There are as many as 20 people chasing the one vacancy in some areas. The UK wind industry is growing fast and now employs over 10,000 people, with many projects sites in rural areas and areas of high unemployment. In January alone, 2,700 wind industry jobs were either created or reinforced with new contracts.

As  DECC points out, “The creation of jobs in the renewable energy sector, investment in new manufacturing capability, and the consequent direct and indirect benefits will support our transition to a green economy.” The offshore wind industry could directly employ 30,000 people by 2020. 

Hopefully ITV will ensure a fair and balanced reporting of the economic successes of the renewable industry. Like Mabey Bridge Ltd, whose Bevil Mabey Structural Steelworks, opened on 12th May 2011, is part of the company’s £38 million investment in the renewable energy sector. This is the UK’s only indigenous manufacturer of wind turbine towers. It created some 240 jobs in addition to the 400 already employed by the company in Chepstow and Lydney. 

Or take Scottish and Southern Energy’s Clyde windfarm. It represents an investment of £500 million, with 200 construction jobs as the windfarm is being built and a staff of 30 to operate and maintain the site. 

The Scottish Government’s £70 million National Renewables Infrastructure Fund, designed to strengthen port and manufacturing facilities and supply chains,  will leverage significant private sector investment. Over the next four years it should  deliver 28,000 jobs and £7.1 billion in value to Scotland’s economy over the coming decade.  

Perhaps we need a proper analysis of the motivations behind the growing number of attacks on renewable energy in the UK. But in there somewhere is an anti-regulation, anti-government, anti-public funding ideology that is apparently blind to the harsh realities of unemployment, falling wages and diminishing employment opportunities which the green industries could help solve.

These achievements add weight to the already compelling argument that wind energy and other forms of renewables are no longer an ‘alternative’ source of energy, but form an integral part of our energy mix.

However, this unprecedented growth and success has inevitably brought with it greater scrutiny of the economic impact of renewables.

This debate has intensified over recent months as consumer energy bills rise and the reality of an impending energy deficit gets ever more real.

Efforts have been made by proponents of traditional energy sources to paint wind as the villain in all of this; nevertheless, wind power only represents about £10 of the average annual domestic energy bill. Increasing fossil fuel prices are to blame for the majority of the increase in energy costs we’ve seen over the last few years.

Minimising our exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices requires an expansion of renewables – which is why we’ve called on the Government to retain the present levels of support for onshore and offshore wind. But this has to be achieved in such a way as to ensure that the communities hosting renewable energy projects share in their benefits too.

Right now, the business rates for onshore wind projects are abstracted into a central Government fund before being redistributed. RenewableUK believes they should be retained at the local level – not just the local authority area, but the locality of the wind farm itself. Doing so would allow communities to better understand the advantages of hosting a wind farm, and alongside the funding that signatories to our Community Benefit Protocol provide, help support communities to direct their own development.

We’re calling on the Chancellor to include this provision in the upcoming budget. We believe that the shift towards renewable energy is something from which everyone can benefit.

First to January’s industrial news. According to RenewableUK, Samsung announced a £100 million project at Fife Energy Park to develop a 7 megawatt offshore turbine, employing 500 people. It’s the company’s first venture of this type in Europe. Huddersfield-based David Brown Gear Systems will design and manufacture the gearboxes, a coup for a British manufacturer. Meanwhile, Vestas submitted a planning application to build a factory at Sheerness in Kent which will create 2,000 jobs when it opens in 2015.

Manufacturer Mabey Bridge, Chepstow, will supply 35 wind turbine towers  to the turbine manufacturer Nordex – Mabey Bridge has recently doubled its workforce to 200 and introduced a 24-hour shift system to meet demand.

And also in January, in the small wind sector, Leicestershire-based Evance Wind Turbines announced its sales had grown 200% in 12 months, leading to a 25% increase in its workforce and a doubling in the size of its manufacturing facility.

The Tory MPs claim, in their letter to Cameron, of a huge ”taxpayer subsidy” is plain wrong. It’s a levy on consumer bills, and as a new DECC study shows, renewable energy policies add just 2% (£19) a year to consumer energy bills last year. 

Media bias against renewables would be funny if it wasn’t damaging jobs and skills opportunities. A Pirc study shows that in the Daily Mail 46% of all articles mentioning renewables were negative, while only 15% were positive. Of articles centrally concerned with renewables in the Daily Mail, 75% were negative. The Sun likewise was broadly more negative than positive in its coverage. But jobs and employment tended to be associated with much more positive coverage, especially in the Daily Mail.

Oddly, the tax paid for emitting a tonne of CO2 varies widely according to the fuel used and whether it was used by households or businesses. This results from the interaction of an array of overlapping policy initiatives – from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and Carbon Reduction Commitment to the Climate Change Levy and the Renewables Obligation – each raising the price of some sources of emissions but not others.

Arguing for more efficeint green taxes and not to abolish them, the IFS says we are in the “ludicrous position” the IFS says that CO2 emissions from domestic gas consumption are not just untaxed but positively subsidised relative to other goods and services. As a result, instead of choices being made on the basis of prices that reflect the underlying commercial and environmental costs of different activities:

• energy-intensive business activity is much more strongly discouraged than household energy use.
• households and businesses have a strong incentive to use gas rather than electric heating.
• electricity generation is biased towards coal rather than gas as a fuel.

Heavily penalising some forms of carbon emissions, while leaving others untouched even if they would be much easier to reduce, is an immensely costly way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Simplification and consistency are needed. But concerns over carbon leakage – the loss of jobs and investment to competitors without CO2 controls – explain the special provisions for energy intensive industries announced in the Autumn Statement. IFS recognises that the need to secure industrial production is a constraint on improvements to carbon pricing. But smart changes would support improvements to the UK’s overall economic performance.

What emerged from our discussions around the groundbreaking report, the New Green Team was that it’s now up to local authorities, trade unions and the renewable and energy efficiency industries to say to the politicians that local schemes which create or save jobs, boost the local economy, tackle climate change and fuel poverty are just what we are all looking for.  A key barrier now is persuading the Coalition to just get over their dogmatic refusal to recognise the potential of public sector solutions to the sustainability challenge.

A major reason jobs are not materialising, and at worst being lost, is the cut to the Feed in Tariff supporting solar power.  Howard Johns, Chief Executive of Southern Solar, said thousands of jobs were lost because of government cuts to the rate payable to households and organisations that sell their surplus power back into the grid.  Individual and possibly community level schemes may survive, but as things stand local authority led schemes may well not.

At a fundamental level, this is about more than just the feed in tariff, and indeed the Green Deal.  It’s also about austerity and the failure to properly think through the role that the public sector has to play in the recovery.

That’s why the report, and the debate that it has started, is so important.  It gives us an opportunity to begin to talk about the role of the public sector, of local government, in creating decent jobs and contributing to a more fair and sustainable economy.  This does rest on recognition of two important facts:

First, the interdependence between public and private sectors.  As a survey last summer by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation demonstrates – cut the public sector and the private sector does not necessarily fill the gap.  20% of private sector employers think that public spending cuts and the lost of trading opportunities, will have either a serious impact on them.

Secondly, it’s because the private sector, left to its own devices, is not up to the task of creating the jobs we need.  Between 1998 and 2007, 2.2 million jobs were created in the UK – well over half were public sector, or in charities and firms dependent on public contracts.

These did not “crowd out” private sector employment.  Instead they compensated, as one commentator has put it, for ‘the incompetence of the private sector to employ’.

The recommendations in the New Green Team report published 31 January, clearly point towards a sustainable growth strategy, demonstrating the steps that help generate the jobs that are urgently needed:

• reinstating the Feed in Tariff for local authority and community scale renewable projects.
• doing more to maximise opportunities from the new energy efficiency retrofit scheme for homes and businesses  - the Green Deal.
• Unions need to engage in tripartite discussions with councils and business on investing in green energy jobs and skills, to ensure that decent, well paid employment offers a pathway out of the recession.

But the challenge for us all is how move to a positive growth and decent jobs whilst trying to cope with the cuts and austerity agenda.

We can only succeed in opposing austerity if we have an alternative. This report and the debate that its started is an important contribution to developing such an alternative.

The GWPF has routinely challenged the climate science community for a lack of evidence, openness and accountability. What’s sauce for the goose…

Knowing better than the work of the thousands of eminent scientific studies contributing to the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, in December 2011 the GWPF published The BBC and Climate Change: A Triple Betrayal.  The BBC had

“failed in its professional duty to report accurately and objectively on the issue of climate change …BBC journalists went out of their way to publicise almost every alarmist claim the promoters of the scare could come up with, even after these had been shown to be without scientific foundation.”

Lord Jay, in an introduction to the report, commented: What really needs changing is the size of the BBC.

Characteristic of the GWPF’s reportage is its coverage of a new Pew Centre study of American opinion. The recession and job insecurity are inevitably uppermost in the minds of many Americans. This is reflected in Pew’s annual poll, confirming that jobs and the economy are the main public concerns. But the GWPF, through its climate sceptic lens, finds that “global warming is last in importance with the public in 20 topics covered.” Yet the same survey shows 43% of respondents were concerned about the environment, an increase on a year ago.  

There is no doubting the dip in public concern in the UK over climate change. Yet in a recent Yougov survey, 60% of respondents believe Britain “should tackle climate change” – whether unilaterally or making action conditional on the actions of others. Just under one third are not persuaded of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among opinion-formers, perhaps reflecting the GWPF’s core constituency, some 14% of Conservative supporters, 54% of Labour and 41% of Liberal Democrats view climate change as a high priority.

Former UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, now President of Realizing Rights, has commented on the “enormous human and social impacts – not just environmental impacts – that are resulting from climate change”.

What is dangerous climate change? The UN Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calls for the “stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” (Article 2).  This is the context within which Lord Lawson’s Foundation is operating.

Meanwhile, the Green Alliance has signalled “five strong measures” needed to make the government’s flagship carbon reduction policies credible.

The Green Alliance is calling on the Government to:

• help to encourage take-up, particularly by using the Green Investment Bank to help deliver preferential 2% interest rates on loans;
• give more support to the fuel poor, by increasing funding through the Energy Company Obligation;
• make sure local economies benefit, by supporting Green Deal accreditation for small businesses and tradesmen;
• spread the message, by introducing a national marketing strategy and give existing community networks communications resources; and
•  help to drive real demand reduction, by making sure the most effective measures are installed first and working with local agencies to help people change.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC) believes that local authorities should play a leading role, working with local partners, in deciding how ECO resources are spent in their area. This would enable resources to be spent in accordance with local needs and is consistent with localism principles.

This proposal chimes with the key point in The New Green Team a UNISON study, supported by the TUC. It shows how local government can play a major role in our economic recovery and in efforts to ensure that the UK meets its targets on carbon emissions and renewables.  This approach involves bringing together local governments economic and environmental agendas together in a more systematic way, creating green & decent jobs through the installation of community scale renewables and roll out of energy efficiency programmes.

The report will be launched at a TUC seminar in Congress House on 31 January. Speakers include: Howard John, Managing Director, Southern Solar; Caroline Lucas MP; Frances O’Grady, Deputy General Secretary, TUC; Mark Bramah, Assistant Chief Executive, APSE; and Mike Jeram, National Secretary for Business and the Environment, UNISON.

The benefits of an effective fuel poverty strategy offer the triple gains of relieving hardship for low income families, saving carbon and creating new jobs and skills. It’s hard to see the point of an unambitious Green Deal.

Rather than prolonging uncertainty to industry, jobs and confidence, the Government would do better to acknowledge that the UK’s green investments are nowhere near ambitious enough. Germany has the highest rate of green energy investment as a percentage of GDP of any country, at 1.4% of GDP.  Much more needs to be done to meet our carbon emissions targets and, equally important, offer the prospect of new jobs and new skills as a way out of the recession.

In 2010, the UK slumped from third place in world investment rankings in green investment to 13th place, according to the US Pew Environment Group. The UK saw a sharp 70% decline in clean energy investment, dropping the nation out of the top 10 among G-20 countries. Investments in 2010 totalled $3.3 billion, compared with 2009 levels over $11 billion. “A sharp decline in offshore wind energy investments and uncertainty surrounding the policy perspective of a new government appeared to have stunted 2010 investments,” the study said. “Investors appear to believe that there is a high level of uncertainty about the direction of clean energy policy-making in the country.”

Germany, by contrast, ranked second to China, with $41bn of renewable energy investment in 2010. And crucially, Germany has the highest rate of green energy investment as a percentage of GDP of any country, at 1.4% of GDP.

DECC reports its green energy investment to the European Commission to comply with the Renewable Energy Directive. DECC reported that we made £2.5billion of new investment in renewable energy projects in the UK in 2010, potentially creating 12,000 jobs, at odds with the Pew study, but confirming the serious fall away in new projects compared with 2009. The Environment Secretary commented that new green projects are “supporting jobs and growth across the country, and giving traditional industrial heartlands the opportunity to thrive again.” Unfortunately, the legal challenge is a poor new year message for solar, which grew 22,000 jobs in a year, but faces bleak prospects in 2012.

Pew notes Germany’s long history of using feed-in tariffs to propel investments. In 2010, the prospect of reductions in its generous feed-in tariffs helped spur dramatic investment growth, propelling the country to second place among G-20 countries in 2010. It doubled its clean energy investment in 2010 to $41.2 billion, led by small-scale, rooftop solar energy projects. It remains one of the largest producers of solar panels in the world.

Gas prices lead to high energy price rises. Still, there’s no pleasing the Global Warming Foundation. It headlined  this report today as: Electricity Bills To Rocket By 25% Because Of ‘Green’ Targets, a lead story taken verbatim from the Daily Mail.

The lion’s share of the increase in our energy bills has been due to the Big Six energy suppliers passing through the increase in the market price of gas and electricity. Renewables haven’t been pushing up our bills so far, and we lag well behind many European competitors in renewable energy supply.

Looking ahead to 2020, the Committee expects an average bill of £1,250, of which about  £110 of the increase is due to investment in low carbon energy capacity, including an average of about £10 to support energy savings like smart meters.  The Mail comments: “The study concluded that electricity prices are likely to rise by 41% by 2020 in real terms – with more than half the increase a result of switching to ‘low carbon’ energy sources.”  However, the CCC shows that increases in the price of gas will add £175 to energy bills, some of which will be offset by measures to reduce consumption.

Yet it’s fair comment that the new ‘carbon price floor’ from 2013 will act as an unrebated tax passed through to consumers’ energy bills. It will raise £3billion a year for the Treasury by 2020. The CCC remarks that the carbon tax is “Creating an opportunity for offsetting tax reductions” or additional public spending to offset energy bill impacts on households.

The Climate Change Committee therefore tackles two myths:

• Energy bills are high due to the cost of low carbon policies: No. Only 7% of the increase is due to renewable and energy saving measures.
• Future investments in renewables will drive energy bills up to £3,000 or more a year. No they wont. Required investment in renewables will be about £30bn and not the £100bn widely reported. And renewables may have high upfront costs but benefit from low running costs, not having to pay for fuel.

But then last Friday, when in Scotland hurricane force winds of up to 165mph blew over high sided vehicles and school buses, brought down power cables and even wee dogs couldn’t walk in the wind, the Mail’s front page depicted a burnt out wind turbine with the comment: New questions are being asked about wind turbines.

What drives all this myth making? Former Conservative Trade Secretary, Peter Lilley, offered this thought to the newspapers today:

‘The truth is that we do not yet know how big the effects of carbon dioxide are on the temperature, still less the balance of harm it will do. We are penalising the current generation on the basis of protecting future generations from an unknown threat.’

RenewableUK reckons there will be nearly 90,000 jobs in wind energy industry over next decade. The National Infrastructure Plan, unveiled in the Autumn Statement, committed the Government to developing five Centres for Offshore Renewable Engineering in Humber, Tees, Tyne, Lowestoft/Great Yarmouth and Sheerness. In 3 of these 5 locations (Humber, Tees and Tyne), offshore renewables projects will form part of an enterprise zone development strategy and will benefit from enhanced capital allowances. The plan also restates government support for investing up to £60 million over the next four years to develop offshore wind manufacturing facilities at UK ports. 

Meanwhile, a Sunday Times YouGov poll shows 56% of public support expansion of wind power, with only 19% against. Some 60% of respondents support Government investment in wind energy, and threequarters want more solar power investment.

The three part Durban pact extends the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012; mobilises a $100bn Green Climate Fund by 2020; and sets nations to work on a comprehensive global agreement which is due to be completed by 2015, but will not take effect until 2020. Four more years of talks lie ahead.

Sure, unions would, at the very least, want governments to continue negotiations. And the UK’s Environment Secretary Chris Huhne diligently supported the EU’s climate change Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, in striking a deal that meets the EU’s aims. But his climate diplomacy somewhat had the rug pulled when his Chancellor discredited the UK’s domestic green economy programme in the Autumn Statement.

Osborne said: ”We shouldn’t price British business out of the world economy …with endless social and environmental goals – however worthy in their own right.” Climate diplomacy is tricky enough without mixed messages on green industrial policy.

Meanwhile, key elements of the UN’s statement include:

• “Governments decided to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not later than 2015. Work will begin on this immediately under a new group called the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.
• Governments, including 35 industrialised countries, agreed a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol from January 1, 2013. To achieve rapid clarity, Parties to this second period will turn their economy-wide targets into quantified emission limitation or reduction objectives and submit them for review by May 1, 2012.
• This is highly significant because the Kyoto Protocol’s accounting rules, mechanisms and markets all remain in action as effective tools to leverage global climate action and as models to inform future agreements.”

However, binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol cover just 15% of global emissions, mainly from the EU. As things stand, the dangerous 2 degrees temperature threshold is likely to be breached, beyond which scientists say climate change becomes irreversible and catastrophic.

For trade unions, as for many other civil society bodies, there’s a tough fight ahead. Unions will not give up. There’s abundant evidence from the 200-strong union delegation in Durban that across all continents we are actively working on climate strategies from the workplace to national level. For the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the weakness of the global pact is a massive disappointment, a far cry from the ITUC’s essential demands for a fair, ambitious and binding deal:

• A legally binding pact effective 2011 – committing developed countries to reduce emissions by 25% to 40% by 2020, and emerging and developing countries to take actions to develop below “business as usual.
• A second Kyoto Protocol – with high ambitions preserving its legally-binding framework.
•  Climate finance – with commitments to provide $100 billion annually by 2020.
• A  Just Transition – with the ILO overseeing the UN’s work on green jobs, skills and labour and human rights.

Of course, the Durban accord notes “with grave concern the significant gap between the aggregate effect of governments’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 degrees.” With global carbon emissions of around 29 billion tonnes a year, the gigatonne gap between cuts and actual emission reductions  is building up an environmental debt that will be increasingly costly to pay back through renewable energy investment.

David Attenborough posed a fundamental question at the end of the final programme in his television series: “Can we respond now to what is happening to the Frozen Planet?” Well, No, it seems we cannot. South Africa’s international relations minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told delegates that the language of the UN’s agreement takes nations “into the future of the climate change regime.” But, as The Guardian’s Damien Carrington commented, “For all the current talk in Europe of austerity – having no comforts or luxuries as the dictionary defines it – the environmental austerity we face as a result of yet more procrastination is far more daunting.”

“Negotiators are taking us further away from the goal of capping the rise of the earth temperature to 2 degrees. The gap between the science and decision makers is widening, which will leave a terrible impact for the planet and people.

“It is not acceptable for governments to turn up at meeting after meeting, with the same blinkered mandate, and ignore the actions called for by voters, workers and communities.” Unions had come to Durban to ask government to join a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, yet a postponement on its ratification until 2012 in Qatar, without solving the loopholes in the Protocol rules, seems likely.

“We came asking a mandate for a global legally-binding outcome, to be negotiated as soon as possible, and it seems we’ll again see a postponement. Draft a mandate after 2012 risks delaying climate commitments until 2020, and reducing the scope for a Just Transition for our people.”

The ITUC also came asking for an operational and democratic Green Climate Fund. We might get just an empty bank account with weak governance mechanisms.

Whatever the outcome in Durban it’s clear from the tremendous commitment from unions globally and the exchange of experience and ideas between the over 200 union  delegates that we have a vital role to play in tackling climate change from the grassroots upwards. Through workplace actions and in influencing employers and governments at national level in many countries, we are building platforms and initiatives in just transition and green jobs, despite the inability of many governments to reach a global deal.

Sharan Burrow added:

“We will bring an ambitious and rights-based voice to the UN climate talks in Qatar in 2012. And we will mobilise thousands of people in support of green and decent jobs on the streets for the Rio+20 meeting.”

The South African Presidency had warned stakeholders to ‘interact but don’t cause tensions’. This follows the ejection yesterday of six young Canadian activists from the conference. ETUC Confederal Secretary Judith Kirton-Darling reports from Durban that:

“We are apparently important as representatives of the world’s population, but we are told that negotiations are built on trust and that stakeholders should interact “without causing tensions”. I sense that there is ‘expectation management’ going on, the Presidency was keen to stress that the whole process has been ‘Party-driven’ and therefore the Presidency has no expectations.”

A day before the end of the COP, what results  might we see against our initial demands?

• KP2 in the interim: If so-called unused emissions permits or “hot air” can be taken into the next period this could mean an extremely weak KP2. The Brazilians are proposing that only those countries that can prove they’ve made an effort should be able to take them forward. This seems to be gaining traction with some. The EU position is yet to be discussed – but the Polish Presidency is keen to defend Poland’s interests and surplus allowances.
• Roadmap: it increasingly sounds like the US is only willing to talk about post-KP2 (i.e. post-2020). There’s a danger that we’ll end up with a very weak text only making reference to a legally-based outcome (some are questioning this strongly) and no timetable to start or end.
• Finance: this is more positive, perhaps. The Global Fund could be the main achievement, with attempts in Europe to get some capitalisation (Germany and Denmark have committed start-up funds). There’s a draft EU paper on capitalisation floating around but not agreed yet.
• Operationalising “Just Transition” and green economic growth: there seems to be some positive movement here. There’s a text from the Umbrella Group and a meeting this evening to discuss further.

India will no doubt have noted that the carbon trading market may be headed for a crash if negotiations are any indication, according to experts. This is likely to impact China and India the most, as the two make up almost three quarters of the multi-billion dollar trade on carbon exchanges.

“The game of ping-pong between the US and China at climate conferences is becoming more and more tiresome.”

The leader of the European Parliament delegation here in Durban added that, “Once again, the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are not contributing towards achieving a binding, global climate agreement.”

ITUC delegate Gladys Branche (Sierra Leone Labour Congress) reported from a meeting with the Africa Group that the conference President is now setting up a task force to draft a statement for the wider G77 group that will hopfully match the EU’s commitment to a second Kyoto Protocol. The ITUC focus through unions in the G77 group of developing nations can have a strong bloc influence on China itself. We have to sustain pressure to counter the “low ambition” lobby at work here in Durban.

Each day we’re tracking the progress on labour and human rights issues here. So far the position we built a year ago holds good, with text on green jobs, decent work and just transition emerging in new papers in circulation. Of course, nothing is given here.

This is my last TUC blog from Durban. If there’s one issue that stands out here it’s the position of many African nations on the climate change frontline, the chance of geography reinforcing the massive challenges of poverty eradication and development.

South Africa’s leading trade union figure, COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, has said:

“We demand action not tourism. This cannot be a world conference in which everybody came just to have a nice time.”

At a meeting organized by the ITUC yesterday Vavi added:

“The irony of all of this is that these talks are taking place in Africa, which is a crime scene. Climate change is hurting communities all across the continent. We are already seeing climate havoc. If global warming reaches 2 degrees, Africa will be a terrible place in all respects. It is a catastrophic situation – both economically and environmentally.”

A big gesture is vital to unfreeze the main negotiations – the EU itself could get off the finance fence and call its finance Ministers to order and commit the financial flows promised so easily in Cancun. Will the UK take the lead?

The letter reminds the President that the 99% bailed out the financial sector three years ago. Yet the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, with South Africa itself one of the most unequal of nations experiencing seriously unbalanced growth.

From our meetings with European governments it’s evident that the EU is looking for a two- track outcome: a second Kyoto Protocol whereby the EU carries the greatest burden balanced by the Durban roadmap, binding all nations to a new treaty to be ratified by 2015. For the EU, we leaned that it’s vital to protect our energy intensive industries with a global deal that ensures our main competitors are faced with similar commitments to reduce emissions, rather than expose the EU to a further round of carbon leakage.

The roadmap?  Once again we are in that weird half world of virtual texts for agreement, hidden by an invisibility cloak. But essentially the roadmap commits governments to agree to negotiate a legally binding deal by 2015, which takes effect in 2020 latest. The Durban deal should involve the following elements:

• Legal form: the roadmap must provide for a legally binding framework.
• Process: Governments must agree to set up a new joint negotiating process starting January 2012, in the form of a new Ad Hoc Working Group (AWG).
• Targets: the deal must have substantive content: emissions reductions targets for developed nations matched by commitments from major emerging economies like India, China, and Brazil. This involves agreeing to Common But Differentiated Responsibilities, a phrase now shorthanded to “CBDR”.
• 2015: the target date for the Durban deal to be ratified, with 2020 the latest date by which the agreement actually takes effect.

Finance is another key factor, with the Green Climate Fund the final piece in the jigsaw, or rather, the piece that could precipitate a final agreement.

So our continuing worry here, that unions are discussing a lot today, is the “low ambition outcome” apparently sought by some of the major governments, willing to see a second Kyoto Protocol as the only binding outcome, narrowly based on essentially EU commitments. This seems to be the end game of nations like the US, India, China and others, with China and or India seeming to want to persuade the Group of 77 developing nations that this is the route ahead. South Africa certainly doesn’t want to KP to be buried on African soil. But we would say that such is the growing economic interdependence between China and some African nations that they are in a position to exert influence on, rather than be swayed by, China’s apparent low ambition strategy.

What a weekend! Over there, UK Ministers and advisers have reaped an NGOs whirlwind, accusing the PM of leading the “most environmentally destructive government to hold power in this country since the modern environmental movement was born.” Over here in Durban, on Saturday, 20,000 people marched for Climate Justice and Green Jobs, led by the South African labour movement.

On Sunday 500 delegates attended a 1 Million Climate Jobs conference, where Graham Petersen from the UCU (UK) lead a workshop and the TUC addressed the plenary. The ITUC delegation met the South African President to rehearse our three main demands: that we leave here with a legally binding future deal. There must be clarity and commitment on the $100bn Green Climate Fund, supported by the Financial Transaction Tax. And the International Labour Organisation (ILO) should oversee the UN’s just transition and green jobs.

So UK Ministers will arrive to a new UN text which, among many other things, sustains the strategic role of green economies in driving solutions to climate change. Today, too, a new science report shows global emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by 5.9% last year. That’s a 49% rise since the 1990 baseline year for calculating emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Some governments (we have met about 15 so far) are suggesting a 2020 start date for a new binding agreement. It just doesn’t sit with the science. We have made the case for urgent & binding action to France, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Bolivia, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Costa Rica, Norway, the EU, the US …

It’s frustrating that the UK green lobby has bracketed the Chancellor’s support for energy-intensive industries (which the TUC welcomes) with other solid causes for concern: cutting support for solar energy, the cancelled carbon capture project, and the fundamental policy shift implicit in the Chancellor’s comment that “with endless social and environmental goals … businesses will fail, jobs will be lost, and our country will be poorer”. We trust that the UK’s current policy will become clearer when we meet the UK delegation later today. Because this process desperately needs Ministers to bring a single minded focus on the facts of climate change and the imperatives of actions only governments can take on our behalf. We’re also in discussion with the EU delegation later this evening.

Today we looked back on the wonderful, tuneful march on Saturday, with a huge ITUC balloon floating hazardously beneath Christmas decorations. Miners, waste pickers, farmers, youth and environmental groups, indigenous peoples from Africa and South America, and trade unionists from scores of countries, joined one the largest such events in recent years. Negotiations have hardly moved an inch on the big issues at stake here. Saturday’s demonstration, the hard work of this union delegation, and the UN publishing text which, yes, has taken into account labour and human rights issues mean that there is still all to play for.

Back on the UN negotiating floor, Christina Figueras, the UN’s executive secretary began the week calling for a clear mandate on financing the UN’s green climate fund, but now the position is more nuanced where the UN is now likely to be mandated to “explore” innovative sources of funding. Ambitious calls for a financial transaction tax (FTT) give way to pressure from governments like the US. And again, there are still too many options on the table for the duration of the second period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP2), ranging from 5, 8 or 10 years. The end date matters as it should be the target date to start a truly global deal that embraces all nations.

The French delegation reps here tells us that they are willing to support a second KP as part of a transition agreement that also involves a clear roadmap and deadline for the common global agreement within a few years. They support the FTT, and the operation of a just transition framework. But France said there would be no new public money available for the Green Climate Fund – apart from innovative sources, such as the Financial Transaction Tax. Of course, the ITUC supports innovative sources, but this apparent block on further support from existing public funds has brought austerity measures into the heart of talks on global climate financing here.

Union delegates also report that Governments are now saying they need much more information on the economic and social impact of “response measures”, that is to say, climate change policies. US and EU government representatives seemed to be almost quoting from the ITUC’s position paper on skills, training and education. It’s what we have been saying from some time now on the need for a just transition strategy focused on jobs, skills and dialogue.

We hear too that the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol could kill off the only major source of funds to developing nations, the clean development mechanism (CDM). Venezuela on behalf of developing nations, said it would “raise hell” in the plenary if the UN didn’t explicitly acknowledge that the clean development mechanism is effectively “dead” without the KP2. This fund has attracted $billions a year of investment from developed nations offsetting their domestic emissions. The ITUC is now working on persuading the UN to adopt labour and human rights considerations in approving schemes, with cases of projects like biofuels displaced traditional agriculture, and also wants far more projects in Africa. These two demands are likely to emerge as a key union priority in the coming year.

The Australian union reps presented their case for the FTT to their government, but Australia doesn’t support this measure. We encouraged the Australian government to support a role for ILO in monitoring the just transition process, and we put to them our concerns about the UN opting to meet in Qatar next December.

But to begin with UN business here at the COP17 Climate Change Conference in Durban: Today’s session on a new form of  agreement is based on a text from the Cancun conference (pdf) that recognises the need to address the negative impacts of climate change policies through the prism of ‘ a just transition of the workforce, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs.’ JT strategies should inform national development strategies for both poduction and service related jobs, ‘promoting economic growth and sustainable development’.

However, some union delegates here, not least the South African union federation COSATU, are expressing concern at the ‘observer status’ of the ITUC, expecting their rightful place at the table with governments in negotiating a new climate treaty. The same sense of seeking greater influence applies across the piece – a union presence on the board of the promised Green Climate Fund, for example, and on the body overseeing the UN’s multi-billion dollar mechanism for clean development (the CDM).

Only 2% of the 3,500 CDM projects agreed to date have benefitted Africa. COSATU is working on an industrial policy that transitions South Africa to a low carbon (for which read low-coal) economy, for which huge new investment flows will be needed into green jobs. An emerging African union strategy is being talked about here, akin to the European trade unions’  joint industrial policies for a greener Europe, presented here yesterday, and their commitments to a renewed Kyoto Protocol.

Yet RENGO, the Japanese trade union federation, is opposing a second Kyoto Protocol. Nationally, huge domestic energy savings of up to 15% are being made out of necessity following the 11 March earthquake. With further plans to cut domestic energy consumption underway. That’s on top of its long term development of low carbon technologies in a wide range of products, well ahead of other developed nations. RENGO sees global warming countermeasures as a ‘common global task’. All major emitters should step up to the plate.

Meanwhile, in the UK, words seem to be speaking louder than actions. It seems that two minutes into an interview on Treasury spending, Chief Secretary Danny Alexander, said:

‘For example we announced a few weeks back that the carbon capture & Storage programme has been delayed because the original project couldn’t be delivered and so we are committed to providing the money for that but it is most likely that the majority of that money will be needed in the next parliament and so we can release the funds in this parliament for this sort of programme’

- a reference to the new capital projects announced this week. We wait with interest to see if this the real end of of the UK’s CCS ambitions, or just yet another confusing signal to energy investors.

It’s odd to see the UK seeming to question the purpose of its own Green Economy Council, having just promised to be the greenest government ever, and abandoning hard won global leadership on the issue, here of all places.

It would help if the government were to publish its evidence that we are burdening business with “endless social and environmental goals” and losing jobs as a result. Climate sceptic language seems to be reaching to the heart of government.

The EU’s new harder line has caused some caused consternation among developed countries at the talks. But the EU alone can’t deliver global emissions reductions: only 13% of global CO2 now stems from EU industries and consumers. “It’s very important that other major economies join the effort – it would not make sense for only the EU to take on a second commitment under the Kyoto protocol,” an EU representative said.

Meanwhile, the ITUC is calling on the UN to “review” its decision to hold the next conference in Qatar. The Qatar government bans wide sections of the workforce from joining a union at all, and its control of labour law reach into the heart of union activities, as reported in the ITUC’s special investigative report “Hidden faces of the gulf miracle“.

Here, the African group, the small islands states and other national groupings are also taking a stronger position on KP2. They are also calling on the UN to ensure that the benefits of its carbon offset scheme, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), should be shared more equitably among developing nations. Congo, on behalf of the Africa Group, spoke of the “near absence” of projects in Africa. Lack of skills and capacity to design project bids have contributed to this bias.

It’s difficult to imagine a more crass way to handle this. ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said:

“Huge economic transformation is needed to tackle climate change. This massive task can only be achieved if working people’s rights are respected. It cannot be simply imposed from above.

Qatar has an appalling record of ignoring workers’ rights, especially migrants, and the decision to hold next year’s climate summit there sends a totally wrong message and risks delaying vital action.

Either Qatar must move urgently to implement labour laws in line with international standards, or another host country should be found for the COP18 talks.”

The decision to hold the COP18 Conference in Qatar was taken today in Durban by the UNFCCC, on the eve of the COP17 Conference, which involves 194 governments and a wide range of civil society organisations, including more than 250 trade union representatives from around the world.

Meanwhile, the Africa group of nations has told the UN today it will not allow African soil to be the graveyard for the Kyoto Protocol. The ITUC wants the KP to continue, but preferably without insulting basic human and labour rights.