitative-easing\/","title":{"rendered":"Green today’s quantitative easing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist Professor Richard Werner<\/strong>, who proposed the term \u201cquantitative easing\u201d in Japan in the 1990s, and\u00a0Caroline Lucas MP, of the\u00a0Green New Deal Group<\/a><\/strong>, are calling for a \u00a370 billion programme of \u201cGreen Quantitative Easing\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>in order to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and set the country on course for a transition to a genuinely green economy.<\/p>\n

In a report launched today, Professor Werner, Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development at the University of Southampton, makes the case that Green QE can reach parts of the economy that traditional QE has failed to do, making a real difference in terms of jobs and the environment.<\/p>\n

Prof. Werner said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bank of England is expected to announce today a further round of Quantitative Easing to follow the \u00a3200 billion of QE1 announced in 2009 and the \u00a375B of QE2 announced last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis staggering \u00a3275 billion largely ended up with the banks in the futile hope that it would result in a substantial increase in UK lending to business. Instead it was used to rebuild their balance sheets and invest in commodity speculation.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo ensure that this does not happen again, we need a different kind of QE, to help the wider economy directly and to implement some badly needed green projects that would enhance the sustainability of the economy and improve the environment\u2013as well as creating thousands of new jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green MP Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion), who has welcomed the report, said:<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is understandably difficult for people to get their head around the idea that the Bank of England could magic out of nothing up to \u00a370 Billion of Green Quantitative Easing. Yet it has already e-printed \u00a327 billion (around \u00a34,000 for every man woman and child in the UK) in an effort to get increased borrowing to British business via giving the money to the banks. But this money has completely failed to reach small businesses in the real economy which urgently need support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bankers have had their \u00a3275 billion chance.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s time for the Bank of England to help create jobs, stabilize the economy, and support the environment through a package of Green Quantitative Easing. I will be calling upon MPs of all parties to support these proposals, and urging my Parliamentary colleagues on the Treasury Select Committee to raise the issue of Green QE when they next question Sir Mervyn King.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Green New Deal group<\/a>\u00a0has called for Green QE to initially spend up to \u00a320 billion on fitting free solar PV for the occupants of the roughly 3 million south facing roofs,\u00a0best suited to capture the maximum amount of energy. Based on last year\u2019s figures when around 20,000 installation jobs were created putting PV on 150,000 dwellings, a million home a year programme would eventually create 140,000 jobs. If that were to be extended to all the potential 9 million homes that could benefit from PV installation at a cost of up to \u00a355 billion, then the employment growth would be much larger still. The households involved would save up to \u00a3250 per annum in reduced electricity bills.<\/p>\n

A further \u00a316 billion of Green QE could be spent kick-starting the Government\u2019s Green Deal energy efficiency programme for homes. The Government expects this to support at least 65,000 jobs in insulation and construction by 2015. Local authorities, many of whom are already involved in planning to make tens of thousands more local homes energy efficient, could access a QE Green Deal fund to initially finance such work.<\/p>\n

Professor Richard Werner said:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThese are exceptional times and they call for exceptional action from the Bank of England. Mervyn King has expressed a desire to see QE help tackle\u00a0\"the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s if not ever.\"\u00a0<\/em>Another serious crisis is climate change and Green QE could not only help address that, but through the huge number of jobs and business opportunities involved, it could also help tackle our financial crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economist Professor Richard Werner, who proposed the term \u201cquantitative easing\u201d in Japan in the 1990s, and\u00a0Caroline Lucas MP, of the\u00a0Green New Deal Group, are calling
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-green-new-deal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}