A few years ago, phrases like “renewables revolution”, “re-wiring Britain” and “green jobs” used to trip off my tongue. Indeed, I coined quite a few of them.
As a UK energy minister, I believed all of that agenda to be possible. And indeed it was, possible – but given the quagmire that is Government and the absence of any clear sense of priority, highly improbable. So when I hear pronouncements now that “green jobs” are going to be a key element in fending off the tide of recession and unemployment, my first response is healthy scepticism. Rhetoric alone does not keep a single person in work.
Furthermore, my recollection is that the principal blockage on anything very radical in terms of energy policy and the climate-change agenda came from Gordon Brown’s Treasury. Have they changed their attitudes or priorities?
As is generally true of finance ministries, they thought in terms of expenditure rather than investment; in other words, a short-term approach that precluded radical initiatives on what, to them, were non-urgent issues like how our electricity is generated, distributed and saved.
Some transformation in thinking may have occurred within Whitehall since I got out, but if so, I have failed to detect it. Everything continues to move at the pace of the slowest. The idea that there is some master plan waiting to be dusted down which will create hundreds of thousands of “green jobs” is risible.
In truth, the most recent “green jobs” enthusiasm owes more to aping the example of Barack Obama than to anything more substantial that is actually going on within Government, either in Whitehall or Edinburgh.
A strategy we should have been following for years has become politically fashionable. I think there is a fair chance of Obama delivering something quite radical in order to fulfil his “green jobs” commitment over the next few years. However, I see no similar signs of leadership on this side of the Atlantic.
Even Obama has started to find out that a time of economic recession is not necessarily the easiest in which to start pushing a “green jobs” agenda. Much better to do so – as it would have been here – when the economy was booming and people could afford to be environmentally altruistic.
For example, there is no doubt that, for the next few decades, renewable generation will continue to cost more than coal, gas or nuclear. Technologies like offshore wind, wave and tidal are still at the margins of, or currently beyond, viability and will involve huge capital outlays if they are to make a serious contribution.
All have the potential to create jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. There are important potential synergies with the offshore oil industry. But first there needs to be investment, in both transmission and generation, on a scale that really would require a major adjustment of priorities. And all the time, other voices will be saying that it could be done more cheaply.
Obama himself has quickly run into a parallel dilemma in the United States. One of his first acts as president was to introduce tougher emissions standards for the auto industry. He also gave environmentally conscious states like California the right to set their own limits amid howls of protest from the industry that this would raise costs and cut jobs.
He is, of course, absolutely right to take these measures, which acknowledge the folly of American dependence on oil imports. They will also help ensure that the drive for alternative motor fuels is maintained even at a time when the price of oil has receded sharply. But the short-term effect may well be to cost blue-collar jobs before green ones are created.
As similar calculations kick in, I doubt if there will be many brave political decisions taken within our own beleaguered economy in order to give substance to the delivery of green jobs. I will be delighted to be proved wrong, and there are a few simple measures which could, and should, have been taken years ago and seem to me to have no corresponding downside. One of these is to start taking energy efficiency really seriously instead of endlessly talking about it. I am attracted to the parallel with the 1980s programme to convert every home in Britain to North Sea gas – an imperative of its time. Why could we not have a similar approach to energy efficiency instead of lots of half-baked schemes that omit far more households and workplaces than they include?
This really could create a load of jobs very quickly and, while the costs would be substantial, they should no longer be inconceivable at a time when billions are being airily spent on rescuing banks from their own folly.
Delivering just that one programme on a substantial scale would give credibility to the claims being made for “green jobs”. It would also have lasting benefits, both social and environmental. Let’s see if it happens.
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