Environment

Environment
The KfW? “We should copy it” – banker

24th May 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

Each year, Germany’s KfW invests 25 times the initial annual capitalisation of the UK’s Green Investment Bank GIB. Today’s draft GIB legislation only serves to reveal the gulf in ambition with our competitors. The KfW Bankengruppe granted EUR 25.3 billion for investments in environmental and climate protection in 2010, a third of its investments. The UK provides GIB with a one-off £3bn budget over the fiscal cycle, and has yet to set its green mandate. Meanwhile, the AAA-rated KfW funds energy efficient construction and rehab in the private sector, offshore wind and geothermal power, municipal modernisation projects and “climate-friendly local public transport systems.”

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Environment
Energy Bill needs a plan for growth

22nd May 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

Alongside the Energy Bill, a TUC Briefing, published today, argues that the government should set out a plan for energy jobs, skills and growth. At least £110bn of clean energy investment is required by 2020, and further £16bn a year through to 2030. Despite rising concerns over energy bills, we are facing a new “dash for gas” stranding the UK with high CO2 emissions into the 2030s. The Energy Bill must therefore enforce carbon capture & storage (CCS) investment on coal and gas power stations from the outset. The Bill should engage industry with a new CCS Feed in Tariff for major industrial sites. New measures to incentivise energy efficiency could save UK businesses £23 billion annually.

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Environment
Cuts to homes energy efficiency drive up fuel poverty

17th May 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

The TUC argues that today’s fuel poverty figures show that the significant investment made under the last government on energy efficiency measures had a huge impact, removing 500,000 households from fuel poverty in 2010. But fears of resurgence in fuel poverty, driven by the price of gas, cuts to energy efficiency programmes and falling incomes are borne out in today’s report.

An extra one million households in England alone fell into the fuel poverty trap this year: there are 3.9 million fuel poor households in England, up from 3.5 million in 2010. And new evidence from ACE shows that the government is cutting in half the budget to make fuel poor homes energy efficient, despite evidence that this is the most effective way to bring homes out of fuel poverty.

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Economic Reports
FT is right about 41,000 jobs from Regional Growth Fund

15th May 2012 — Filed under: Economic Reports, Economics, Environment

Philip Pearson

Lord Heseltine thunders at the FT today for an “extremely misleading” report that the Regional Growth Fund will create just 41,000 jobs, costing up to £200,000 to create a single post. Not so, says Lord Heseltine, who chairs the RGF advisory panel. The fund “will create 328,000 jobs … As I made clear to your reporter, I do not accept the figure of 41,000 jobs, which gives a misleading impression of the impact of the fund.” So who is right? The FT headlined a review last Friday by the National Audit Office of the government’s flagship to create private sector jobs where public sector job losses would cut deepest. The NAO found that the 219 successful projects would create 117,000 full time equivalent jobs. Of these, 41,000 are additional full-time equivalent private sector jobs. The average cost if £33,000 per job, with a tenth of projects exceeding £106,000 per job.

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Environment
Green growth fluffed in Queen’s Speech

9th May 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

The Queen’s Speech opened with a set of measures intended “to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability.” Its single positive, recovery-oriented Bill will establish a Green Investment Bank. But it missed an opportunity to address the prevailing anti-austerity mood with an offer to boost the bank’s £3bn capitalisation. And if the government was fully alert to the industrial opportunities of a low carbon economy, it would have bracketed the Energy Bill as a growth and recovery measure, too.

Unless the government manages to develop a compelling growth story to its Electricity Market Reforms, we can look forward to an Energy Bill under attack from the anti-wind farm brigades.

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Environment
Happy Shell pulls out of North Sea renewables

27th April 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

Two questions for Shell today as it pulls the plug on North Sea wind projects. With a 16% surge in three months profits to £4.5bn, why do companies like this need the Coalition’s £3bn subsidy for oil & gas exploration off the Shetlands? And, is the company’s finance director right to criticise the “vast amount of public subsidies going into renewables”, when the government already subsidises fossil fuels by £3.63bn a year, mostly in the form of VAT breaks? That’s three times the support received by the renewables industry, as the REA reported this week.

Those in the renewables industry who feared that the new government subsidy for offshore oil & gas world deter investment in renewables have so quickly been proven right.

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Environment
£50m cut from green economy budget

25th April 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

Hidden cuts to the green economy fuel the recession. As David Thorpe commented on my fuel poverty blog, it seems that the government actually under spent its energy efficiency budget by a third last year, saving £50.6 million. Today, the Energy Secretary Ed Davey was telling the Clean Energy Ministerial in London that:

“We should make more strongly the business case for going green. Efficiency policies are unashamedly good for growth – using less resources lowers operating costs and frees up capital.”

But as we blogged earlier, deep funding cuts are seriously damaging progress towards eliminating fuel poverty. Now, a Parliamentary Answer to his Shadow Minister, Caroline Flint, seems to suggest that one third of the budget was unspent for the last financial year, 2011-12, £50.6 million:

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Environment
Not NOW, please!

20th April 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Philip Pearson

Poor start for NOW, the new anti-renewables campaign, launching its batty Charter on the same day a new poll showed two-thirds of the public support wind farms! With so many people out of work or forced into part-time jobs, it’s galling that NOW claims “there’s no evidence that wind farms bring significant local employment.” In truth, tens of thousands are employed in wind power projects. The Renewable Energy Association has a new report out next Tuesday with the facts: we won’t break their embargo, but look for the new data on the jobs growth, skills created, export opportunities, turnover, revenues to the Treasury, and annual growth rates an example to any Chancellor.

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Environment
So, green jobs are a bad thing, are they?

20th April 2012 — Filed under: Environment

Owen Tudor

Right-wing blogger (that’s the politest I can be) Tim Worstall writes in the online version of the magazine for millionaires, Forbes, that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have got it all wrong about green jobs. In the strange world of Worstall, it’s a bad thing that green industries could produce 48 million jobs in the 12 countries* studied by the ITUC. Because jobs cost money, see, so they’re “a cost, not a benefit”.

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Economics
President Obama award for US greenworkplace project!

17th April 2012 — Filed under: Economics, Environment

Philip Pearson

A greenworkplaces pilot project led by the US communications union IUE-CWA
won a Champions for Change Award for its work in training union members to identify energy efficiencies in manufacturing companies. The White House program highlights examples of citizens who represent President Obama’s vision of out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building the rest of the world through projects that move their communities forward. IUE-CWA’s work stems from an innovative partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). In a pilot program, front line workers conduct the energy efficiency “Treasure Hunts.” For an average one-off investment of $34,500 in energy saving equipment, the unions “Treasure Hunt” program achieves annual utility bill savings of $97,500 and cut CO2 emissions by 779 metric tonnes annually.

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