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One millionclimate jobs

Solving the economic and environmental crises

2 One million climate jobs

Campaign against Climate Change5 Caledonian Road London N1 9DX www.campaigncc.orgPublished October 2010 First edition 2009

Contributors: Jonathan Neale, EditorRuard Absaroka, CaCCTim Baster, COINChris Baugh, PCSDavid Byrne, Durham

UniversityManuel Cortes, TSSAGareth Dale, Brunel

UniversityDave Elliott, Open

UniversityMartin Empson, CaCCBen Fine, SOASAlan Freeman, Association

for Heterodox EconomicsHilary Gander, CaCCNick Grant, NUT

Rajat Gupta, OxfordBrookes University

David Hall, GreenwichUniversity

Barbara Harriss-White,Oxford University

Suzanne Jeffreys, CaCCSian Jones, CWUStephen Joseph, Campaign

for Better TransportTony Kearns, CWUNancy Lindisfarne, CaCCLarry Lohman, Corner

HouseDavid MoxonRichard Murphy, Tax Justice

Network

Fergus Nicol, LondonMetropolitan University

Graham Petersen, UCUJohn Sinha, CaCCKevin Smith, Carbon

Trade WatchMark Smith, VestasWorkers CommitteeJohn Stewart, HACANIan Terry, Vestas Workers

CommitteePhil Thornhill, CaCCDerek Wall, Green PartyDexter Whitfield, Centre

for Public ServicesRoy Wilkes, CaCC

© Jonathan Neale, 2010

Cover photos: left: ‘The Wave’ protest in December 2009 circles UK parliament - photo by Mark Salisbury right: wind mill at dawn by John Northrup

Copy editor: Anne Elliott-Day, PCSDesign: Shtig (.net)

3www.climate-change-jobs.org

One million climate jobsSolutions to the economic and environmental crises

A report by the Campaign against Climate Change

trade union group in conjunction with the Communication Workers Union (CWU),

Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA)

and the University and College Union (UCU)


Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – What do we mean by ‘climate jobs’?

Chapter 2 – How will we pay for these jobs?

Chapter 3 – The danger

Chapter 4 – Jobs in electricity and energy

Chapter 5 – Jobs in homes and buildings

Chapter 6 – Jobs in transport

Chapter 7 – Jobs in industry, agriculture and education

Chapter 8 – What you can do

Endnotes

Page

5

6

9

14

17

24

28

35

41

48


Introduction

We are facing a globalenvironmental crisis and aglobal economic crisis. We need solutions to both –now. Many climate activists,and several national tradeunions, have decided to fightto make the governmentcreate one million green,climate jobs. This reportexplains how we can do thatand why we must.

Sooner or later gradual climatechange is going to turn into swiftcatastrophe. So we need drastic cutsin the amount of carbon dioxide,methane and other greenhouse gaseswe put into the air.

This will take government regulation andinternational agreements. It will also take alot of work – jobs. We have to build wind,wave, tide and solar power. We have torenovate and insulate our homes andbuildings. And we have to provide a networkof cheap buses and trains.

There are officially two and a half millionunemployed people in Britain. Many moreare not counted in government figures. Wemay be facing a long recession, or theeconomy may 'recover' sales. But theexperience from many countries now is thatbusiness has to sell a lot more, for a long time,before jobs start to recover. We will have massunemployment for many years.

We have people who need jobs and workthat must be done. A million climate jobs inthe UK will not solve all the economy'sproblems. But it will take a million humanbeings off the dole and put them to worksaving the future.

The cuts proposed by the currentgovernment will add hundreds of thousandsof public sector workers to the dole queues.Even more private sector workers will losetheir jobs. The result will be another plungeinto recession.

We cannot halt climate change only byaction in the UK. But if we act, people allover the world will know, and take hope andcourage to act themselves.

Building new wind turbines near AmsterdamPhoto: Jules Stoop


Chapter 1

What do we mean by ‘climate jobs’?

This chapter explains what we meanby climate jobs. It’s different fromwhat politicians usually mean whenthey talk about ‘green jobs’.

We mean climate jobs, not 'green jobs'.Climate jobs are jobs that cut down theamount of greenhouse gases we put in the airand thus slow down climate change. ‘Greenjobs’ can mean anything – jobs in the waterindustry, national parks, landscaping, birdsanctuaries, pollution control and many morethings. All these jobs are necessary. But theydo not affect global warming.

We mean jobs that tackle the mainsources of emissions. The three maingreenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2),methane and nitrous oxide. In Britain CO2 isthe most important. We are putting CO2 intothe atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas –these are called CO2 ‘emissions’. We need tocut emissions as fast and deeply as possible.(Chapter 3 explains why).

In the UK, we emit about 11 tonnes ofCO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions ayear for each person (see box on the right).

Most of this report (and most of our jobs)focusses on the first 8 tonnes – electricity,buildings and transport. But about 20% ofour emissions are CO2 from industry andother gases from farming and putting wastein landfill. Here the solutions are morecomplicated. Chapter 7 covers these sectors,and also deals with ‘other energy’, education,research and training.

Round numbersA note to explain how we use numbersin this report. We use round numbers-for example, 170 not 173.4. We do thisbecause round numbers are easier forthe reader to make sense of.1 We make alot of assertions and estimates aboutnumbers here. You can find thecalculations behind these in thetechnical backup papers on our website:www.climate-change-jobs.org. Theyare effectively appendices to this report.

Sources of greenhousegas emissions per person in the UK 2

Electricity 3 tonnes Transport 3 tonnesHeating buildings 2 tonnesIndustry 1 tonneFarms 1 tonneLandfill 0.5 tonnes Other energy manfacture 0.5 tonnes

Total 11 tonnes


We mean a million new jobs, not onespeople are already doing. We don’t want toadd up existing and new jobs and say thatnow we have a million climate jobs. We don'tmean jobs with a climate label, or a climateaspect. We don’t want old jobs with newnames, or ones with ‘sustainable’ inserted intothe job title. And we don’t mean ‘carbonfinance’ jobs.

We mean new jobs now. We want thegovernment to start employing 83,300workers a month in climate jobs. Then,within twelve months, we will have created amillion jobs.

We mean government jobs. This is a newidea. Up to now government policy underboth Labour and Conservatives has been touse subsidies and tax breaks to encourageprivate industry to invest in renewable energy.

The traditional approach is to encouragethe market. That’s much too slow andinefficient. We want something more like theway the government used to run the NationalHealth Service. In effect, the government setsup a National Climate Service (NCS) andemploys staff to do the work that needs to bedone.

Government policy has also been to givepeople grants and loans to insulate and refittheir houses. Instead, we want to send teamsof construction workers to renovateeveryone’s home, street by street. And wewant the government to construct windfarms, build railways, and put buses on thestreets.

Direct government employment meanssecure, flexible, permanent jobs. Workerswith new climate jobs won’t always keepdoing the same thing, but they will beretrained as new kinds of work are needed.

For instance, we are going to need about400,000 workers in renewable energy withinthree years. But we can’t start with thatnumber. There are shortages of skills,materials and factories. It will take time togear up.

However, we can start on refitting buildingsin a big way. We have an army of unemployedconstruction workers, and enough of themhave the necessary skills to teach otherpeople. Once renewable energy is up andrunning properly, some of them can retrainfor that.

In transport, we can start with peoplemaking and driving new buses and buildingrailways. But after ten years the buildingworkers will have finished most of therenovation, and many of them can retrain todrive buses and trains, fix electric engines,paint railway carriages, or work on ships.

If we tried to do all this with privatecompanies it would take years to get up andrunning. Large amounts of money would bewasted, and workers would constantly losetheir jobs.

Of course we will have to be flexible. Forinstance, the National Climate Service willneed the offshore wind technology thatprivate companies have now. The obvioussolution is a royalty agreement to pay thecompany a percentage for technology andadvice. And the experience in Denmark andSpain is that onshore wind power is morepopular, and much more gets built, whenfarmers and local communities run the windfarms and share in the profits.

Even the conservatives have lived fordecades with national services like education,health and defence. What we are proposing isanother such service.


No one will lose out. Of course somepeople are going to lose their jobs in a lowcarbon economy. But a National ClimateService can have a simple policy. Anyone wholoses their job because of the new economywill be offered work in the NCS, withretraining and their old wages guaranteed.

This is the right thing to do. It is alsonecessary. Important groups of workers nowfear for their jobs in a new economy. We needtheir support. They are intelligent andinformed people. They too worry about thethreat of climate change. At the moment theyare torn between needing their jobs and whatthe planet needs, and they don’t like being inthat bind. Guaranteed new jobs will cut thatknot. But we have to mean it, and they haveto be very sure we will all fight for their jobs.

A million climate jobs will create othernew jobs - in two ways. First, there will bemany more jobs in the supply chain. TheNational Climate Service will employ peopledirectly in making the components for windturbines, putting the components together,installing and maintaining the turbines, andbuilding and working the ships we need foroffshore wind. These will all be part of theone million new jobs.

Then there will be the workers who makethe supplies and services the NCS needs –steel for the turbines and ships, the hammersand saws for the building workers, the paintfor the buses. A reasonable estimate is that forone million new jobs there will be anotherhalf a million ‘indirect jobs’.3

The second way is called ‘induced jobs’. Amillion and a half new workers will spendmore money than they did on the dole. Theywill buy shoes, clothes, cinema tickets, meals,cameras, fishing rods, tickets to gigs, and soon.

More people will then have jobs supplyingthese things. The workers at those new jobswill have money to spend, too, and that willcreate more jobs. A reasonable estimate is thatwill mean an extra quarter of a million jobs.

In all, we estimate the NCS will take1.75million people off the dole. However, wewill be losing some jobs too. Most of thesejobs will be lost after the first ten years of theprogramme. Even then, we estimate that after20 years there will a net gain of 1.33 millionjobs.4 And everyone who has lost a job willget another.

Climate jobs will be decent, fair, safejobs. The government will decide where jobsgo. Building and transport jobs will go wherepeople live. But manufacturing jobs can besited where people need them most, to savecommunities. And that can be done withoutwasting money on tax breaks for privatecompanies.

Workers who traditionally would not behired for some of these jobs, like women andpeople with disabilities, would get a fairchance. Apprenticeships could give schoolleavers a decent start in life.

We also want jobs with fair wages anddecent conditions. Many climate jobs aredangerous. Much of it is factory work, oftenwith toxic chemicals. Working at sea, onoffshore wind or anything else, has alwaysbeen risky. No amount of contract languagewill ensure decent wages, conditions or safety.Trade union organisation, on the job, can dothat. If people work for the NCS, and if theyhave won those jobs through a massmovement, they will be able to organisethemselves.


Chapter 2

How will we payfor these jobs?

This chapter argues two things.First, we can afford climate jobs.They won’t cost a great deal, andthe money is there. Second, thegovernment is now saying theeconomic crisis means they have tocut public expenditure. They aremistaken and their policies are theroad to ruin. We need to createjobs, not cut them.

In some ways, the model for what we wantto do is what happened in World War Two.Then all the great powers of the world tookcontrol of their economies and directedindustry to make as many weapons aspossible, as fast as possible, to kill as manypeople as possible and win the war.

One example will give the scale of this.When the US entered World War Two inDecember 1941, government expenditureexploded. GDP had doubled in three years.5

The car factories in America closed inJanuary and they made no more cars for therest of the war. By the end of March, the carfactories reopened, making tanks, weaponsand, by the end of the war, 66,000 bomberaircraft.6

The Soviet Union, Germany and Britain alldid the same. This rearmament boom did notbankrupt the governments. Instead, it createdjobs and lifted the whole world out of theGreat Depression. We need to do the samething now, but in order to save lives.

After all, governments do things that ‘costtoo much’ when they really care. The war inIraq is one example. The banks are another.When the credit crunch hit, we discoveredthat governments could spend hundreds ofbillions of dollars or pounds by lunchtime.They will get some of that money back, butno one knows how much. The IMF estimatethat the British government has lost at least£200 billion.7

We estimate that we can employ a millionworkers for ten years for less than thegovernment gave the banks in one year. Thisis because a million climate jobs won't reallycost the government all that much.

At first sight, the figures for a year lookroughly like this:

• £27 billion in wages for one million jobsover one year.8

• £5 billion in employers’ national insuranceand pension contributions.9

• £20 billion in costs like materials, fuel,supplies, rent and interest.

Total cost £52 billion

Climate jobs, come rain or come shinePhoto: Solid Ether


But these figures are deceptive because:The government will save money on taxes

and benefits. When you lose your job, youpay the government a lot less tax and youcollect more benefits. In the same way, everyunemployed worker costs the governmentmoney. The government gets less tax and theyhave to pay out more in benefits.

Individual cases vary. But on average, everytime the government employs someone on£27,000, they save £13,000 on that person’staxes and benefits.10 That’s £13 billion savedon a million jobs.

The government will save on indirectjobs. Remember, we will have one millionpeople directly employed. But that will createanother half a million ‘indirect’ workers.11

The government will save on the taxes andbenefits of those half a million workers too.Again, they will save about £13,000 a job.That’s £6.5 billion saved on half a millionjobs.

Moreover, all those new workers will bespending their pay on burgers, books, shoesfor the kids, organic parsnips and so on. Thatwill create another quarter of a million jobs.Many of them will be lower paid but thegovernment will still save at least £1.5 billion.So the government has saved:

• £13 billion on directly employed workers’taxes and benefits

• £6.5 billion on ‘indirect’ workers' taxes andbenefits

• £1.5billion on ‘induced’ workers' taxes andbenefits.

Total: £21 billion saved.

The National Climate Service will getmoney back. They will build wind turbines,and people will pay electricity bills. They willbuild railways and drive buses, and peoplewill pay for tickets.

If a private company was spending £52billion a year, it would expect to get morethan £52 billion back each year to pay forprofits, loan interest and dividends. Thegovernment doesn’t have to do any of that.They could eventually decide to make publictransport free, or not charge people forinsulating their homes.

So let’s assume the government only getsback 25% of what they spend. That meansthey will get back £13 billion a year.12 Addthat to the £21 billion the government saveson taxes and benefits, and the governmenthas saved £34 billion a year.

We started with the government spending£52 billion. They have saved £34 billion. Inother words, they spend £52 billion up frontevery year, but they get back £34 billion. Sothe real cost of one million climate jobs isonly £18 billion a year.

The money is there. Remember, when thebanks were in trouble, the government cameup with £850 billion in one year in loans andgifts to the banks. At least £200 billion ofthat is lost forever.

In 2009 they spent another £200 billion.This was called ‘quantitative easing’ but wasreally the same as printing money.

We were told this money would ‘stimulatethe economy’ and create jobs. In fact, themoney disappeared down black holes in theaccounts of banks and hedge funds. And thebanks loaned less money, so businesses couldnot create more jobs.

If you want to create jobs, it is far moreefficient to do it directly. Sixteen billionpounds a year will create jobs and start to savethe climate.


The government found the money for thebanks because they thought it mattered. Thebig banks, they said, were ‘too big to fail’.They meant the consequences would becatastrophic. We think the planet is too big tofail.

There are several ways the government canfind £18 billion a year:

If the richest 1% each paid 5% moreincome tax, that would raise £5 billion ayear. The richest 1% of taxpayers all makemore than £100,000. Their average income is£225,000 a year. With tax breaks, they nowpay 27% of that in income tax. If they paid5% more, they would still pay only 32% oftheir income in tax.13

Close the ‘tax gap’. Closing the taxloopholes to curb avoidance, investing inrather than cutting jobs in HM Revenue andCustoms and chasing the criminals engagedin massive tax evasion could generate anestimated £120 billion annually. Moving to amore progressive tax regime that raises taxesfrom the profits of major companies,particularly the energy, banking and retailsectors would generate billions more.

A Robin Hood Tax - on banks andfinancial transactions could raise an estimated£400 billion a year and fight poverty, protectpublic services and tackle climate change.14

We could make extra jobs by borrowingmoney. During the depression of the 1930sthe economist John Maynard Keynes arguedthat in bad times governments should createall the jobs they could. His example was thatit was worth it even if the government hiredpeople to dig holes one day and fill them inwith earth the next.

What was needed was to get the economymoving. Earth diggers and hole fillers buygoods and services.

Governments have done this kind of thingfor generations - in two ways. One way is thatthe government borrows the money to createjobs and pays the money back when thingsget better. We can raise part of the £16 billionthis way.

The government could just spend themoney. The other way is that the governmentjust spends the money without borrowing it.This used to be called ‘printing money’. Thatsounds bad, so now it’s called ‘quantitativeeasing’.

People always say that if you print money,then inflation explodes like it did in Germanyin the 1920s or Zimbabwe today. That’s whathappens if you print far too much money. In2009-10 the Bank of England spent £200billion on ‘quantitative easing’. The world hasnot come to an end. We are only looking for£18 billion a year.

In any case, governments have longsubsidised conventional energy andtransport. The provision of free roads andbridges for cars is a subsidy. The aviationindustry has been supported by untaxed fuel,orders for the military versions of mostplanes, and subsidies for airports. The oil, gasand coal industries are backed bygovernments, as are pipelines. There areliterally hundreds more examples. But thelargest subsidies of all have gone to nuclearpower, all over the world.15


But what about the cuts?So we can afford climate jobs. But even if themoney weren’t there, we would still have toact now to prevent climate change. The nextchapter will give the reasons why. But rightnow the British government is not expandingjobs. Instead, they have proposed publicspending cuts of 25% over five years.

They argue that the country is bust, thatnational debt is out of control, and sackingpublic sector workers will solve the problem.The rest of this chapter lays out what's wrongwith their arguments.16

First, we are not bust. Britain's nationaldebt is now about 75% of our nationalincome. David Cameron and GeorgeOsborne now warn that if a country’snational debt exceeds 75% it is ‘bust’.

By that yardstick Britain has been ‘bust’ formost of its history since the 1750s. In theearly nineteenth century the debt was not75% of our national income. It was almost200%.

As the economist Will Hutton puts it:

“From 1750 to 1870, Britain won wars,assembled an astonishing navy, built anempire and launched the IndustrialRevolution, yet the national debt wasconsistently above 80 per cent of GDP.Nobody cared. High national debt was aprecondition for winning two world warsin the 20th century. Periods when theover-riding preoccupation has beenlowering the national debt have coincidedwith industrial, economic and strategicdecline. So it will again.” 17

1956 was a very good year. The debt wasjust under 150% and the conservative HaroldMacmillan was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He quoted the liberal historian LordMacaulay:

“At every stage in the growth of that debt ithas been seriously asserted by wise menthat bankruptcy and ruin were at hand;yet still the debt kept on growing, and stillbankruptcy and ruin were as remote asever.” 18

Japan has had a debt of over 75% since the1970s. In 2009, Japanese government debtwas 189% of their annual GDP. There is areason Japanese government debt is so high.For many years, the Japanese government hasrun big public works programmes in order tokeep unemployment down. That is what wewant our government to do. Japan has almostthe same income per person as the UK, andonly two thirds the unemployment rate. If wehad Japanese levels of unemployment,800,000 more people in the UK would havejobs.19

The cuts won’t save much. We havealready showed that it will be cheap for thegovernment to employ new climate workersbecause they stop claiming benefits and startpaying taxes. It works the other way roundtoo. When the government sacks a worker,she stops paying taxes and starts claimingbenefits. The exact amount varies dependingon her rent and family status. But on averageit costs the government £12,000 in taxes andbenefits every time they lay off a worker on£25,000.20

Only it’s worse than that. Because whenpublic sector workers lose their jobs, theyspend less much less money on goods andservices. That means other people lose theirjobs, and they too pay stop paying taxes andstart claiming benefits.


Cutting public spending in the middle of arecession starts a spiral downwards. This hasbeen seen many times before. In thedepression of the early 1930s, the Britishcoalition government under RamsayMacDonald cut benefits and spending. Thenext decade was spent in a bitter depression.In the US President Herbert Hoover cutspending, stoked the Great Depression, andwas swept out of office in a landslide. InWeimar Germany, the same policies led to therise of the Nazis.

In the 1970s, many African governmentshad borrowed heavily when the worldeconomy was expanding. When Westernbanks suddenly raised interest rates, theycould not repay their debts. TheInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) and theWorld Bank insisted that the Africancountries had to slash food subsidies, health,education, jobs and spending. The result waseconomic disaster, and most of Africa has notrecovered to this day.21

The IMF and the World Bank did the samething in Latin America in the 1990s. LatinAmericans now call it the ‘lost decade’ 22

The IMF is now pushing the same sort ofcuts in Britain and across Europe. The resultwill not be pretty. The government say that‘the markets’ are requiring them to cut. But‘the markets’ will see deep cuts as a sign thatsomething is deeply wrong.

‘The markets’ are not things, of course.They are human beings who run banks,hedge funds, and corporations. Some of themwant cuts in public spending now.

Some don’t, because they think it will lead todisaster. But once the economy starts to spiraldownwards, the same greed will lead all ofthem to move their money out of the pound,out of government bonds, and out of thecountry. Then a sudden economic crisis islikely.

In any case, public spending is not theproblem. The economic crisis is real. It wasnot caused by high public spending.

As you may remember, the banks and hedgefunds got into a spot of trouble. They hadloaned more money than they had. In manycases, they loaned thirty times as muchmoney as they had, or more. That was fine aslong as everyone thought the party could goon forever. But when one big bank lost itsnerve, so did the rest. The banks and hedgefunds suddenly had debts they could not pay.All over the world, governments stepped in togive them money.

The banks and hedge funds did not loanmore money after they got the handouts.They loaned less. And that’s why theeconomy is in trouble. Banks, hedge funds,corporations and rich people are still nervousabout loaning or investing money. The rest ofus are nervous too, and being careful aboutour spending.

Someone has to start spending money. Thathas to be the government. And we need jobsnow.


Chapter 3

The danger

We turn now to look at the scienceof climate change and explain whywe have to act so quickly and onsuch a large scale.

The global climate is warming becausehumanity has been burning more coal, oiland natural gas over the last 200 years. Coal,oil and gas all contain a lot of carbon. Whenthey burn, the carbon joins with oxygen inthe air to make carbon dioxide (CO2). Themore CO2 in the air, the more it traps heatand stops it escaping into space. There arealso two other greenhouse gases – methaneand nitrous oxide. We will pay some attentionto them in this report. But CO2 has the mosteffect, and has been increasing most rapidly.

As part of a long term natural process, theamount of CO2 and heat goes up and down.This process takes place over long cycles, of21,000 years, 41,000 years, and 100,000years. What is new is that we are forcing thepace.

Every year, some of the CO2 we put in theair is absorbed by the oceans, and by plantsand animals on shore. But not all. Some of itremains for at least 100 years.

Over the last several hundred thousandyears the temperature of the earth has goneback and forth between two roughly steadystates: ice ages and warm periods. Forinstance, we were in a warm period in themiddle of the twentieth century.

During the ice ages there were about 180parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air.During the warm periods the level of carbonwas about 280 – 100 more. It is now 385 –another 105. Of that increase, 70 hashappened in the last 50 years. We are pushingthe envelope. No one knows exactly what willhappen if we do this.

One concern is the possibility of very fast –'abrupt' – climate change. Scientists areconcerned about this because of whathappened in the past. They learned a lotabout this by drilling into the Greenland icewhich contains an effective record going back140,000 years.23

The scientists discovered that when theearth cooled, the process was gradual, overthousands of years, with temperatures andCO2 levels declining in step. When the earthwarmed, it also started out gradually. Butthen there was a rapid increase in bothtemperature and CO2 levels often in twentyyears or less.

Scientists have since looked for evidence ofclimate change in ice packs, glaciers, oceanfloor deposits and caves around the world.What they have found confirms theGreenland research.

Scientists know this means that in the pastthere was some kind of feedback effect, orseveral feedback effects. An example canexplain how climate feedbacks work. RisingCO2 levels are now warming the Arctic. Thisbegins to melt the permanent snow and ice.


Snow and ice are white and reflect heat backinto the atmosphere. When they melt, theyreveal dark sea, dark tundra and dark trees.These absorb heat, and the Arctic warms upmore, so the snow and ice melt more quickly.That reveals more dark tundra, trees and sea,which cause more melting, and so on. Thisfeedback process has begun, and it is speedingup.

Scientists have discovered several moreclimate feedbacks as well, some of them veryworrying.24 They are sure that feedbacks andabrupt change will happen. But they are notyet agreed which feedbacks will be crucial, orhow long we have. The best guess is twentyyears, but it could be much more or muchless.

The second worry is that we seem to beseeing serious effects of climate change now.The most important is a change in rainfallpatterns, producing drought and famine, butalso torrential rainfall and floods. In addition,rising sea levels will combine with a risingintensity in hurricanes and cyclones toproduce catastrophic flooding.

There has been a drought in Sahel – thepart of Africa just below the Sahara – forforty years. There is also serious drought inCentral Asia and Australia. Forest fires inAustralia and Greece, serious tropical stormdamage in Bangladesh, Haiti, Costa Rica, andthe USA, and the recent floods in Pakistanare all part of this pattern.

None of them are produced only by climatechange. But rising temperatures are part ofthe reason for all of them. None of them aresimply ‘natural disasters’. In each case theeffects of the natural problem are greatlyincreased by official neglect and corruption.But that is what it will be like in the future aswell.

Fast, runaway climate change will producelarge numbers of extreme weather events allover the world within a very short space oftime. For a worrying example of how thegovernments of the world are likely to cope,look at how the richest country on earthcoped with one hurricane in New Orleans.25

Age of Stupid is a powerful film that tackles the likely effects of climate change www.ageofstupid.net


Famine, storms, drought and rising seas willproduce hundreds of millions of refugees.This is likely to cause resentment, conflicts,hatred and mounting xenophobia and racism.The quickly changing climate will also changethe balance of power between and withincountries. That will mean war in manydifferent places at the same time.

There can be no accurate estimates ofhuman fatalities from all these causes, butthey will be in the hundreds of millions.Rough estimates are that between 30% and70% of the species on earth will perish. But itis in the nature of a runaway event that, whilethe consequences will be horrific, the precisescale remains unknown . Moreover, becausewe are forcing the pace at an entirely newrate, we cannot be sure what will happen.

All this means we have to move quickly tostabilise levels of CO2. Yet most of theworld's governments are still talking aboutputting more CO2 into the air. They plan toeventually stabilise CO2 levels in theatmosphere at much higher concentrationsthan we have now. And they don't plan to doso until 2050. Ten or five years ago, that’show many scientists were talking too. Thescientists are talking differently now. This ispartly because of considerable evidence thatclimate change has been speeding up, andthat feedback effects are already happening.This means that the gap between what thescientists are saying, and what the politiciansare doing, is huge and dangerous.

Many scientists, led by NASA's JamesHansen, now argue that levels of CO2 in theair are already too high, and that we willactually have to take CO2 out of theatmosphere. Hansen estimates that we needto reduce from the current level of 387 ppmof CO2 to 350 ppm at most.26

Other scientists feel that we can live withthe present, or perhaps slightly higher, levelsof CO2. But whichever view you take, theimmediate priority is to stabilise levels ofCO2 in the air, and that is what this reportwill focus on. The quicker we can do this thebetter the chance we have of avoidingcatastrophe.

To stabilise greenhouse gas levels we do nothave to eliminate all emissions. About half ofthe CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and byplants and trees on land. On a global scale, acut of 50% to 60% in emissions shouldstabilise CO2 in the atmosphere. However,the richer countries currently emit more –Britain emits ten times as much as India perperson. The poorer countries will insist thatricher countries make deeper cuts. That isonly fair, and we cannot do it without them.

Ideally, we can get close to cutting all UKemissions by 2030. In this report, though, weconcentrate on how a million jobs could cutemissions by 80% in 20 years – the lion'sshare of what we need to do.

Of course cuts in the UK on their own willmake little difference to global climatechange. But if we campaign for a million newjobs, and win them, people all over the worldwill see what we have done. They will know itis possible. And then they can do the same.And that will save the planet.

We will explain how we havearrived at these numbers of jobsand try to provide a reasonablydetailed plan. But with productionon this scale the technology willimprove, and change, massively.Our plan is designed to show thatclimate jobs could work, based onwhat we know now.

This plan depends on a lot ofelectricity. The first step is toproduce a lot of wind, wave, tidaland solar power to supplyelectricity. That way we can doublethe amount of electricity produced,and none of it burns gas or coal.CO2 emissions from electricity godown to almost zero.

Then we cut the amount ofelectricity we now use by half,mainly by new regulations forappliances, lights and machines.That gives us even more spareelectricity.

We insulate and renovate allhomes and public buildings to cutthe amount of emissions by about40%. Then we replace half of theremaining emissions withelectricity from renewable sources.


We will now describe climate jobs in detail. In the next three chapters weconcentrate on the big three: electricity, transport, and heating. A millionpeople working for 20 years can cut these CO2 emissions by about 80%.

Chapter 4

Jobs in electricity and energy

UK greenhouse gas emissions (tonnes per person) by sector

Carbon dioxide 9.5 tonnes per personElectricity & energy production 3.5 tonnes Transport 3 tonnesHeating buildings and water 2 tonnesIndustry 1 tonne

Other greenhouse gas 1.5 tonnes of CO2emissions equivalent per personAgriculture 1 tonneLandfill 0.5 tonne

Distribution of climate jobsin an average year

Making renewable electricityRenovating buildingsChanging transportIndustry and landfillEducationTotal

425,000 jobs175,000 jobs300,000 jobs

50,000 jobs50,000 jobs

1,000,000 jobs


Finally, we cut the amount ofoil used in transport by halfthrough improved publictransport, new regulations anddesign. Then we replace 60% ofthe remaining oil used intransport with electricity fromrenewable sources. That shouldcut emissions in electricitygeneration, heating and transportby over 80% within 20 years, asshown in the table on the right.

We still have 100,000 of our 1,000,000climate jobs available for other uses.

Renewable energy

That’s the broad outline. We will start withhow to double the amount of electricity weuse, and produce it all from renewable energy.It is called renewable because it uses usesendlessly renewed sources of power – thewind, the sun, waves, river and tides.

To produce a steady supply of renewableenergy you need a mix of several kinds. Thisis because sometimes, in some places, thewind blows stronger, and sometimes it stops.The sun does not shine at night, and so on.

We need many kinds of renewable energy,because it’s hard to store electricity. It’s notstuff, it’s a pulse moving down wires. It has tobe used when it’s made.

We also need a mix of energy from differentplaces. Wind and sunshine vary from place toplace. So we need to extend the national gridwith cables to take electricity from wind, sun,tide and waves right across the country. Thesupply will balance even better across longdistances. Modern long distance HighVoltage Direct Current cables now make itpossible to transmit electricity right acrossEurope and North Africa.

In any case, we will need massive changes tothe current electricity grid. There will bemany more places and facilities supplying thegrid, and the coordination of all that energywill be more complex too. None of this islikely to work with our present privatised anddivided grid. There seems little alternative torenationalisation.

Currently, the UK makes and uses 400terawatt hours (twh) of electricity a year. Wecan almost double it in 20 years (see tablebelow).

How we can almost double electricity production in 20 years28

twh/yr JobsOnshore wind 90 20,000Offshore wind 520 260,000Wave power 40 24,000Tidal stream 60 27,000Tidal range 36 16,000Backup energy 14 28,000New national grid -- 50,000

TOTAL 760 425,000

Emissions cuts and jobscreated by our plan27

ElectricityHeating buildingsTransport

TOTAL

Emissions Emissions Jobs before after created3.5 tonnes 0.2 tonnes 425,0002.0 tonnes 0.5 tonnes 175,0003.0 tonnes 0.6 tonnes 300,000

7.5 tonnes 1.3 tonnes 900,000


Wind power The new electricity will come mainly fromwind power because we are blessed with windin the UK. It is our compensation for allthose centuries of complaining about theweather.

To explain how this works, let’s start withonshore wind farms. Almost everyone hasnow seen a wind turbine with three narrowblades that turn in the wind, like a windmill.The blades are attached to a cylinder (the‘nacelle’) that sits on top of a high tower. A dynamo inside the cylinder transforms theenergy of the turning blades into electricity.Cables carry that electricity back to the grid.

Wind turbines need a steady supply ofstrong wind. So they are built in rural areas,often on ridges, in the hills, or along theshore. The turbines are usually built ingroups, or ‘wind farms’. There are someobjections to how they look, but some ofthese will be reduced as people begin to takeclimate change more seriously. There wouldalso be more support if both farmers andsmall rural communities were allowed tomanage and profit from wind farms.

In the first few years, most of the jobs inwind farms will be making the tower, thecentral cylinder and the blades in separatefactories. They are then transported andassembled together on site. These are skilledfactory jobs. But as wind farms grow, after 20years about half the jobs will be inmanufacture and half in maintenance.

With 20,000 workers a year, we canproduce about a quarter of our currentelectricity from onshore wind (90 out of 380twh/yr).29 The big bonanza for the UK,though, is offshore wind. There are four greatresources of renewable energy in Europe andNorth Africa. One of them is North Seawind.30

About half the jobs in offshore wind will bethe same as onshore wind – at first mainlyfactory jobs. The other half, though, are inassembling the turbines, taking them out tosea, and putting them in place. Much of thiswork will use the same skills built up overyears in shipbuilding and on North Sea oiland gas rigs. It will also require a lot ofseafarers.

Thanet off-shore windfarm, KentPhoto: Vattenfall


We estimate it will take 260,000 workers 20years to build and maintain enough offshorewind for 520 twh/yr of electricity. That'smore than our total electricity use now (400twh/yr).

Some of this will depend on a newtechnology called ‘floating wind’. At presentoffshore wind turbines are anchored to theocean floor, usually with a single steel orconcrete plug. Floating wind is basically aboat or pontoon with a wind turbinemounted on it. Several prototypes have beenbuilt. The technology could possibly run intoserious problems, but we expect it to work. Ifit does, floating wind could provide far moreelectricity than we have planned for.

Wave and tidal powerOnshore and offshore wind will provide themost jobs. But there will be another 60,000jobs a year in wave and tidal power.

Wave power is really stored wind power –wind creates waves. The energy can be tappedusing floating buoys, or via hinged flapsystems or by turbines. They usually face theincoming waves, and turn the energy of thewaves into electricity.

Tidal stream power turbines do the samewith incoming and outgoing tides. ‘Tidalrange’ power relies on barrages and lagoons inareas with particularly high tides.

These marine power technologies are still inthe early stages. The UK is a world leader inresearch and development, and in testfacilities, with the European Marine EnergyCentre in the Orkneys and the New andRenewable Energy Centre in Northumbria.The majority of jobs here are in research anddevelopment, in manufacture, and inmaintenance at sea.

Combining technologies

Wind power will be the core technology forrenewable energy in the UK. But it needsbalancing with other forms of energy - forseveral reasons.

For one thing, the demand for electricityvaries throughout the day, and is at its highestduring early evenings in winter. It is difficultto store electricity. This is less of a problemwith gas or coal – you simply turn the powerstation supply up and down at different timesof day, and burn less fuel when you need littleelectricity. But wind turbines turn throughthe night. If that electricity is not used atnight, it is wasted.

There are several ways of solving theseproblems. One is a national grid that links upwind from off the shore of Cornwall, offNewcastle, out in different parts of the NorthSea, and on shore in Wales, Kent, Yorkshireand so on. If the wind is not blowingsomewhere, it is likely to be blowing 1,000miles away.

This is also where wave and tidal energy areimportant. There are always waves aroundBritain, though strength varies. Tides move inand out at different times as you go round thecoast, and are of reliable strength.

Moreover, the modern grid connectionsdon't just go far out to sea. The technologynow exists for cables to deliver electricityacross all of Europe and North Africa. Theother great resources are wind in Siberia,wind in Kazakhstan, and wind and sun inNorth Africa. It is perfectly possible to exportelectricity from Britain across Europe and toimport it back at other times, to balancesupply.31


Spreading demand

Another way of balancing wind is to spreaddemand. We will be making twice as muchelectricity as we do now. That electricity canbe used at night in transport and buildings.

There are several ways of doing this. One isto charge the batteries on electric vehicles atnight. In some cases electric cars and bicyclescan be charged at home. But mostly this islikely to be a matter of buses in garages and‘filling stations’ that lift out batteries and putin newly charged ones.32

Home and building owners, too, can beencouraged to use electricity at night. Thiswould start with the installation of ‘smartmeters’ in every building that could beprogrammed to control electricity use atdifferent times. With well insulated boilers,water can be heated mostly at night and usedmostly during the day. Buildings can also beheated to a certain background temperature,and topped up during the day.

Free, or very cheap, electricity late at nightwill encourage people to spread the load.This makes no sense commercially, but everysense environmentally if the government isrunning the grid.

This can be combined with ‘load shedding’.One form of this is for businesses and otherusers to get cheap electricity in return foragreeing to shut down at rare moments of lowsupply. Another form is for households andbusinesses to agree to shut down parts oftheir use briefly at times of high demand,using smart meters.

Finally, we can also use ‘headroom’ – havemore electricity available than we need, ratherthan always running at the edge. This wouldcut into the profits of a private company, butit makes sense for a public company trying tosave the planet.

Electric bus at a charging station in Beijing,China Photo: Maciej Janiec


Other renewable energy jobs

We will also need some other forms ofbackup energy for electricity. The current gaspower stations will not be closedimmediately. Some of them will stay open formuch of the next twenty years as newrenewable power is built.

There is also solar power. One form of this,solar water heating, is discussed in the nextchapter. Photovoltaic (PV) cells are thesecond kind of solar power. These cells comein thin boxes, and are attached to southfacing roofs. They turn sunlight intoelectricity, even on cloudy days. In Britainthese are more expensive than wind power,and make more sense in sunny countries likeSpain. So for the moment we see a limitednumber of jobs. However, mass production inother countries may soon bring the cost downdramatically.

Then there is concentrated solar power(CSP). This works like a steam engine.Mirrors concentrate the rays of the sun onmercury or liquid salt. The pressure turns adynamo that creates electricity. CSP alreadyworks impressively in many countries,including Spain. North Africa would be evenbetter in the long run. The obvious thing todo is build more wind power in Britain andexchange it for CSP electricity from othercountries.33

There have also been suggestions for use of‘biofuels’ in power stations. This iscontroversial, and we will return to this in thechapter on agriculture (see pages 37-38).

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is alsocalled ‘clean coal’. In coal fired power plants, a‘scrubber’ takes the CO2 out of the air afterthe coal burns. That’s the ‘capture’. This CO2is then turned into a liquid under pressureand shipped to a cavern underground orundersea. That's the ‘storage’.

The scrubbers work. They are expensive,which means more jobs, but it’s also thereason why power companies have onlyinstalled them in small ‘demonstration’plants. The storage is more problematictechnically, and there is still no working coalpower station in the world capturing andstoring all its carbon.

Different contributors to this report havedifferent views on this. Some of us are deeplysceptical of clean coal, and some are strongsupporters. So what we propose is this: wewant some of the one million jobs to be forthe research, design and building of the firstworking coal plant in the world to captureand store all its carbon.

If this works safely, it will be an enormousachievement. If it doesn’t, then we will know.

We have not included any jobs in nuclearpower. Most of us think this is too expensive,toxic and dangerous. However, we are awarethat there are many people in the unionmovement who support nuclear power andwe wish to continue discussions with them.

We can’t know now what the likely balanceof these various technologies will be. But weestimate, quite roughly, that we will needabout 425,000 jobs a year for all of them.


Reducing demand

Finally, we are going to need large amounts ofrenewable electricity to transform the way weheat buildings and run transport. To free upsupply for that, we also need to reduce theamount of electricity we use.

Currently about a third of electricity is usedfor lights and appliances as well as cookingand heating in homes, about a third for thesame things in public buildings andbusinesses, and a third for industry. Reducingthis is mainly a matter of strict newregulations.

This is not, in the main, a matter ofdeveloping new technologies. We alreadyhave lights and appliances that use much lesselectricity. We just need regulations sayingthat in three years time everything sold has tomeet the standards of the best available now.

Within five years after that, electricity use hasto cut by half again. This has been donebefore by regulation with many technologies.However, we have to be sure not to regulateon the basis of ‘energy efficiency’. That meansthe manufacturer can make a fridge that istwice as efficient, but twice as big, and so usesthe same amount of electricity. Instead, weneed rules for the maximum electricity amachine or appliance can use.

With these sorts of controls, it should bepossible to cut current electricity use by atleast half. So we can double electricityproduction, and halve the amount ofelectricity we use now. That gives us a lot ofspare electricity to transform transport andhow we heat buildings. And we will eliminatealmost all CO2 emissions from makingelectricity.

Main jobs in renewable power

• The majority of jobs will be in factoriesthat make wind, wave and tidal turbines,and solar thermal heating

• Transport and assembly of turbines onsite

• Maintenance of wind farms and marineturbines

• Transport and assembly of offshore windand marine turbines, using the skillslearned by construction workers, diversand seafarers in the North Sea oil and gasfields

• Building barges and boats for assemblingand maintaining offshore wind andmarine turbines

• Manufacture of long distance cables andpylons

• Building a new grid• Other factories and mills that supply

parts and materials• Research and development in wave and

tidal turbines• Research and development in clean coal• Manufacture of a new generation of low

energy lights, appliances and machines• Training and education in the necessary

skills


Chapter 5

Jobs in homesand buildings

This chapter is about jobs inrefitting homes, public buildingsand businesses. We will need about200,000 workers for the first fifteenyears of the project, and 100,000 forthe next five years. Most of themwill be construction workers of allkinds.

These workers will insulate and draughtproof homes and buildings so they use lessenergy. They will also install local renewableenergy in and on top of the buildings. Andthey will install electric heating powered byrenewable energy from the grid. In mostcases, they will put up scaffolding, street bystreet, and do all the required work at thesame time.

Here is how it will work in detail. We willstart with homes. The last chapter dealt withthe electricity used in homes for poweringlights and appliances. As we showed there, wecan cut this electricity use by half, andeventually supply the remaining half withrenewable electricity.

Three quarters of emissions from housesand flats, however, are caused by heating theair and water. To reduce this we need toinsulate, draught-proof, and replace boilers.This can cut the amount of energy needed toheat the home and water by about a third.

The most direct way to save energy in ahouse is to use insulation to reduce theamount of heat lost. This can usually beadded easily to the loft space, which isparticularly vulnerable. About one in fourhouses already have some loft insulation, butin many cases much less than is needed.

Another major source of heat loss isthrough the walls. If they are cavity walls, asin most houses built since 1945, then it iseasy to pump in foam as insulation. In olderbuildings with no cavity, the insulation has tobe applied inside or outside. Applying itinside is easier, though it reduces the size ofthe rooms a bit, and can also increase the riskof overheating in summer. Applyinginsulation to the outside as a render worksbetter, but may be unpopular withconservationists in some areas.

Heating buildings and water accountsfor about two tonnes per person of

CO2 emissions. This is about 20% ofeach person’s CO2 emissions.

Solar hot water system at Martha’s Vineyard Photo: Boston Joe


A lot of heat is lost through windows. Inthe UK these are often single glazed, andmany older buildings have draughty windowframes. The solution here is double, multipleor ‘secondary’ glazing, and draught proofingwindows, doors and plugging any other areasof heat loss.

Finally, more than half of homes can havean old boiler replaced with a new ‘A-rated’boiler that uses much less energy to heatwater.

Using all these techniques, we can cut theamount of emissions from gas and coal forheating by about a third. It makes more senseto do all these jobs together. A team ofbuilding workers can put up scaffolding alldown one street. Then they go in as a team,work quickly, and do all the necessary jobs inone go. This cuts labour time by about athird, and it reduces the inconvenience.

The next strategy is to install renewableenergy on site, where we can. This can beeither solar hot water thermal energy orground source heat pumps. Solar hot water isalso called solar thermal heating. The watergoes through thin black painted pipes on theroof, and the sun warms the water. For this towork you need a suitable roof.

Ground source heat pumps work by diggingwater pipes into the ground. They rely on thefact that in winter the temperature below thesurface is higher than the temperature atground level (in summer it is cooler and wecan make use of that as well). They can onlybe installed where people have suitablegardens.34

Installing the renewable energy from solarwater heating and ground source heat pumpscan be done at the same time as theinsulation and refitting work. This again ismore efficient, and causes less trouble for theresidents, than doing things bit by bit.

Our estimate is that it will take 200,000workers ten years to transform all existinghomes. Each house will need a differentcombination of insulation, glazing, draught-proofing, boiler replacement and onsiterenewable energy. Households will save a lotof money on bills over the years, but wepropose that the work be done for free.

Once this work is done, emissions fromheating homes and water will have been cutby about 40%. (See endnote 37 forcalculations in full). On top of that, we canreplace much of the heating now done withgas, coal and oil with electricity – once themajority of electrical energy is fromrenewable sources.

Some heating of water (in kettles orimmersion heaters) or air (for instance byblower heaters) is already done by electricity.However at present electricity produces a lotof emissions because it is inefficient togenerate. So there is no point in replacing gaswith electric heating immediately. We need towait until almost all of our electricity comesfrom renewable sources. This means workerswill probably have to come back a secondtime after fifteen years to install electricheating.

At the moment, not including electricity,there are 80 million tonnes of CO2 emissionsfrom heating homes. Our estimate is thatinsulating, refitting, new boilers and solarthermal can cut that by 40%, to 48 milliontonnes. A switch to electricity can then cutthat to 24 million tonnes, a total cut of 70%.


Non-domestic buildings

We turn now to non-domestic buildings – allthe buildings that are not homes or factories.These include office buildings, hospitals,shops, restaurants, warehouses, schools, andmany more.

Many of us have worked in commercialoffices built in the 1960s or 1970s with singleglazing in ill-fitting metal windows.Sometimes these buildings are airconditioned in an attempt to make up for theinability of the building to soak up theenormous amount of energy put out by theIT equipment.

Total energy use in non-domestic buildingsis about half that in homes. But much moreof it comes from electricity, and much less ofit goes on heating air and water. So non-domestic buildings produce 22 milliontonnes of CO2 emissions a year from gas, coaland oil used to heat rooms and water. This isjust over a quarter of similar emissions inhomes. These buildings will need similartreatment to homes.35

Public buildings differ a great deal from oneto another, however, in the ways they useenergy. A school, an office building full ofcomputers, a restaurant and a supermarket arevery different. The basic jobs to be done arethe same – insulation, fixing windows anddoors, replacing boilers, regulating lightingand appliances, and adding thermal solarpower and heat pumps.36 We estimate thatover 5 years 200,000 workers can cut energyuse and emissions in non-domestic buildingsby about 40%.

Then, as with homes, once there is enoughrenewable electricity, much of the remainingheating in non-domestic buildings can beswitched over.

New build

But there is one way non-domestic emissionscan be cut faster than domestic emissions –new buildings. The average house is replacedafter 100 years. The average public buildingstays up for 40 years. This means that after 20years, only 20% of houses and flats will bereplaced. But 50% of public and businessbuildings can be replaced.

It is much easier to save energy and cutemissions in new buildings. Here the answerto emissions is a matter of regulations, ratherthan new jobs. The government already hasdetailed building regulations. There arealready plans to tighten the ones aboutenergy use. Two things are necessary now.

Mixed housing and office built to the R2000super-efficient building system on a brownfield site in Victoria, Canada

Photo: Mike Nelson Pedde


One is to tighten the regulations stillfurther. There are now many examples,particularly in Germany, of housingdevelopments that use very little energy.Scandinavian countries already have far morestringent building regulations than the UK.The second is to make the new regulationstake effect immediately.

The new buildings will be a bit moreexpensive than at present – about 10% to20% more. There will not be more climatejobs here, however. These will be the samebuilding workers as before. There will,however, be jobs for energy inspectors.

Main jobs in homes and buildings

• Most jobs will be in building trades of all kinds • Manufacture of building materials, insulation materials, new boilers,

solar thermal, and heat pumps• Manufacture of low energy appliances• Suppliers of materials and parts for those manufacturers• Architects, engineers, and research and development• Housing inspectors• Training and education for all these skills

At the moment enforcement of buildingregulations on energy use is left to privateinspectors paid by the builder, and abuse iswidespread. The solution is perhaps 10,000public inspectors with stringent powers.

With insulation, refitting, new boilers, solarthermal heating, some heat pumps, andtightly regulated and inspected new build weshould be able to cut domestic emissions by75% in 20 years.37 That will require anaverage of 175,000 workers every year for 20years. When we have enough electricity, itwill be possible to cut this even further.


Chapter 6

Jobs in transport

This chapter is about jobs intransport. To see how to change,we’ll start with emissions now.Transport currently accounts forabout three tonnes of emissions perperson, or 174 million tonnes for allof us.

Cars, planes, lorries and vans account foralmost 90% of our emissions now. So that'swhere we need to cut.

We need to do four things, whereverpossible. The first, and most important, isswitch people to public transport. Thesecond is switch freight from lorries andplanes to trains. The third is to replace petroland diesel engines with renewable electricity.None of these solutions will be easy, but theyare possible.

Public transport

We will begin with the big one - cars. Thefigures for passenger miles in 2007 were:

Cars, vans and taxis 425 billion passenger miles

Buses and trains 68 billion passenger miles 39

Cars, vans and taxis carry six times as manypassenger miles, and have thirteen times theemissions. So for each passenger mile, theyemit about twice as much CO2.

One reason is that the average car on theaverage journey carries 1.6 people.40 Anotheris that long vehicles save energy. Think of theway that riders in the Tour de France bunchbehind a leader, because he saves them energyby breaking through the resistance of the air.The same principle works for buses – andreally well for trains, which are long inproportion to their fronts.

The third reason is that trains and tramsmove more easily because the wheels and thetracks are made of the same material – steel.There is less friction, so less energy is needed.

These are the three reasons why, right now,every switch to public transport cutsemissions in half. There are two more reasonswhy public transport could do much betterthan that.

CO2 emissions from transport 38

Million % of tonnes transport

emissions

Cars 77 44 Air 37 21HGVs 26 15Vans 15 9Sea/waterways 12 7Rail 4 2.2Buses 3 1.7TOTAL 174 100


One is that occupancy rates on buses andtrains now are quite low – there areexceptions, but most seats are empty outsideof rush hour. With a better, and morecomprehensive public transport system, itshould be possible to fill a lot more seats. Wewill return to this point.

The other reason is that it is much easier torun electric trains and buses than it is to runelectric cars. Right now, with most electricitycoming from gas and coal, there is no savingin heating homes by electricity. But the tradeoff is better for buses, trains and cars. Evennow, we can cut emissions by electrifyingtransport. Once most of our electricity isrenewable, the savings will be very large.

We also need to think of cycling andwalking as part of a public transport strategy– they are good for your health, and the onlyCO2 they produce is in the air you breatheout. We will return to this point too.

Making public transport popularThat’s the case for public transport. Butmaking the case is not the same thing asgetting people to use public transport. Thetransport system has to be designed so peoplewant to get out of their cars.

For that, several strategies have to gotogether. The first would be reserved buslanes. That way buses could be faster thancars. Some streets would have to be bus onlyat certain times of day. Not having ticketswould also speed up buses.

Another strategy is a more frequent, andmore comprehensive, service. That makestravel more reliable, warmer, drier, and moreappealing, and means you can get to manymore places. With a more frequent service, itwill also be possible to run smaller buses andshorter trains at slow times. And, crucially,there will be space for shared taxis.

The TGV (high-speed electric trains) at Pasteur-Montparnasse, France Photo: Matthew Black


A key step, though, is to work towardsmaking buses and trains free. Many transportunion activists feel there are dangers in doingthis immediately. They fear, understandably,that without money coming in from tickets,the government will not invest properly inpublic transport. As an interim step, we canmake travel free for all children, seniors, andpeople with disabilities. We can use currentgovernment subsidies to keep ticket priceslow. We can also simplify tickets, with onlyone or two fares for any destination, andbring prices into line with the lower averageprices in Europe. Then, once a comprehensiveservice is established and secure, we can makeit free. This will make for many more users,and fewer cars, and faster travel, and morefrequent trains and buses.

The service will never be really free, ofcourse. Someone still has to pay for it. Thefair solution is the one we use for schools andhospitals. Everyone pays for the service out oftheir taxes. People who use private hospitalsstill pay for the NHS, and old Etonians payfor state schools. In the same way, all of us,car and bus users alike, would pay taxes forpublic transport. Taxes would be a bit higher,but most of us would save more on ticketsand petrol.

At the moment approximately 160,000people in the UK drive taxis and cabs.41 Wedon't want to put them out of work. But formost trips they are only carrying one or twopeople, plus the driver. Many countries in theworld have shared taxis and minibuses. Theysay on the front where they are going, they letyou off when you ask, and you flag themdown when you need them. At the start ofthe journey, the taxis line up, and each onegoes off as it fills up, which usually takes threeor four minutes. The system works well.42

The key is full taxis, so they use less energy.Once they become popular on certain routes,the drivers can upgrade to minibuses. And allthe taxis can be electrified. They will be ableto make a particularly useful contribution inrural areas and with transport for people withdisabilities and the elderly, taking them rightto their door. At the moment about half ofvehicle miles in the UK are on rural roads.43

It should go without saying, but it doesn’t,that all of the new comprehensive transportsystem will have to be accessible to peoplewith disabilities. This would cut costs for thehealth and social services as people becomemore independent. More importantly, it willtransform people’s lives.

Any one of these strategies won’t makepublic transport popular on its own. Takentogether, and over time, they can make adecisive difference.

Finally, we can try banning cars from innercities, or from whole cities, altogether. Thiswould allow fast, efficient transport, andmean that most streets could be returned totrees, children, neighbours, grass, parks andgardens. This won’t work by passing a law.But it could work if people in one city votedto try it. We think the results would be suchthat everyone else would want to do it too.

An ‘Eco-Cab in Stockholm, Sweden, pedal-powerewd with a small electric battery to

help with hills Photo: phototouring


Trains

So far we have been looking mainly at busesand taxis. We also need trains. We can switchto buses quickly, because the roads are alreadythere. Every time you fill a bus you clear spaceon the roads.

The train network is already nearly full.The seats are not – many are empty. But thenumber of trains is close to what the tracksand systems can carry. And there have to beregular times at night to maintain the track.

So the first step is to build a new, secondnetwork.

With rail most of the jobs in the first fewyears will be in construction, not in drivingand running the system. And a new railsystem can be entirely electric from thebeginning.

The real gain here is in carrying freight.Remember, HGV lorries produce one fifth ofall transport emissions. It is very difficult toelectrify a lorry – they travel too far andconsume too much energy changing speed.Rail freight already uses about one sixth ofthe diesel of a lorry carrying the same freight.Electric rail could eventually eliminateemissions altogether.

We would need to expand the existingdepots, and build a network of new ones. Butthe freight could be broken down anddistributed in electric vans, recharged at thedepot at night.

The existing rail network is already wellfitted to moving freight – it just needs fullelectrification. A new passenger networkcould run faster trains.44 It could also rundouble decker trains, as in other Europeancountries, because we could have higherbridges and longer platforms.

With trains, as with buses, more frequentservices and free tickets would combine toattract even more passengers, and provide adenser and more reliable service.

How many jobs - and what jobs?

We can get a pretty clear idea of the jobs thatwould be needed from the ones we have now.Currently we have about 180,000 busworkers, mostly drivers, and 120,000 railworkers, doing a variety of jobs. That’s about300,000 in all. There are another 170,000more indirect jobs supplying the bus and railindustry.45

We propose a 250% increase in bus andtrain travel. At first sight that would mean anincrease from 300,000 to 1,050,00 directworkers. That is a very large number ofworkers to find – we also need workers forrenewable energy and refitting buildings. Butin practice we could do it with fewer workers.With all the strategies we proposed above, itshould be possible to double passenger loadsper vehicle. That would nearly, but not quite,halve the number of workers needed. Andmaking buses and trains free will also savejobs.

Ordinarily, unions and workers wouldworry about losing all those jobs. But we areproposing a massive increase in publictransport jobs, and a wide variety.

It should also be possible for 600,000workers – 300,000 more than we have now –to carry the new passenger miles. Thoseworkers could also carry a massive increase inrail freight.

About a third of those jobs would be busdrivers. At first about half would be buildingnew rail lines. In time those would becomepermanent jobs on the railways.


There would also be about 150,000 jobs withshared taxis. At least some of these would bepart of the National Climate Service.

On top of that we can encourage cycling.Ordinary bicycles are good for your healthand burn nothing but food. Electric bicycles,now widely used in China and in Europe, alsohave very low emissions.

The key thing here is building a network ofwide, safe, separate cycle lines that are notsimply white lines on a road. This can bedone quickly. It would rapidly generate jobsin building proper lanes, building andmaintaining bikes, and in factories makingelectric bikes. We figure cycles could probablyreplace a tenth of car passenger miles.46

Lower speed limits would also make cyclingand walking safer. And they are a fast way ofcutting emissions – the amount of petrolneeded to move a car increases rapidly after50 mph.

In all, with cycling, and with buses, trainsand taxis working at double capacity, wecould cut car and van passenger journeys byat least two thirds, and total passengeremissions by at least half.47

Electrification

But public transport is only part of theanswer. The other part is electricity. On theface of it, we simply make all the electricityrenewable and electrify all the cars.

There are two problems. One we havementioned before. We can double theamount of electricity we generate, but wewould need much more than that to electrifyall heating and transport. So we also have toreduce the total amount of energy used intransport.

The other problem is that right now electriccars don’t work that well. There is only onecar available that goes more than 100 mileswithout recharging. The Tesla sports car runsfor 200 miles, costs £90,000 and takes 16hours to recharge. There are also questionsabout materials for batteries.

However, there is a big advantage torecharging batteries at night. A system ofservice stations where you haul out batteriesand replace them, much as you would fill up atank now, could make a big difference. Thekey would be a law that said all new cars hadto be electric.

Luckily, public transport already fits moreeasily with electricity. The whole rail systemcan be electrified. On motorways we canbuild reserved lanes for buses with overheadelectric lines. These can be connected to citiesby bus stations at each interchange. With amixture of local buses stopping at each exit,and express buses running long distances,intercity bus travel could be far quicker thannow, and run every few minutes.

Vans, buses and shared taxis fit electricitywell. They don't have to go fast. They can usehybrid technology on all-electric motors toturn constant braking into saved energy. Andthey can change batteries regularly atdepots.48

Some, but not all, the authors of this reportthink there are other reasons for avoidingelectric cars. One is congestion. A second isthe large number of people killed andmaimed by cars. The third is that if we havemillions of cars in rich countries, then peoplein China and India will want them too. Thatwill put an enormous strain on the world’sresources, and lead to massively increasedemissions.

On the other hand, some of our authorsthink that electric cars could make anenormous difference.


Air and sea transportThis still leaves air and sea transport.

Planes account for more than a fifth of UKemissions from transport. Almost all of thiscomes from international flights.49 Planeemissions are deposited in the upper levels ofthe atmosphere, where they do more harm,and some of them are greenhouse gases thatdo swift harm. There is debate about howmuch difference this makes, but a reasonableguess is that it at least doubles the impact ofplane emissions.

That would make air emissions from planesroughly as important as cars - but they areharder to cut. Planes are aerodynamic, theyare already public transport, and there is noway to electrify them.

There are ways of coping. Over twentyyears we can replace most European anddomestic flights with rail travel. There areobvious exceptions like the Orkneys. Andthere is a strong argument for building adecent high speed rail system first and thendiscouraging or banning flights. A speedyreliable train service across Europe could takepassengers 1,000 miles in seven hours toholiday in Spain.

Over half our air miles, however, come fromflights beyond Europe. Design can have aneffect here. Regulations can insist that planesfly full, as charter flights do now. Businessestravellers can be discouraged, andteleconferencing encouraged. All that canprobably reduce air emissions from 34million tonnes to 15 million tonnes.

Beyond that, there are three otherpossibilities. Biofuels are a controversial idea,for reasons we talk about in Chapter 8. But ifthere is a case for them anywhere, it's inplanes.

Blimps are slower and more stately, but stillsoaring. A third possibility is sea travel. Shipsare already the low emission way of movingfreight. Air freight has 46 times the emissionsper tonne, and even rail freight has six timesthe emissions of shipping.50 Ferries with halfthe crowding of sleeper carriages on railwayswould cut emissions drastically, and be ascheap as planes.

It is difficult to see how to cut totalemissions from water transport. It has lowemissions and in a low carbon economy, therewould be an increase in water travel andfreight.51

The new jobs here are on blimps, at sea, andon high speed rail.


The results

If we do all the things we havesuggested in this chapter, wewill still have some emissionsfrom HGV lorries, planes andwater travel. If electric carswork in time, emissions can becut by 80% (see table to theright).

It is possible of course, thatelectric cars will not work out.In that case, a larger shift topublic transport combinedwith some electric cars wouldallow us to cut car emissions to7 million tonnes, and the totalto 42 million tonnes. Thatwould be still be a cut of 76%.

At first, most climate jobswill be in refitting buildingsand in renewable energy. Butover time, transport will takeup the majority of jobs. Heremost people will be able totransfer their old skills, andpleasure in the job, to similarwork. Cabin staff can work oninternational rail and ships,HGV drivers can drive busesand trains, taxi drivers willhave friendlier and moretalkative cabs, and car workerscan make electric cars, taxis,buses and bikes.

How we can cut emissions from travel 52

Million of tonnes Before After

Cars 77 0 Air 37 12HGVs 26 8Vans 15 0Sea/waterways 12 15Rail 4 0Buses 3 0

TOTAL 174 35Cut in emissions 80%

Main jobs in transport

• Bus drivers• Shared taxi drivers• Driving, stations, signals and track work in rail• Building and electrifying rail lines• Manufacture of track, engines, rolling stock, electric

cars and buses, and cycles and electric bikes• Building cycle lanes• Supply of parts and materials• Maintenance, servicing and repair of all vehicles• Training and education in all the necessary skills


Chapter 7

Jobs in industry, agriculture and education

In the last three chapters, we havecovered jobs in renewable energy,construction and transport. Theseaccount for eight tonnes of CO2emissions per person. That’s out ofa total of 9.5 tonnes of CO2 perperson, or 11 tonnes of allgreenhouse gases. So we havecovered the most important areas.As it happens, they are also theareas where it is easiest to agree howto make cuts in emissions.

Agriculture and industry are different. Cutsin emissions here require complicatedpolitical choices. These sectors are also muchmore immersed in the global economy, inways we will explain.

Moreover, for the last three chapters wecould to some extent rely on research that hasalready been done. There has been much lesswork on agriculture and industry, and thatmeans we can be less certain about how manyjobs will be needed.

First, an easy one. The half a tonne ofemissions from making ‘other energy’ lumpstogether four main things:

• energy used in refineries• natural gas leaks of methane• flaring and leaks in oil and gas fields• making solid fuel.

If we make the changes already discussed inthe last three chapters, almost all of theseemissions will disappear. If we stop using oilin transport, there will be no energy used inrefineries. If we stop using natural gas inpower stations and to heat houses, there willbe no leaks. If we stop using coal and othersolid fuel, we will have no emissions makingit.

And another easy one. Emissions fromlandfill account for another 22 milliontonnes of CO2 equivalent - almost half atonne per person. Here again cuts inemissions are pretty straightforward. Themain problem is methane (natural gas)emissions from the decay of organic matter(left over food) in rubbish. In Britain, andworldwide, we have already eliminated muchof these emissions by feeding the methaneinto pipes as it seeps out of landfill. Thatmethane is then burned, and can be used forheat and energy.

Greenhousse gasemissions by sector (per person)

Industry 1 tonne Agriculture 1 tonne'Other energy' 0.5 tonneLandfill 0.5 tonneEducation needed for

all other jobs


So one strategy is more jobs in energy fromlandfill. The other possible strategy is simplysorting and recycling left over food. This canthen be collected separately, and sent to beprocessed into different combinations ofenergy, fertiliser, and food for pigs. Again,there are jobs in food recycling plants.

These two strategies can cut almost allemissions from landfill.

Industry

Now for a harder one. Industry producesslightly less than one tonne of emissions perperson. This may seem a low figure. Manypeople somehow assume that most climatechange emissions come from industry.

They don’t. For instance, industry uses onlyabout one quarter of our total electricity.More importantly, though, most electricityuse comes from electricity generation ortransport. We have already covered these inprevious chapters. Almost all the electricitywill be from renewable sources. Most of thetransport of freight for business will be onrailways and vans run by electricity.

That covers all the use of electricity, petroland diesel in industry. When we say onetonne of emissions from industry, we meanwhat's left. That mainly comes from threesources.

The first is burning fuel to keep factories,other industrial buildings and workers warm.Here the emissions can be cut in the sameways as in other buildings.53

The second source of emissions is burningfuel to make the large amounts of heatneeded in certain industrial processes.Processing iron and steel is the biggest one,but aluminium and pulp and paperprocessing are big consumers too.

Here some emissions can be reduced by usingrenewable electricity instead of coal ornatural gas. More cuts can be made withimproved design. But this is not as simple asthe changes in keeping a factory warm.

The third source of emissions is those thatdon't come from burning, but from someother effect of the industrial process. Cement,for instance, is manufactured in a process thattakes the carbon out of limestone and releasesit as CO2. Here there are some cuts to bemade by using different materials, and someby changing design.

Again, though, the changes are not simple.For one thing, each factory and each processis different. What is needed is a team ofskilled designers and craftspeople who cancome into a factory or plant, work out thechanges needed, and do them.

These teams can do something else as well.We have already said that factories will beusing renewable electricity. But we have alsobeen emphasising that we will have moreelectricity than we do now, but not enough towaste it. So the teams that go into thefactories can also redesign the layout ofmachines, the pumps, and the electricity linesto reduce the amount of renewable electricityused.54

Which still leaves the question of who pays.That’s pretty straightforward if the changesmean the company saves money quickly, ashappens with most insulation. But whatabout industrial processes that require largeinvestments, and would leave the companyweaker in the face of competitors overseas?

After all, industries export a lot of theirproduct. Electricity, housing and transportare all mostly tied to one country.Government regulation can simply changewhat happens in that country. But industrymakes things that go around the world.


So changes to industry can't simply comefrom regulations by a government in London.That regulation can make a difference. Butthe real changes will come from concertedgovernment action around the world. Evenwithout that, though, we can probably reduceemissions from industry by half.55

Agriculture

Agriculture, too, is not straightforward.There are political problems. Britishagriculture is part of a global market, andmuch of our food comes from abroad. Also,the actual production processes are complex,and vary a lot.

The first thing to say, though, is thatagriculture accounts for just less than onetonne of emissions per person. As withindustry, people find this surprising. Partly it’sbecause agriculture is not the same thing asfood. About half our food is imported, so isnot counted in UK emissions. The transportof food, and the electricity use in canneries,slaughterhouses, warehouses, and stores hasbeen covered by previous chapters. Here weare talking only about agriculture – growingfood and animals on farms.56

Very small amounts of emissions – aboutfour million tonnes in all – come fromburning oil in agricultural vehicles. Mostemissions come from methane and nitrousoxide. The split is about equal.

The methane comes from cattle, sheep andgoats. They chew the cud, have two stomachs,and take their time digesting food. In theprocess they produce methane that comes outin burps and farts. Pigs, chickens, ducks, andeven ostriches and llamas don't do that.

Nitrous oxide comes from using nitrogenfertiliser in the soil, or from manure, whichalso contains nitrogen.

The majority of this fertiliser is used to growgrains to feed sheep and cattle.

There are partial technical solutions –different grasses, different land use practices,and different animal feeds, or more pigs andfewer cattle. Some people argue for giving upmeat altogether, but this divides both theenvironmental and the union movements.

A strong case has also been made forswitching a lot of agriculture to ‘secondgeneration’ biofeuls.57 Biofeuls are basicallyalcohol made from plants. Petrol engines,with some modifications, can burn thealcohol. The attraction is obvious, above allfor planes.

There are several problems in practice.58

There is only so much land on the planet. Inmany cases, forests are cut down to growbiofuels. In other cases, they are grown onland that was used for crops, and other forestsare cut down for more crop land. The releaseof CO2 and methane when forests are cutdown is enormous.

Cattle produce methane - a powerful greenhousegas Photo: Compassion in World Farming


Moreover, when biofuels and food cropscompete for land in the global market, carswill beat poor families every time.59 That willraise food prices, stoke hunger, and destroymore forests.60 In addition, many biofuelsconsume a great deal of fossil fuel energy inthe production process.

Many people argue that we can avoid theseproblems by using 'second generationbiofuels'. These are crops that grow on landnot used for trees or food now. Or they growon land now used for pasture, but could besurplus if we eat less meat. Or they are madefrom recycled leftovers.61

The problem, however, is that there is aglobal political dispute going on right nowover ‘first generation’ biofuels. Arguments forlimited and controlled use of biofuels are inpractice likely to be used to legitimate allbiofuels. Here again the authors of this reportare in two minds, and we do not recommendjobs in biofuels at the moment.

More organic agriculture would also createmore jobs, and does not use nitrogenfertiliser. But yields are lower, which meansmore land has to be found somewhere on theplanet.

For the moment, then, we are not sure, oragreed, on what to recommend for jobs inagriculture. This is why our proposals, fornow, concentrate on other areas. We willassume that agricultural emissions can be cutby 30% through changes in processes andregulations. Obviously, we will need morethan that in the long run, and there willprobably be many jobs involved.

Education

Our last category is jobs in education,training and research. These are not jobs inreducing emissions from the education sector– those have already been covered in otherchapters. Here we mean the training andresearch necessary to back up other climatejobs.

Training will be done in different ways fordifferent jobs. At the moment, for instance,blade technicians in wind turbine factoriesare trained on the job, often in anothercountry. Bus drivers are trained by theemployer, and then on the road with anexperienced mentor. Train drivers take yearsto become fully qualified. So do mastermariners, who have a good deal of theireducation in college. As do engineers, of allkinds.

So there will be workplace, college anduniversity education, in differentcombinations – and many apprenticeships.The number of apprenticeships has shrunkdrastically in this country, partly because ofsubcontracting, and an economy thatdiscourages private employers from providingtraining for more than the part of the craftthey need. The climate service shouldencourage three and five year apprenticeships,with day release, that teach an entire craft.This is less boring, and it produces moreflexible, thoughtful and innovative workers.One particular apprenticeship we will needlarge numbers of, across all sectors, iscombined electricians and electrical machinefitters.

These apprenticeships can provide a futureto a large number of school leavers whocurrently lack opportunities. They can alsoopen craft skills to more women, and to olderpeople wanting to restart their working lives.


We will also need a good deal of researchand development. In any industry, much ofthis takes place as part of the process ofproduction on a large scale. In particular,that's where big productivity savings aremade.

In new industries, solving new problems, wewill need more such research. But we will alsoneed university based research. The currentmodel of scientific and engineering researchtied to the immediate needs of Britishindustry does not serve either science orindustry well. There is a need for projectsthat look at basic scientific problems, thatmight not work, or do not serve an obviousneed. In the past, British industry and sciencewere among the world leaders preciselybecause they did both ‘practical’ and'theoretical' work. We need that again.

Finally, this research needs to be ‘opensource’ – with the results available to theworld, not concealed by commercial secrecy.If we can pioneer this, and other countriesfollow, it will enormously accelerate ourability to cut emissions globally.

An overview

We have not yet done the work - nor have wefound anyone else who has - to be able toestimate accurately how many jobs we willneed in industry and education. For themoment, we will assume that each of thosesectors takes 50,000 jobs (see table below).

Distribution of climate jobs (first 20 years)

Electricity 425,000Buildings 175,000Transport 300,000Industry 50,000Education 50,000

Total 1,000,000

Distribution of climate jobs(after 20 years)

Electricity 300,000Transport 600,000 Education 50,000Other 50,000

Total 1,000,000

The building jobs include 200,000 workingon homes for the first ten years, the samenumber working on public and businessbuildings for the next five years, and 100,000fitting electric heating in homes for the lastfive years. See panel below for how the jobswill look after 20 years.

‘I’m ready for a green economy’ placard at aGreen Jobs educational event in Vancouver

Photo: Green-for-all


These are guesses. Twenty years is a longway off. We are assuming that with technicalprogress, and a grid in place, it will take lessjobs to replace wind farms than it did to buildthem in the first place. We also assume thatindustry and buildings will have beenreconfigured.

These are not all the jobs in a new lowcarbon economy. These are the new,government climate service jobs. They do notinclude the 300.000 already working on busesand trains, for instance. Nor did they includethe building workers, many of them trainedby the National Climate Service, who wouldgo on to build low carbon homes andbuildings.

We could make even deeper cuts, and getcloser to Zero Carbon Britain, if electric carswork. We could also do it with more jobs inpublic transport, or more electric heating.And we can do it if we find ways to makedeeper cuts in agriculture and industry, or touse biofuels in planes.

It does not have to take 20 years. A millionand a half workers could do it in 13 years.Two million could do it ten years.

Climate jobs: cuts in emissions

Tonnes per personBefore After

Electricity 3.0 0.2Transport 3.0 0.7Buildings 2.0 0.4Industry 1.0 0.5Agriculture 1.0 0.7Other energy 0.5 0.1Landfill 0.5 0

TOTAL 11 2.6

Total cut in emissions: 76%


In an era of government cuts andausterity measures, climate jobs andinvestment will only become real ifwe campaign, organise and fight forthem. It is a truism, but socialchange has only ever come frompeople struggling together.

With austerity programmes being pursuedby governments across Europe, the ideascontained in this report can help counter theargument that there is no alternative. Itshows how creating one million climate jobsis both technically feasible and affordable andhow the necessary public investment canbuild a green industrial base – the“commanding heights of the future.” 62

But we have to learn the lesson that ifclimate change is the result of massive marketfailure we cannot rely on the market to takethe decisive action needed.63

A fairer system of taxation and strongergovernment regulation must be part of thesolution. So is the need to debate andexplore alternative, democratic forms ofpublic ownership if the planet’s productiveresources are to meet social need and halt aslide towards ecological disaster.

Thousands of people have read this or anearlier edition of this report. At first we metwith some scepticism, as the concepts werenew to many in the union movement. But inmany British trade unions the argument forclimate jobs has been won.

The idea of climate jobs has become nationalpolicy for many trade unions and is spreadinginternationally. Now we need to expand thecampaign. The argument for climate jobs hasbeen made, and often won. We need to startthe campaign to get those jobs.

The authors of this report have spoken atnumerous meetings and seminars. Oftenwe've found that workers andenvironmentalists agree with everything wesay, but don't know what they should do next.So in this chapter we will look at differentways that we can organise.

Those of you who have read this far willcome from a number of different points ofview. Some of you will be active tradeunionists, involved as a workplacerepresentative. Perhaps you regularly attendyour union branch meeting and take part inthe debates and votes that take place there.Other readers will be in a union but wouldn’tconsider yourself active – maybe you got holdof this pamphlet through your union branch,but don’t go to meetings.

Some readers might not be trade unionists,or even in work. But you see the need forjobs, or you are desperate for action overclimate change. Perhaps the cuts have put youon the dole, or you have come out of theeducation system and haven’t yet found work.

Finally many of you will be environmentalactivists. Maybe you saw this report and readit because you wanted to know more, or wereunconvinced of the need to create climatejobs.

Chapter 8

What you can do


Perhaps you’ve been to Climate Camp, or area member of the RSPB, the Campaignagainst Climate Change or Friends of theEarth. Perhaps you’ve signed petitions andjoined demonstrations, but want to do more.Whichever group you are from, you can help.

So what can I do?

Here are some ideas how you can help spreadthe campaign for one million climate jobs.

Popularise the idea of climate jobs even further

This is particularly important as workingpeople face enormous cuts in their jobs andservices. Climate jobs allow campaigners tooffer a positive way forward. Instead ofsimply saying “we are against this cut” or“stop this service being closed,” we can arguefor positive solutions. Climate jobs won't justcreate work and save the planet - theinvestment has the potential to pull theeconomy out of crisis.

Ask people to sign up to thecampaign and add their name toour website

We want to show the breadth of support fora million climate jobs so as to create theground swell campaign that can force actionfrom national government. This includesMPs, local government councillors, authorsand leading trade unionists. We also wantordinary campaigners, activists and unioniststo do the same in their thousands.

We should get organisations – cycling clubs,union branches, churches, mosques andsynagogues, professional associations, localbranches of political parties and NGOs toadd their group to the list of supporters atwww.climate-change-jobs.org.

Link with existing campaigns Campaigns against austerity measures are

starting up everywhere. They will be holdingmeetings, demonstrations and protests. Weneed to get the message of climate jobs toevery one of those events. The demand for agreen economy needs to be at the heart ofthose struggles.

We need to build a network of campaignersprepared to get organised to visit picket lines,speak at meetings, petition in town centresand leaflet workplaces. There are activists inevery town and city in Britain willing to getinvolved in this.

The Campaign against Climate Change(CaCC) which produced this report havegroups around the country. Our trade uniongroup has an extensive network of unionmembers who want to campaign for climatejobs. Groups like Climate Camp, Friends ofthe Earth and Greenpeace have members inevery town. National supporting trade unionssuch as PCS, CWU, UCU and TSSA havelocal branches in many towns andworkplaces.

Getting in touch with all of these can seemdaunting. But if you start from the existinggroups such as those on the CaCC website,you can quickly find a network of others whowant to get involved.

We have found public meetings that discussthe idea of climate jobs have been verypopular. These meetings don’t have to be big,just bringing together trade unionists andenvironmentalists can start a dialogue abouthow to work together.


Getting together, booking a room andinviting activists to an initial organisingmeeting is the easiest first step. Contact theCaCC office or the CaCC trade union group(see inside back cover for details) – we canhelp you get a speaker or put you in touchwith local activists.

To many environmentalists, unions canseem very confusing. There are manydifferent bodies, they seem to organise instrange ways – sometimes geographically,sometimes on a workplace level andsometimes across an industrial sector.

At the same time, environmentalists oftenseem strange to trade unionists.Environmental meetings can seem long andsprawling, with no fixed agenda, unlike morerigid trade union meetings. Sometimespeople don’t like to take votes, or electofficers.

These differences shouldn’t worry us. Theyare just different methods of working. Thoseof us who have put this report together comefrom all sorts of different traditions. Over theyears we have learned to work together, andlearned from each other.

An important aim of this report is todevelop the debate both within and betweentrade unions and environmentalists.

Raising climate issues in your trade union

Not everyone in a union knows the ropeseither. We have lots of support already, but westill want climate jobs discussed at every levelof the union movement – and in everybranch and workplace.

Unions organise in a democratic way. While they have a layer of officers andleaders, nationally and locally many of theseare elected by the membership. Policy isdecided by annual conferences, throughmotions submitted by branches and groups.

The unions that support the campaign forclimate jobs do so because at their unionconferences activists have debated anddiscussed motions from branches that havecalled on them to do so. We want to expandthis, so when you discuss the issue in yourunion branch, you might want to see whetherit can be passed up to the next union body –perhaps the ‘region’ or the ‘sector’.

What you can achieve will depend on yourunion branch, but getting involved is the firststep to finding out what can be done. If youare a union member and have never beeninvolved in your branch, you might feeluncomfortable raising these issues. But whenyou do, you are likely to get a welcomingreception.

Part of The Wave, a march against climate change, London, 2009 Photo: Peter J Dean


Here’s what you, and your union branch,can do:

• Find out where your union branch meets.In a unionised workplace, the best personto ask is your workplace representative orshop steward. Explain that you want toraise the issue of climate jobs and showthem this report. If your union alreadysupports the idea, explain this.

• Ask your shop steward how you can bestraise the issue. This might be through amotion - a short statement that the unionbody agrees to action. Or by simplyspeaking on the issue. Depending on howyour branch is organised, you might wantto speak about the idea of climate jobsyourself or see if you can get the union toinvite a speaker from the campaign.

• There are other tried and tested actions thatunion branches are familiar with. Forexample, the branch can agree to purchasecopies of this report to circulate amongmembers. They could sponsor a jointmeeting with another campaign group, orinvite a speaker from the climate jobscampaign.

• In recent years many unions have started toelect environmental or greenrepresentatives. These reps are like shopstewards or health and safety reps, but forthe environment. They campaign forchanges at work that improve theenvironment and reduce energy use.Unfortunately these reps have no statutoryrights, but if combined with health andsafety legislation they can make adifference. Many of the changes they arguefor would improve working conditions – orsave money.

• Green reps or learning reps can also help toeducate fellow workers about climatechange - by, for example, organising filmshowings or workplace meetings. At oneelectronics firm in the North West,representatives showed the Al Gore film AnInconvenient Truth after work for theircolleagues, provoking a debate about whatcould be done there to reduce energy useand involve trade unionists inenvironmental campaigning. There mayalso be activists who have been involved inTUC GreenWorkplaces or ClimateSolidarity projects in your workplace youcould contact.

Reaching out to other workersWe live in a new and challenging time for

the environmental movement. The failure ofa genuine international agreement atCopenhagen in 2009 has demoralised some.The economic crisis has already led togovernments saying they cannot afford eventhe minimal changes they had agreed to helpfight climate change.

This can paralyse us as environmentalists.Or we can use this new situation to ouradvantage. We can reach out to those peoplewho are having their livelihoods attacked,their services cut and jobs destroyed. We canget involved in their campaigns to spread adifferent message – of climate jobs and greeninvestment.

If there is a strike, protest or campaign inyour area it is important that you showsolidarity. Go down and join the picket linesand demonstrations. Take copies of thisreport to show the campaigners about thealternative.


Disputes at Visteon and Vestas

When the workers at the Visteon carcomponent plants occupied their factoriesin the face of closure early in 2009 theyissued a statement that said:

"Our skills - we can make anything inplastic - should be used to makeincreasingly needed parts for greenproducts: bike and trailer parts, solarpanels, turbines, recycling bins, etc."

These workers wanted to save their jobs.But they had also started to think aboutwhat they did. If cars were no longer indemand, what else did society need thatthey could turn a hand too?

Visteon workers met a wave of solidarity.Other workers, trade unionists, socialistsand campaigners took food, bedding andsolidarity down to the occupied plants.This support enabled them to carry ontheir struggle and although they didn't savetheir jobs, they won a huge financialsettlement.

A few months later another occupationhad a profound impact on the union andenvironmental movements in Britain.Vestas, Britain's only wind turbinemanufacturer, decided to move productionto the USA from the Isle of Wight. Sixhundred men and women lost their jobsand the island’s economy was devastated.

The insanity of closing a turbine plantwhen the world desperately needs morerenewable energy was there for everyone tosee. Again, the occupation of the plantreceived huge solidarity from tradeunionists, environmentalists and islanders.A climate camp set up outside theoccupation involved hundreds of people.

While the Vestas occupation did not endin victory, thousands of trade unionists andenvironmentalists learned that there was noiron wall between their struggles. Groupsworked together around the country toprovide solidarity.

A number of high profile campaigns inrecent years have had environmental ideas attheir heart (see box below).

There will be more struggles like this. Manywill start in communities or workplaceswhere the environmental link is not obvious.Sometimes workers will be on strike incarbon intensive industries like car plants orairports. Workers in industries like thesearen’t selfish. They care about the future ofthe planet, but are worried about theirlivelihoods.

This is why we need to support them andshow that environmental issues play a part inthese disputes too. Car workers for instancecould be producing the buses, coaches andtrains that our expanded public transportsystem needs. If those campaigns can defeattheir bosses or the government, then all of uswill be stronger.


The umbrella for the British Trade Unionmovement is the Trades Union Congress.The TUC strategy for a ‘Just Transition’argues that working people should not loseout in the transition to a low carboneconomy. They demand that:

“jobs loss as a result of environmentaltransition is minimised and that changewithin sectors does not occur at the expenseof decent work and decent terms andconditions. A Just Transition is alsorequired to ensure that environmentalinitiatives... do not impact on lowerincome groups.” 64

Workers in high carbon industries are notour enemy. We want them to have better,safer jobs in a future economy.

The future of aviation, coal or nuclearpower are things that not all of us will agreeon. However it is important that there is adialogue between different sections of thetrade union movement and environmentalistsabout how we take things forward. In thisreport however, we have shown that part ofthe drive towards creating millions of climatejobs is to retrain, redeploy and reuse the skillsthat people already have.

Take the North Sea oil industry. Thousandsof people are employed who have skills inbuilding structures at sea, deep sea diving,flying helicopters and navigating boats. If weare to construct off-shore wind-turbines intheir thousands, these workers will beurgently needed. People who work in the carindustry will be able to turn their skills tomaking buses, coaches and trains for ourexpanded public transport networks.

When the Tories destroyed the coal miningindustry in the 1980s, hundreds of thousandsof people were thrown on the unemploymentscrapheap. We don’t want that repeated.Anyone who loses their job in a low carboneconomy will have a new one, or theopportunity to retrain and redeploy.

Winning a million climate jobs will not beeasy. None of our recent governments havelooked like they would simply introduce themeasures we need. We will have to forcethem. But the climate jobs we want to createoffer much more than jobs that can help savethe planet. They will be jobs with decent payand proper health and safety. Many will beskilled jobs that will help halt the decline inmanufacturing industry. They will give hopeto young people facing a bleak future. Andcampaigning for them will help unite tradeunionists, environmentalists, students,pensioners and the unemployed. Such acoalition will be a powerful force.

The way forward


The more we build on the this, the morelinks we create, the more networks we build,the more we support each other’s struggles,the greater the chance of us winning thechanges we need.

In May 2010, the Bolivian governmentcalled a World People’s Conference onClimate Change and the Rights of MotherEarth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. A grassrootsalternative to the failed United Nations 2009Copenhagen talks, the conference concludedwith a Universal Declaration of the Right ofMother Earth.65 In the words of DomingoLechon, Climate Justice Co-ordinator fromFriends of the Earth Mexico:

“Cochabamba represents a uniqueopportunity for popular demands to beadopted by governments. We will use thenew people’s agenda as a rallying call tomobilise movements of affected peoples,indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, tradeunions and women to dismantle corporatepower and force our governments intoaction”.

Today, millions of people face a stark future.The campaign for climate jobs is aboutoffering an alternative to the austeritymeasures and cuts offered by the currentgovernment. It is a positive alternative –putting people and planet first.

Mass movements of ordinary people arewhat force governments to introduce change.Whether the campaign for the right to vote,the right to be in a trade union, or even theright to protest. All of these have broughthuge pressure – demonstrations, protests, andstrikes – to bear on governments andpoliticians.

Our campaign is no different. In the shortterm we need to spread the idea of climatejobs and make it central to existing campaignsand strikes. Every strike that protects a serviceor saves jobs, could also create new climatejobs. The case for one million climate jobscan help build mass support for an alternativeto austerity measures that are trying to makeus pay the price for the economic crisis. Itcan help challenge the fatalism that hasafflicted trade unions and popular protest fortoo long. We can show in practice thatanother world really is possible.


Endnotes

1 We are following the excellent example ofDavid MacKay, Sustainable Energy –without the hot air, UIT, Cambridge, 2009,downloadable at www.withouthotair.com

2 Emissions are measured in million tonnesof CO2. For methane and nitrous oxidethey are measured in million tonnes ofCO2e, which means CO2 equivalent –enough methane to have the same effect asa tonne of CO2. These are estimates partlybecause emissions fell 10% from 2008 to2009, because of the recession. It is notclear how high emissions will be in 2010and 2011. We have chosen the highernumbers for 2008 because 2009 may, ormay not, prove to be an exceptional year.Sources: Department of Energy andClimate Change statistics for greenhousegas emissions, 2008 and 2009, atwww.decc.gov.uk. To make these estimates,we have included emissions from refineriesunder transport, where almost all oil isused. We have included emissions frommanufacturing solid fuel and other energyunder buildings, where much of it is used.We have added the emissions from aircraftfuel and ship fuel sold in Britain forinternational travel to the government'smore conventional measure of Britishemissions. We have included emissionsfrom leaking gas pipes as part of buildings.For more details on the calculations, see theTechnical Note on UK Emissions on ourwebsite www.climate-change-jobs.org

3 Our detailed calculations are in theTechnical Note on Jobs Created and Lost,available on our website: www.climate-change-jobs.org

4 See note 3 above.5 Source: ‘Government spending details’ at

usgovernmentspending.com6 See Jonathan Neale, Stop Global Warming,

Bookmarks, 2008, pp. 50-55; and PaulKoistinen, Arsenal of World War II: Thepolitical economy of American Warfare,University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2004.

7 International Monetary Fund, GlobalFinancial Stability Report, April 2009, p.36. The figures are given in dollars: $110 ofwrite-offs up to the end of 2008, and afurther $200 million expected in 2009.

8 For ease of calculation, we have used anaverage wage of £27,000. In 2009 themedian earnings for full-time men was£28,270. That means half of men earnedmore than that and half less. The meanearnings for men was £35,661. That meansthe average, but it is distorted by very highearnings by a small number. For full timewomen the median was £22,851 and themean was £26,000. These figures are fromthe 2009 annual Survey of Hours andEarnings (AHSE) published on the websitewww.statistics.gov.uk. We are assuming herethat climate workers will be both men andwomen, they will be paid a bit more thanthe man in the middle makes, but that theywould not necessarily be paid overtime. Sothe wages in the National Climate Servicewould be a bit higher than £25,000.However, the calculations work out muchthe same if we use higher numbers.

9 We are not counting in the costs ofemployers’ national insurance contributionspaid in by the government, because theseare in effect the government paying thethemselves.


10 Mattias Dolls, Clement Fuest andAndreas Peichl, Automatic Stablizers andEconomic Crisis: US vs. Europe, Institute forthe Study of Labor, July 2009. The keytable is on p. 14, and suggests a rate of 44%,or 11,880 out of £27,000. However, theauthors are using data from Euromod,which does not include spending on VATand other indirect taxes. To allow for this,we have used the estimates for indirect taxesin Richard Murphy, 'Cut Government Debtby Increasing Spending',www.compassonline.org.uk, 10 July 2009,for a person on £25,000 a year, and allowedabout 4% of total expenditure for indirecttaxes. This gives us a total rate of 48%. 48%of £27,000 is £12,960, which we haverounded to £13,000. We have not takenaccount of employers’ national insurancecontributions, on the grounds that whensomeone is a public employee, thegovernment is in effect paying themselvesthe employer's contributions.

11 This is more than for many public sectorworkers, because building work, transportand wind power create a lot of jobs in thesupply chain. See the note on Jobs Createdand Lost on our website:www.climate-change-jobs.org

12 This is a low estimate, and assumes thatelectricity is cheap, public transport is free,and house refitting is free. The real figurewill certainly be no lower than this, andmight be much higher.

13 Calculations based on the figures in MikeBrewer, Luke Sibieta, and Liam Wren-Lewis, Racing Away: Income Inequality andthe Evolution of High Incomes, Institute ofFiscal Studies Briefing Note 76, 2008, p. 9.This paper uses data from 2005-2006, andthe numbers would be slightly higher now.

14 See http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/15 See the note Subsidies by Barbara Harriss-

White on our website: www.climate-change-jobs.org.

16 This chapter owes a good deal to theGreen New Deal Group, The Cuts Won'tWork, New Economics Foundation,London, 2009.

17 Will Hutton, Guardian websiteComment is Free, 13 September 2009.

18 Samuel Brittan, 'Why UK should not fretabout national debt', Financial Times, 27March 2009.

19 CIA World Factbook 2010 for nationalincomes, at purchasing power parity. InMay 2010 unemployment in Japan was5.2% and in the UK 7.9%, but the countingis less rigorous in the UK.

20 See note 10 above.21 Paul Mosley, T. Subasat and John Weeks,

1995, 'Assessing Adjustment in Africa',World Development, 23 (9): 1459-1473.

22 John Weeks, 2000, 'Latin America andthe “High Performing Asian Economies”:Growth and Debt', Journal of InternationalDevelopment, 12:625-654.

23 Two readable accounts are Richard Alley,The Two-Mile Time Machine, PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, 2000; and JohnCox, Abrupt Climate Change and What ItMeans for our Future, Joseph Henry Press,Washington DC, 2004.


24 For a readable summary of many of thepossible feedbacks, see Fred Pearce, WithSpeed and Violence, Beacon, Boston, 2007.The recent and worrying climate science issummarised in Katherine Richardson et al,Synthesis Report on Climate Change: GlobalRisks, Challenges and Decisions, Universityof Copenhagen, available atwww.climatecongress.ku.dk; RichardHawkins, Christian Hunt, Tim Holmesand Tim Helweg-Larsen, Climate Safety,Public Interest Research Centre, 2008,available at www.climatesafery.org; andZero Carbon Britain 2030, pp. 37-57.

25 See Neale, Stop Global Warming, pp 223-233; Spike Lee's film When the LeveesBroke, 2006; Douglas Brinkley, The GreatDeluge, William Morrow, New York, 2006;Jed Horne, Breach of Faith, Random House,New York, 2006; and John McQuaid andMark Shleifstein, Path of Destruction, LittleBrown, New York, 2006.

26 See most recently, Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, P.Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V.Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo,D.L. Royer, and J.C. Zachos,'Targetatmospheric CO2: Where should humanityaim?', Open Atmos. Sci. J., 2008, 2, 217-231;and for much more, go to Hansen's websiteat Columbia, www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

27 See note 2 above.28 For the details of our calculations of

possible renewable energy resources andjobs needed, see footnote 1, the TechnicalNote on Jobs and the Technical Note onJobs and Capacity in Renewable Energy onour website www.climate-change-jobs.org

29 For all the calculations in this chapter onjobs, capacity installed and electricityproduced, see the Technical Note on Jobsand Capacity in Renewable Energy, on ourwebsite. To work out the estimates forcapacity installed and electricityproduction, we have relied on MartinKemp and Josie Wexler, eds., Zero CarbonBritain 2030, Centre for AlternativeTechnology, Machynlleth, Wales, 2010(ZCB); The Offshore Valuation Group,The Offshore Valuation, Public InterestResearch Centre, Machynlleth, Wales, 2010(PIRC); and David JC Mackay, SustainableEnergy – without the hot air, UIT,Cambridge, 2009; and a series ofbackground papers by Dave Elliott of theOpen University, posted on our website.

30 See Technical Note on our website byDave Elliott on Estimates of RenewableResources across Europe and Beyond.

31 See the Technical Note by Dave Elliott onour website.

32 There have been arguments for usingelectric car batteries as a resource to drawon at periods of peak demand. Zero CarbonBritain 2030, however, says that the energylosses are so great that it is an inefficientway of storing energy; p.111.

33 At the moment there are considerablepolitical problems with plans to developCSP in North Africa for export. See theTechnical Note on CSP by Dave Elliott onour website. In the longer run, if we get amass climate jobs programme and othercountries follow suit, these problems couldbe easily solved.


34 Both Zero Carbon Britain 2030 andMacKay, Sustainable Energy, propose thatwall mounted heat pumps could also makea major difference in Britain.Unfortunately, recent research suggests thatfor the moment this is not the case. SeeEnergy Saving Trust, Getting Warmer: afield trial of heat pumps, 2010. Groundsource heat pumps do not seem to be amagic bullet, but do work reasonably wellin new buildings.

35 Gupta, R. and Chandiwala S (2009), Acritical and comparative evaluation ofapproaches and policies to measure,benchmark, reduce and manage CO2emissions from energy use in the existingbuilding stock in cities of developed andrapidly-developing countries – case studies ofUK, USA and India. The World Bank,USA

36 For the detail see Briefing Paper: Buildingindustry by Fergus Nicol and Rajat Guptaon our website, www.climate-change-jobs.org; David Jenkins, Phil Banfill andGiuseppe Pelligrini-Massini, Non-domesticconclusions of the Tarbase project – ReducingCO2 emissions of existing buildings, UrbanEnergy Research Group, School of BuiltEnvironment, Heriot Watt University,2010; and The UK’s approach to the thermalrefurbishment of non-domestic buildings: Amissed opportunity for bigger carbon emissionreductions? has been written by CalebManagement Services Limited, andcommissioned by Kingspan InsulatedPanels downloadable fromwww.kingspanpanels.com/research.

37 The calculations are as follows:

Emissions from homes now 80 milliontonnes

After refitting, solar thermal and heatpumps - 54 million tonnes; includingswitch to renewable electricity - 27 milliontonnes; and including effects of new build(20%) - 22 million tonnes

Emissions from non-domestic buildingsnow 22 million tonnes

After refitting, solar thermal and heatpumps - 13 million tonnes; includingswitch to renewable electricity - 6.5 milliontonnes; and including effects of new build(50% of stock) - 3 million tonsTotal emissions now - 102 million tonnesTotal emissions after all changes - 25million tonnes.

38 Transport statistics Great Britain 2009Table 3.7 We have adjusted the statistics totake account of the emissions from electricrail. Without this adjustment, publictransport has about a third of the emissionsof cars and vans, not half.

39 Transport statistics Great Britain 2009Table 1.1.


40 Statistics for passenger occupancy rates arefrom Table 1.7 of the Defra paper athttp://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/reporting/pdf/passengertransport/pdf, a paper titled 2008Guidelines to Defra’s GHG ConversionFactors: Methodology Paper for TransportEmission Factors. This paper includesemissions in respect of different types oftransport of all kinds, including ‘real life’estimates taking account of actual ratherthan theoretical fuel consumption.Emissions per passenger kilometre (ortonnes for freight) are given for differentforms of transport, except cars where thefigure is for vehicle km. The car figures canbe converted to passenger km using TableNTS 0905 from the Department forTransport’s National Travel Servicesstatistics which give car occupancy rates athttps://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/nts/.../nts0905.xls

41 Transport Statistics Great Britain 2009has figures in Table 1.16 for peopleemployed as 'Taxi, cab drivers andchauffers'. This gives 164,000 for peopleemployed in the transport industry and32,000 for other industries, presumablychauffeurs.

42 It may also prove useful to run at leastsome women only taxis at night.

43 215 billion road kilometres on rural roads,184 billion on urban roads, and 100 billionon motorways. Source: Department forTransport, Transport Statistics Great Britain2009.

44 There is controversy over whether a reallyhigh speed network is needed, because thetrains would use more energy – the dragincreases with the square of the speed. Buttrains going 125 or 150 miles an hourwould be enough in Britain.

45 Ecosgen, Employment in SustainableTransport, a report by the Campaign forBetter Transport and Sustrans, 2010.

46 This is a rough estimate, and in practicethe figure may be a good deal more or less.

47 See the Technical Note on Transport Jobsand Emissions on our website.

48 There is also a case for using hybrid busesand taxis now as a transitional measure tofull electrification.

49 We count the plane fuel sold in the UK,so in effect only outgoing flights. This is agood reflection of UK use however, as weshould be responsible for about half theemissions from flights into and out of theUK, and the other countries for the otherhalf.

50 Zero Carbon Britain 2030, p. 130.51 With rising oil prices there have already

been successful experiments using hugekites to catch the wind and reduce oilconsumption by 20 per cent on cargo ships– expected to double to 40 per cent withthe next generation. See, for instance,http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/beluga-skysails-cargo-ship-kites.php .Other articles cite a range between 15 and50 per cent of fuel saved.


52 Transport statistics Great Britain 2009Table 3.7. We have adjusted the statistics totake account of the emissions from electricrail. Without this adjustment, publictransport has about a third of the emissionsof cars and vans, not half. Table 3.7, givesthe figure of 2.5 million tonnes of CO2. Fora reference to a higher figure, 3.85 milliontonnes, see: ‘Act on CO2’ on the Directgovwebsite:http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/home/what-you-can-do/On-the-move/Compare-CO2-emissions.html . There is also Df T Factsheet 3 Railways:Greenhouse Gas emissions. It’s of interestthat 40 per cent of the network is electrifiedbut these routes account for around 60 percent of passenger miles. Freight traffic,though, is 95 per cent diesel. Totalemissions are estimated to be 43 per centfrom electric trains and 57 per cent diesel.http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/energyenvironment/climatechangefactsheets.pdf . The source is:http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/climate_change/gg_emissions/uk_emissions/2008_final/2008_final.aspx

Figures vary slightly but those given aboveare probably as good as any. There may beramifications in translating rail emissions tothose per passenger mile because passengertrains disproportionately use more efficientelectric trains. But for now these rough andready figures are accurate enough for ourpurposes.

53 The way the government collects thestatistics makes it difficult to impossible totell how much of industrial and businessemissions are from heating industrialbuildings. We suspect it is a substantialproportion.

54 For an idea of some of the possibilitieshere, see the often over-optimistic, butalways stimulating, work of Amory Lovins,L. Hunter Lovins and their colleagues.Examples are Paul Hawken, Amory Lovinsand L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism:Creating the Next Industrial Revolution,Back Bay Books, New York, 2000; andErnst von Weizacker, Amory Lovins and L.Hunter Lovins, Factor Four: DoublingWealth, Halving Resource Use, Earthscan,London, 2001.

55 This is a rough estimate. But for some ofthe possibilities, see the books by Lovinsand associates cited above, and morerecently Ernst von Weizacker, KarlsonHargroves , Michael Smith and CherylDesha, Factor Five, Earthscan, London,2010.

56 UK agricultural emissions in 2008 were 48tons of CO2 equivalent for 2008, about 0.8tonnes per person. See Department ofEnergy and Climate Change, 2008 UKFinal Greenhouse Gas Emissions: DataTables, downloadable fromwww.decc.gov.uk.

57 The case for limited and controlled use ofbiofuels is well put in Martin Kemp andJosie Wexler, Zero Carbon Britain 2030,Centre for Alternative Technology, 2010,pp. 189-231 and 247-249.

58 www.biofuelwatch.org.uk is the place tostart in the literature on the problems ofbiofuels.


59 George Monbiot has argued thiseloquently, and influentially, over severalyears.

60 There is controversy over the effect ofbiofuels on the last big surge in agriculturalcommodity prices in 2008-09. This was atleast partially driven by biofuels,particularly American production, but thefact that prices eventually fell quite quicklysuggests that speculation also played aconsiderable part.

61 Many people would also include‘sustainable’ forests of fast growing treesthat can be burned and then replaced bynew growth. We have not included this,because with this kind of forestry most ofthe CO2 remains in the air for most of thecarbon cycle.

62 See Seamus Milne, ‘Even the Isle of Wightwants Miliband to buck the market’, TheGuardian 22 July 2009http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/22/green-jobs-market-vestas-strike

63 See the Stern Review, The Economics ofClimate Change (2006) http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/stern_review_report.htm

64 A Green and Fair Future: For a JustTransition to a Low Carbon Economy,Touchstone Pamphlet 3, TUC, 2008, p. 3.

65 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/21/ evo-morales-grassroots-climate-talks


The Campaign against Climate Change tradeunion group aims to get trade unionistsinvolved in action on climate change.

We have support from several major tradeunions and have hosted three nationalconferences that have brought togetherhundreds of delegates to debate the issuesraised by global warming.

For more information see the Campaignagainst Climate Change trade union groupwebsite http://cacctu.wordpress.com. To join ourmailing list or to get involved contact Martin Empson on079 585 35231 or email [email protected]

In 2009, the Campaign against Climate Change tradeunion group – working with academics, climateactivists and several UK trade unions – decided tofight to make the government create one milliongreen ‘climate’ jobs. We produced a report ‘OneMillion Climate Jobs NOW!’

Thousands of copies of thisreport have been sold aroundthe world.

There are now over two and a half million unemployedpeople in Britain. We havepeople who need jobs andwork that must be done.

One million climate jobs

Published by the Campaign against Climate Change5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX October 2010

Printed by Witherbys Lithoflow on 9 Lives offset 100% recycled paper

www.climate-change-jobs.org

This latest report sets outhow, and why, the governmentmust create one millionclimate jobs – in renewableenergy, refitting buildings,public transport, industry andeducation – if we are to solvethe economic crisis and avoidenvironmental catastrophe.

If we succeed, our examplewill inspire the world.

£2.50 or £15.00 for ten copies

one million climate jobs - shtiggy.files.wordpress.com · 01.09.2013 · create one million green,...

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