ONE
MILLION
CLIMATE
CHANGE JOBS NOW
A
report by the
Campaign
against Climate Change
trade
union group
Contents
Page 2 is an
introduction.
Pages 3-4 explain
what we mean by one million climate jobs.
Pages 5-7 explain
how we can pay for them.
Pages 8-9 sets out
the science of climate change and explains why we need to act now.
Pages 10-16
describe the jobs that need doing.
Pages 16-18
suggests ways we can make it happen.
Published by the Campaign against Climate Change, xxx
Pentonville Road, xxxx
Edited by Jonathan Neale for the CCC trade union group
copyright CCC and Jonathan Neale, 2009
INTRODUCTION
Several national trade unions and many climate activists
in Britain have decided to fight to make the government create one million
green climate jobs immediately. This short report from the Campaign against
Climate Change explains how we can do that and why we must.
At some
point gradual climate change is going to turn into runaway catastrophe. We may
well hit that point in the next twenty years. To avoid that, we need drastic
cuts in the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases we put
into the air.
It will
take government regulation and international agreements to do that. It will
also take a lot of work jobs. We have to build a green energy economy,
renovate and insulate our homes and buildings, and provide comprehensive public
transport.
There are two and
a half million unemployed people in Britain. By next year it is liable to be three
million or more. It is possible that the
economy will have started to 'recover' by 2010. But recovery only means that
profits and sales begin to rise. Unemployment will grow for a time after
'recovery' begins, and may stay high for a very long time.
We have people who need jobs and work
that must be done. A million green climate jobs in the UK will not solve all
the economy's problems. But it will take a million human beings off the dole
and put them to work saving the future.
We cannot halt climate change only by
action in the UK. But if we act, people all over the world will know, and take
hope and courage to act themselves.
Who We Are
In the spring of
2009 the trade union group of the Campaign against Climate Change organised a
conference of 200 trade union activists. That conference decided to start a
serious fight for green climate jobs.
We set up a working commission to draw
up detailed plans. That commission has people from the campaign, four national
unions (CWU, PCS, RMT, and TSSA), several NGOs and several academic experts. It
is preparing a longer report with more detailed calculations of how many jobs
will be needed in each sector and how much they will cut emissions.
But we are bringing out this booklet
now, because we want unions to start fighting for a million jobs now.
The
Main Kinds of New Jobs We Need
Producing
alternative energy (See pp 00-00).
Insulating
and renovating buildings and making better appliances (pp 00-00).
Public
transport on trains and buses (pp 00-00).
Agriculture
and waste disposal jobs to cut emissions of methane and nitrous oxide (pp
00-00).
Manufacturing
(pp 00-00).
Educating
and training the new workers (pp 00-00).
SECTION
ONE WHAT ARE CLIMATE JOBS?
Climate jobs are
jobs that reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the air. Greenhouse
gases cause global warming. This preliminary report will concentrate on the
most important gas, carbon dioxide (CO2).
We are putting CO2 into the atmosphere
by burning coal, oil and gas these are called CO2 'emissions'. In the UK we
need to make 80% cuts in our CO2 emissions as soon as possible. That means
burning only 20% of the coal, oil and gas we do now. (For why, see pages
00-00.)
That is possible. It will take a lot of
work. But if we can cut our energy use in half and supply half of that from
alternative energy, we can cut CO2 emissions by 75%. We will need at least a
million new climate jobs to do that.
When we say a million climate jobs, we
mean something rather different from
what the politicians mean when they talk about 'green jobs':
We mean climate
jobs, not 'green jobs'. Climate jobs are jobs that cut down the
amount of greenhouse gases we put in the air and thus slow down climate change.
'Green jobs' can mean anything jobs in
the water industry, national parks, landscaping, bird sanctuaries, pollution
control, flood control and many more things. All these jobs are necessary. But
they do not effect global warming.
We want a million
new jobs, not ones people are already doing. We don't want to
add up existing and new jobs and say that we now have a million climate jobs.
We don't mean jobs with a climate connection, or a climate aspect. We don't
want old jobs with new names, or ones with 'sustainable' in the job title. And
we don't mean 'carbon finance' jobs.
We want the
government to hire a million workers within twelve
months of starting the policy. This is a new idea. Up to now, government policy
has been to use subsidies and tax breaks to encourage private industry to
invest in renewable energy. They also plan to give people grants or loans for
part of the cost of renovating their homes. Their idea is to encourage the
market.
We want something more like the way the
government used to run the National Health Service. In effect, the government
sets up a National Climate Service, and the new NCS hires staff to do the work
that needs to be done.
Most of us in the trade union group
would like to see almost all of these workers employed by central or local
government. However, we are aware this may not be politically possible, and
part of the work will probably be done by contractors. But we want the
government to control the project, so that they make sure it happens, and do
not simply rely on the market.
We also want jobs with proper wages,
pensions and trade union rights.
That will create
hundreds of thousands more jobs in the private sector. This
always happens with new investment. New jobs are created with suppliers. The
new NCS may run the wind turbine factory. But that factory will buy steel,
wood, aluminium, electricity, brooms, tea, and the people who make and
transport those things will have jobs.
New jobs are also created because a
million new workers with wages spend more money than they did on the dole. Somebody has to make the goods and services
they buy. Those people have new jobs too. And so do the people who make the
things they buy, and the new materials their companies buy.
But some people
will lose their jobs. If there is a massive expansion in
renewable energy, some of the jobs in the old energy economy will go. By no
means all, and it won't happen quickly, but it will happen.
In the same way, with a massive shift
to public transport there will be jobs driving buses, making buses, and making
electric cars. But there will be fewer jobs making cars.
Many more jobs will
be created than lost. It takes many more workers to run buses and
trains than it does to build cars for the same number of passengers.[i]
For a given amount of energy, it takes
many more workers to build and operate alternative energy than it does to build
and operate gas or coal fired power stations.[ii]
And jobs renovating homes and buildings do not put anyone out of work.
We will have to
protect people who lose their jobs because of the new
climate economy. This is easy if the government is hiring the new climate
workers. The government simply guarantees new jobs to these workers.
This is not only a matter of social
justice. If we don't guarantee jobs in that way, different groups of workers will
be at each other's throats. There are powerful forces in society, like the oil
companies, who do not want a new green economy. They will use those divisions
between workers to make sure nothing is done.
So we will hire a
million direct workers, but create about one a half million jobs in all.
Our rough estimate is that a million
workers directly hired will stimulate another 850,000 jobs, but probably lead
to a loss of about 350,000 jobs.[iii]
SECTION TWO HOW TO PAY FOR IT
How can the government pay for a million new jobs?
In some
ways, the model for what we want to do is what happened in World War Two. Then
all the great powers of the world took control of their economies and directed
industry to make as many weapons as possible, as fast as possible, to kill as
many people as possible and win the war.
One
example will give the scale of this. In 1942, their first year in the war, the
American government spent as much on the military as the entire Gross Domestic
Product of the US the year before. The car factories in America closed in
January, and they made no more cars for the rest of the war. By the end of
March, the car factories reopened, making tanks, weapons and, by the end of the
war, 66,000 bomber aircraft.[iv]
The Soviet
Union, Germany and Britain did the same. This rearmament boom did not bankrupt
the governments. Instead, it created jobs and lifted the whole world out of the
Great Depression.
We need to
do the same thing now, but in order to save lives.
After all,
governments do things that cost too much when they really care. The war in
Iraq is one example. The banks are another When the credit crunch hit, we
discovered that governments could spend hundreds of billions of pounds by
lunchtime. They will get some of that money back, but no one knows how much.
The IMF estimate is that the British government has lost at least £200 billion.[v]
That's £8,000 for each worker in Britain.
We
estimate that we can employ a million workers for ten years for less than the
government gave the banks in one year.
This is
because a million climate jobs won't really cost the government all that much.
At first
sight, the figures look roughly like
this:
£25 billion in wages for one million jobs
£5 billion in employers' national insurance and pension
contributions.
£20 billion in other costs like materials, fuel, supplies, rent, and interest.
Total cost £50 billion
But these figures are deceptive, because:
The government will save money on taxes and benefits. When you lose your job, you pay the
government a lot less tax and you collect more benefits. By the same token,
every unemployed worker costs the government money. The government gets less
tax, and they have to pay out more benefits.
Individual
cases vary. But on average, every time the government hires someone on £25,000,
they save £12,000 on that person's taxes and befits.[vi]
That's £12
billion saved on a million jobs.
The government will save on indirect jobs. Remember, our one million direct
hires will mean approximately another half a million new 'indirect' workers.
The
government will save on the taxes and benefits of those half a million workers
too. Again, they will save £12,000 a job. That's £6 billion saved
on half a million jobs.
Add that
to the £12 billion already saved and for a total of £18 billion.
The government will make money back. Bus and train passengers can buy
tickets. Electric cars and low energy appliances can be sold for money. People
will pay bills for electricity from renewable energy.
If a
private company was spending £50 billion, they would expect to get more than
that back each year. That's how they make a profit. The government won't be
able to do that with climate spending. The government may not charge for house
insulation or installing solar heating. They may subsidise public transport or
make it free. Renewable energy is expensive and won't pay back everything put
into it.
So let's
assume the government only gets back 25% of what they spend. That means they
will get back £12.5 billion. Let's round
that down to £12 billion.
Add that
to £18 billion and the government has has saved £30 billion.
We started with the government spending £50 billion. But
they have saved £30 billion.
So the
real cost is only £20 billion.
There are several ways the government can find £20
billion a year:
If the richest 1% each paid 5% more income tax, that
would raise £5 billion a year.
The richest 1% of taxpayers all make more than £100,000. Their average income
is £225,000 a year. With tax breaks,
they now pay 27% of that in income tax.
If they paid 5% more, they would still pay only 32% of their income in income
tax.[vii]
Maybe we could cancel the new Trident nuclear submarine,
or bring the troops back from Afghanistan? In common decency, we should both.
If we had
full employment, that would be that. We would stop doing useless and
destructive things, and spend the money on hiring people to save the climate
instead.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Case Study: Taxes and Benefits for
One Worker
We will take the example of a worker on £25,000 a year,
a single parent with one child and rent of £500 a month.
In
Work Out of work
Income tax paid
3,705 0
National insurance
2,120 0
Council tax 700 0
VAT, petrol duty, car tax,
TV license, alchohol duty,
etc 2,300 1,100
TOTAL TAX PAID 8,825 1,100
Child tax credit 1,110 2,785
Job seekers allowance 0 3,353
Housing benefit 0 6,082
TOTAL BENEFITS 1,110 12,210
GOVERNMENT MAKES 7,715
GOVERNMENT LOSES 11,100
When this worker has not job, the government loses a
total of £18,815 in taxes and benefits.
This is only one example. The figures would be different
for someone with a working partner, or no children, or a higher income, or no
rent.[viii]
-----------------------------------------------------------
But right
now we also want to create jobs. Cutting Trident won't help there. Let's say
there are 3 million unemployed. You cut Trident and other government projects
by one million jobs, and use the money to hire a million climate workers. But
unemployment is still 3 million.
We want to
bring it down to 2 million. We can't do that by cutting other jobs. What we
want instead is to make extra jobs.
We could make extra jobs by borrowing money. During the depression of the 1930s
the economist John Maynard Keynes argued that in bad times governments should
make all the jobs they could. His example was that it was worth it even if the
government hired people to dig holes one day and fill them back up with dirt
the next day. What was needed was to get
the economy moving.
Governments
have done this kind of thing for generations, in two ways. One way is that the
government borrows the money to make jobs and pays the money back when things
get better. We can raise part of the £20 billion this way.
The government could print money. The other way is that the
government just spends the money without borrowing it. This used to be called
'printing money'. That sounds bad, so it's now called 'quantitative easing'.
People
always say that if you print money, then
inflation explodes like in Germany in the 1920s or Zimbabwe today.
That's what happens if you print much too much money. In the last year the Bank
of England has just spent £175 billion on 'quantitative easing'. The world has
not come to an end. We are only looking for £20 billion a year in total.
But what if they already spent it? Many politicians and economists are
now saying they are sorry, but they have given all the money to the banks and
there isn't any more. So they say they have to cut jobs, services and wages in
the public sector to get the money back. That also means the government can't
spend money on new climate jobs.
There are
two things to say to these politicians and economists.
First, if
you gave all the money to the banks, go take some of the money back from the
banks.
Second,
and crucially, cutting government jobs when you have already have mass
unemployment is madness. You lose their taxes, and you have to pay benefits.
Because the sacked workers are not spending money, other workers will lose
their jobs, and the government will lose their taxes too and have to pay them
benefits too.
The
suffering is great and the savings to the government very small.
This
approach has been tried before. In the early 1930s Herbert Hoover, the widely
despised US president, did it; Ramsay McDonald, the widely despised British
prime minister, did it; and by the people who ran Germany before Hitler came to
power did it.
It does
not work.
SECTION
THREE: THE DANGER
We turn now to look
at the science of climate change and explain why we have to act so quickly and
on such a large scale.
For the last 200 years humanity has
been burning more and more coal, oil and natural gas, putting more and more
carbon dioxide (C02) into the air. And that CO2 traps heat and warms the earth.
Scientists are now seriously worried
about runaway climate change because of recent discoveries about the past.
The key research was done by two teams
of scientists who drilled down into the Greenland ice pack in the early 1990s.
In Greenland the winter snow and the summer snow look different and have a
different chemistry. The differences remain as the snow turns into ice. So as
the scientists drilled down through the ice pack, they could see what happened
year by year, like reading tree rings.[ix]
The ice is two miles thick and keeps a
record of 140,000 years, during which there have been more than more than
twenty major climate changes. The scientists discovered that when the earth
cooled, the process was gradual, over thousands of years, with temperatures and
CO2 levels declining in step.
When the earth warmed, it also started
out gradually. But then there was a sudden explosion in both temperature and
CO2 levels. This rapid increase often happened in twenty years or less. The
last big change was from the last Ice Age to the present warm period. In
Greenland, half of that change happened in three years.
Scientists have since looked for
evidence of climate change in ice packs, glaciers, ocean floor deposits and
caves around the world. What they have found confirms the Greenland research. When
the earth warms, it starts gradually and then explodes.
Scientists know this means there is some kind of
feedback effect,
or several feedback effects. An example will explain how climate feedbacks
work. Rising CO2 levels are now warming the Arctic. This begins to melt the
permanent snow and ice. Snow and ice are white and reflect heat back into the
atmosphere. When they melt, they reveal dark sea, dark tundra and dark trees.
These absorb heat, and the Arctic warms up more, so the snow and ice melt more
quickly. That reveals more dark tundra, trees and sea, which cause more
melting, and so on.
This
feedback process has begun, and is speeding up. Scientists have discovered
several more climate feedbacks as well, some of them very scary.[x]
They are pretty sure that feedbacks and abrupt change are waiting for us. But
they are not yet agreed which feedbacks will be crucial, or how long we have.
There is one worrying sign. CO2 levels
in the atmosphere are measured in parts per million (ppm). The difference
between an ice age and a warm period is 100 ppm. In the last 250 years we have
added another 105 ppm. Two thirds of that has been added in the last 50 years.
The scientists' best guess is that we may have ten to twenty years to act, though we may have fifty. On the outside, it may be less than ten years or more than fifty.[xi]
Fast, runaway
climate change will produce large numbers of extreme weather events all
over the world in the same year. There will be rising seas, droughts, crop
failures, fires and deadly urban heat waves.
The consequences will be enormous. If
you want to know how the governments of the world will cope, look at how the
richest country on earth coped with one hurricane in New Orleans.[xii]
Climate
change has already caused droughts that have lasted many years in Chad, Sudan
and Ethipoia, and led to recurrent famines. Drought is now spreading in West
Africa, Kenya, the southwestern United States, and Central Asia. With abrupt
climate change, serious droughts will hit many parts of the world. We can
expect crops failure and widespread famine.
Famine, storms, drought and rising seas
will produce hundreds of millions of refugees. In the world we live in, many of
them will be stopped at borders and trapped in refugee camps. Racism will
increase to justify keeping them out.
The quickly changing climate will also
change the balance of geography and economy between and within countries. That
will mean war, in many different places, at the same time.
There can be no accurate estimates of
the dead from all these causes, but they will be in the hundreds of millions.
Humanity as a whole will survive. Many species will not. One guess is that 30%
of the species of life on earth will perish, but no one really knows.
That's why we have
to move quickly to stabilise levels of CO2 in the air. However, most of the world's governments
are still talking about stabilising CO2 levels at much higher levels at much
higher levels than we have now by the year 2050. Five years ago, that's how
many scientists were talking too. The scientists are talking differently now.
This is partly because of considerable evidence that climate change has been
speeding up, and that feedback effects already underway.
Some scientists now feel that we can
only tolerate limited increases in the CO2 in the air. Others argue that levels
are already too high. In both cases, the gap between what the scientists are
saying, and what the politicians are doing, is huge and dangerous.
So this report will talk simply about
stabilising levels of CO2 in the air. After all, that is what we have to do,
sooner or later. Sooner is safer, and will lead to a better life in any case.
We do not have to eliminate all
emissions. Part of the CO2 that goes into the atmosphere each year is absorbed
by the oceans and by plants and trees on land. On a global scale, a cut of 50%
to 60% in emissions should stabilise CO2 in the air.
However, the richer countries of the
world currently emit far more than their share. Britain emits ten times as much
as India per person. The poorer countries will insist that richer countries
make deeper cuts. That is only fair, and we cannot do it without them.
This means means the UK will have to
cut its emissions by about 75% to 80%. We can do this, and do it quickly.
SECTION FOUR THE JOBS
This section looks
at the jobs that need doing. In the New Year we will produce a longer report
will give more detail on the how many jobs need doing in which sectors and how
much carbon they will save. This booklet will only give rough estimates.
One way to cut carbon emissions is to
stop burning coal, oil and gas and make energy another way 'alternative
energy'. The second is to use energy more efficiently. Still heat the house,
for instance, but insulate the walls and roof so it requires less fuel to stay
warm.
We have to do both.
Alternative energy
Alternative energy is also called renewable energy. This
is because it uses endlessly renewed sources of power the wind, the sun,
waves, rivers and the tide.
To produce
a steady supply of renewable energy, you need a mix of several kinds. This is
because most forms of renewable energy work best at different times. Sometimes
the wind blows stronger, and sometimes it stops. Solar power does not work at
night.
We need
many kinds of renewable energy, because it's hard to store electricity. It's
not stuff, it's a pulse moving down wires. It has to be used when it's made.
We also
need a mix of energy from different places. Wind and sunshine vary from place
to place. So we need to extend the national grid with cables to take
electricity from wind, sun, tide and waves right across the country. The supply
will balance even better across longer distances. You have more sunlight, and
are certain to have steady wind, if you link up across Europe. There are also
proposals to generate electricity from concentrated solar power machines in the
Middle East and North Africa and send it across Europe.
Wind power
All that said, onshore and offshore wind power makes
the most sense in Britain. We have a lot of wind.
Wind
turbines (modern windmills) are big. Solar power works well locally and
domestically. Wind power works best in big wind farms in windy places. This is
because the amount of electricity is much greater if the wind speed is higher.
That means the towers need to be tall so the blades are high up where the winds
blow. Turbines also work well offshore, where the wind blows more steadily.
Most of
these jobs will be in manufacture. The UK currently produces 401TWh (Terrawatt
hours, or trillion watt hours) of electricity a year. If 300,000 wind workers
are employed for ten years, by 2020 wind could produce 300 TWh, three quarters
of the present supply.[xiii]
Wave and tidal power
Marine power technologies, like
offshore wave and tidal current turbines, are still in the early stages. The UK
is a world leader in research and development, and in test facilities, with the
European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkneys and the New and Renewable Energy
centre in the Northumbria. The resource potential is huge, and so is the export
potential. There are currently dozens of projects in development around the Uk.
If this technology can be developed here, it will be a service to the world.
Solar Power
The most economic form of solar power in
Britain at the moment is solar water heating. Household water passes through
thin pipes on the roof and is heated by the sun. Once installed it's virtually
free. This is already widely used in other parts of the world, particularly
rural China.
PV cells
are the second kind of solar power. These cells come in thin boxes, and are
attached to south facing roofs. They turn the sunlight into electricity, even on
cloudy days. PV cells are expensive, but they are the main available backup to
wind. Once mass produced, they should
come down in price.
For much
of the time solar PV cells installed on roofs will be producing more
electricity than the house needs. This extra electricity will not be wasted.
The cables that carry electricity into the house from the supplier can also
carry the spare solar electricity back to the grid.
Other Alternative Energies
We are still working on the phrasing for coal and
nuclear here.
------------------------------------------------
The main renewable power jobs:
The majority of jobs are in
factories that make the wind turbines, marine turbines, PV cells and solar
heating.
Working in other factories and
mills that supply parts and materials.
Transporting and assembling the
wind turbines, marine turbines and solar power on site.
Maintaining the wind farms, marine
turbines and solar power.
Transporting and assembling
offshore wind turbines and marine turbines, using the skills learned by
construction workers, divers and seafarers in the North Sea oil and gas fields.
Building the barges and boats for
assembling and maintaining offshore wind and marine turbines.
Manufacturing and setting up the
long distance cables and pylons for new renewable electricity.
Building batteries and other ways
of storing electricity.
Research and development in marine
turbines.
Training and education in the
necessary skills for all the above jobs.
Energy
Use
Alternative energy is half the solution. The
other half is reducing energy use.
In Britain almost 80% of our CO2
emissions are due to energy used in homes, public buildings and transport. The
jobs that need doing are concentrated in those areas.
Homes
Home use is
responsible for about a quarter of CO2 emissions.[xiv]
Three quarters of this comes from heating the home and hot water. This
currently uses gas or coal, not electricity.
New houses can be made very low carbon
simply by tightening the building
regulations. This is about regulation, not mainly about new jobs. But we will
need plenty of rigorous building inspectors.
New houses account for only one home in
a hundred each year. So most of the work has to go into old homes.[xv]
Each home is different, so different
techniques will apply. But the first priority is to stop the house leaking
heat. For the majority of homes the easiest first step is the insulation of
lofts and cavity walls. After that will come solid wall insulation, double
glazing windows, and draught proofing.
The second priority is to replace all
old boilers with the current generation of highly efficient boilers.
These measures should cut emissions
from heating air and water by about 45% - almost half. It will take
approximately 200,000 workers ten years to do this.[xvi]
This is not enough, however. Something
more is necessary. Solar water heaters on roofs are possible. At present costs,
it would take another 100,000 workers ten years to do 19 million homes, and cut
total heating emissions by another 6%.
It would also be possible to cut
another 8% by putting solar PV cells on 10 million roofs. But at present costs
it would take 200,000 more workers ten years. There is an argument, though, for
using solar power to back up wind when it fluctuates.[xvii]
In many cases the work could be done
more efficiently by teams of building workers who move through a neighbourhood
block by block, and do several jobs in each house at one time.
Ground source heat pumps are another
possibility. They could cut emissions by large amounts in houses with gardens.
But they run on electricity. And they will not reduce emissions until more than
half of electricity on the grid comes from renewable energy. So it makes sense
to install wind, wave and tidal energy first, and to fix leaky houses, before
installing solar power or heat pumps.
Home Appliances
About a quarter of
energy use in homes comes from lighting and appliances. Here the main solutions
are not new jobs, but new regulations. For instance, old style incandescent
light bulbs will be banned in the next few years.
What is needed, however, is complete
regulation of all appliances and lighting for energy use. The government would
set regulations for next year that fit with the best appliances currently on
the market. Those regulations could bee regularly tightened as the technology
develops.[xviii]
The usual practice is to regulate the
energy efficiency of the appliance how much electricity it uses for so much
energy. This is a trap, however. Many manufacturers will simply make bigger,
more efficient fridges to replace small inefficient fridges. What is needed
instead is limits on the total amount of electricity any fridge, or TV, or
whatever, can use.
It is often said that standby settings
should also be eliminated. In fact this is not necessary, because regulations
can simply require that none of them use more than 0.1 watts an hour.
Here the saving is mostly by
regulation, not jobs. But the workers at any factory threatened with closure
should be able to retool and reopen making new efficient appliances. These
could then be sold very cheaply, at much less than cost, to anyone prepared to
turn in very inefficient old appliances. Even allowing for the emissions
created by making the new appliances, this would still cut emissions considerably.
Public Buildings
About one-sixth of
CO2 emissions come from buildings that are not homes but not factories either.
The main energy users here are shops, offices, warehouses, schools, hotels and
restaraunts.
The balance of emissions is a bit
different from in the home. Almost half of emissions comes from heating air and
water, and a quarter come from lighting.
Lighting use can be reduced by
regulations, more efficient bulbs, plus careful use and monitoring. Emisssions
from heating can be reduced by the same measures used in homes. We estimate
that it would take about 100,000 workers over ten years to insulate and
renovate these public buildings.[xix]
------------------------------------------------------
The
Main Jobs in Homes and Buildings:
Most
jobs will be in building trades of all kinds.
Manufacture
of building materials, boilers, 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.
Transport
Transport ccounts
for a third of UK emissions.[xx] The
main thing we have to do here is switch from cars, planes and lorries to buses
and trains.
Cars produce about one eighth of the
total UK emissions from all sources. In the UK, buses and trains produces about
half that amount of CO2 for each passenger journey. In other countries, the
comparison favours buses and trains much more, partly because of better design
but mainly because the buses and trains are fuller outside rush hour. In these
cases, buses and trains can run on a third of the CO2 of cars, or even less.[xxi]
So the starting point is a massive
expansion of buses and trains. For this we need public transport that comes
often, runs late into the night, goes everywhere, is clean, comfortable and not
empty or overcrowded.
To do this we need more trains, more
track, and more lines. We need to have all the train lines electrified, because
electric trains produce far less emissions than deisel. And in the future those
trains can run on electricity from wind and other renewable sources.
We also need more buses, and more small
buses and minibuses to avoid wasteful empty buses outside rush hour.
Cars, vans and taxis now acccount for
six out of seven passenger miles in the UK. There are three ways of encouraging
people to switch from cars. We can make public transport more attractive. We
can ban cars from inner cities, or ban cars during rush hour. We can make
public transport free. Or we can use a mixture of all three.
If three quarters of car journeys
switch to buses and trains, that would cut passenger emissions by half.[xxii]
[xxiii]
Planes
Aviation accounts
for about 6% of UK CO2 emissions, according to official figures. However, the
CO2 from planes does at least twice the damage, because it is emitted much
higher in the atmosphere. Taking that into account, planes are responsivle for
about 12%, or one-eighth of our emissions. This is also the fastest rising sort
of emissions.
High speed trains can replace domestic
and European flights. From Heathrow, for instance, this represents half of all
flights, although a smaller proportion of passenger miles. And planes produce 8
to 11 times the CO2 of high speed rail.[xxiv]
This is an emormous saving, but requires building more electrified high speed
rail lines in Britain, and across Europe. It would also help to ban all
domestic flights as a first step.
Freight
HGV lorries in the
UK currently account for about 3% of total UK emissions. Lorries emit about six
times more CO2 than trains for every ton carried one mile.[xxv]
Lorries also carry most of the freight seven times as much as rail.
These numbers may overstate the
advantages of rail freight. It is possible that building railways and trains is
responsible for more CO2 than building roads and lorries.[xxvi]
But even if the numbers are exaggerated, the cuts in CO2 emissions from
transferring even half of road freight would still be very large. Again, as
with passenger transport and aviation, this means building tracks and expanding
the number of rail workers.
Electric Cars
Buses and trains
are the main solutions. However, there will still be some cars on the roads.
Electric cars are respsonsible for
smaller emissions, although the difference is not that great.[xxvii]
But they have other advantages for the climate, because they have batteries.
Once we have extensive wind farms, they will produce a great deal of
electricity in the late night hours that has to be used then or wasted. This
electricity can be used to recharge electric car batteries at night. Moreover,
those car batteries can be linked to the grid and provide a store that can be
drawn upon if there are sudden falls in the renewable energy supply, or sudden
surges in demand.[xxviii]
There are equivalent savings to be made
from electric buses.
How much difference
would this make?
Let's assume that
half of the passenger miles by car each year switch to buses and trains. Let's
also assume that the remaining cars, buses and the trains are all electric.
Then the 12% of CO2 emissions that come from cars would shrink by at least
half.[xxix]
Replacing all domestic and most European air travel with high speed rail would
cut another 12% of emissions by about a third.[xxx]
Add in replacing half of HGV traffic with rail freight, and we have cut total
UK emissions by about 12%, or one eighth.
That will require a very large number
of railway and bus workers. This is because they would carry more than four
times the passengers and three times the freight they do now.[xxxi]
There are about 250,00 rail and bus workers now, so we could need up to 750,000
more.[xxxii]
On the other hand, building renewable
energy and renovating houses will provide a lot of jobs over the first ten
years, but many fewer permanent jobs. Transport will eventuslly provide the
permanent, continuing jobs.
The
Main Jobs in Transport:
Jobs
in bus travel
Jobs
in rail travel
Construction
work in building and electrifying high speed rail and other new rail lines
Manufacture
of track, engines and rolling stock
Manufacture
of electric cars and buses
Supply
of parts and materials for that manufacture
Training
and educating in all the necessary skills
Agriculture and Waste
Until now we have been talking about jobs that will
reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But two
other greenhouse gases are also important: methane and nitrous oxide.
These are
very powerful greenhouse gases, but we only put small amounts into the air. If
you measure the total warming effect of all the greenhouse gases, methane is
repsonsible for 7% and nitrous oxide for 5%.[xxxiii]
Both these gases, however, remain in the atmosphere for much less time than
CO2. So cutting CO2 makes a long term difference. Cutting methane and nitrous
oxide give you fast cuts. And fast cuts are what we want first.
The good
news is that emissions of both methane and nitrous oxide in the UK have fallen
by half since 1990. It should be possible to cut both quite more quite quickly.[xxxiv]
The main jobs here are in waste and organic farming.
Half of
methane emissions come from the slow decay of food waste in landfills. There
are two solutions here. One is burning more of the methane that seeps out of
landfills. The other is sorting out the food waste at home and burning it in
local 'combined heating and power' plants.
A third of
methane emissions come from agriculture. Almost all of this is in the farts
from cattle, and the solution is fewer cattle.
Two thirds
of nitrous oxide emissions also come from agriculture more than half of from
using fertilizer. The most effective solution is stop using fertilizer. That's
called organic agriculture, which takes a lot more work more jobs.[xxxv]
Manufacture
A large proportion of the new climate jobs will be in
manufacturing. We have already mentioned most of these manufacturing wind
turbines, marine turbines, solar power, power lines, building materials,
boilers, heat pumps, low carbon appliances, electric buses, electric cars,
rolling stock, and the parts and materials for all these industries.
There will
also be work, however, in redesigning and renovating factories so they are more
efficient, and in building new, more efficient machines and factories.[xxxvi]
Education
Finally, there are jobs in education and training many
new skilled trades people like electricians. There will be training in new
skills for already experienced crafts people.
Over the
years the nature of the new jobs will also change, and people who have been
trained will need training again.
Some of
the jobs in training will be on the job, and some in colleges and universities.
There will be paid work for teachers and lecturers here. But workers being
trained will have to be paid too, and there will be more of them than the
teachers.
One Million Jobs
We have now mentioned a wide variety of jobs. The total
clearly adds up to more than a million jobs a year for ten years. There are two
possible ways of dealing with this. One is to take longer perhaps twenty
years to cut our CO2 emissions properly. The other is that once we have a
million jobs, people will be persuaded that the programme is a good thing. They
will also become far more conscious of climate change, and there will be
millions of 'climate ambassadors' among the new workers and their families. So
if we need more jobs, we are likely to get them.
SECTION
FIVE: MAKING IT HAPPEN
OK. We're serious. It sounds good. Now we have to make
it happen.
Because we
mean it. We are not doing this to just to influence union policy, or party
policy, or to make ourselves feel good. We want to make the government do it.
And we're going to have a bloody good try.
To do
that, we have to bring intense pressure to bear on the government of the day,
whoever they may be. We will do this whether it is a Labour or a Tory
government. That means building a campaign in many different ways.
The scale
of the problem of climate change and the scale of the real solutions require
union activists to think in ways less routine and more daring ways. The
precedent in this country was when the unions founded the Labour Party, and
used it to fight for a health service
and a welfare state.
This
challenge means that unions will have to join and lead all kinds of other
groups. We cannot solve this problem without jobs and massive government
programmes. Unions understand that.
At the
same time, though, union activists and environmentalists will have to learn to
work together. We will not win this one unless union activists are fighting not
just for themselves, but for the planet.
This means leadership from the top, and
engagement at the national level, with an extraordinary unwillingness to compromise. Nature, after all, is not going
to compromise with humanity.
But it
also requires union members and local representatives who are willing and
determined to lead the campaign at a local level and to involve other groups.
We want climate scientists talking to meetings of postal workers, and union
branch secretaries going to talk to mosques. In the end, we also need union
members prepared to make their national leaders act.
This adds
up to a very tall order. But the projects starts more easily, with persuading
people and organisations to back the idea.
In some
unions the national leadership already backs the idea. There we need to go the
branches and workplaces.
In other
unions some national leaders will be hesitant, and some sections of workers
will be worried about their jobs. Here we need to argue carefully and listen
patiently. We will need to persuade workplace groups and branches, and then
take resolutions to national conferences.
However,
unions have a long tradition of passing motions on policy. The proposers of the
motion then feel good and nothing happens. We don't want that.
So every
step of the way we need to be saying that we mean this. If you say that often
enough, people start believing that you mean it. Even you believe it. Then you
can make it happen.
We need to
move out beyond unions to the whole of society. We can ask local councillors to
support a milliono g climate jobs, and then mayors and whole councils. The key here
will be polite but consistent lobbying. We can do the same with local branches
of political parties, with members of parliament, and with the assemblies of
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
We can
approach the churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. National environmental
organisations, and their local branches, can be another stronghold. So will the
many local clubs with obvious links to the issue cyclists, bird watchers,
train enthusiasts, and all the rest.
In
addition, there are all the groups with no obvious connections to the issue.
Choirs, the patrons of a particular hairdresser, parent teacher associations,
book groups, amateur dramatic societies, pub patrons, youth groups, and many
thousands of other possibilities.
The point
of all this will be to establish, in front of everyone, that most people in the
country support a million climate jobs.
Action
Persuasion and support on their own will not be enough.
We will need action.
Action
will put pressure on the government of the day. But there is an equally
important fact about human psychology. If people just listen to arguments, they
feel passive and don't care that much.
If they organise and act, they feel more deeply committed. Even seeing others
taking action makes people stronger. It makes them feel that something can be
done, and people like them can do it.
So
campaigning for support can lead to action, but action also leads to support.
Action can
be of many kinds. In unions, one form of daily action is the work of union environmental
representatives. These 'reps' are like shop stewards or health and safety reps,
but for the environment.
Management
currently refuse to recognise
environmental reps. But we can elect them, and make management talk to
them. The government is also refusing to give environmental reps statutory
rights. We can push them too.
Union
environmental reps can fight to cut energy usage. Management will generally go
along with that. But union reps, backed by union members, can also fight for
management to actually spend money on the climate.
For
instance, union members can force employers to insulate and ventilate buildings
properly. They can insist that new
buildings are built to the highest standards, with solar panels on the roof.
In
addition, disputes over the closure of local offices, depots, and hospitals
effect the climate. Every time a local office closes, both staff and service
users have to travel further every day, with more emissions. Strikes to prevent
local office closures are battles to defend the climate, and deserve wide
support.
Campaigns
and actions over climate in the wider society will bring unions and other
activists together. We can build local campaigns to fight for planning
permission for wind farms. We can campaign for local councils to insist on
solar roofs and low carbon buildings as a condition of all permission for new
buildings. Students can fight for the same thing in universities, and tenants
associations in council housing.
It is also
essential for unions to be part of national climate campaigning. Climate jobs
are only part of what we have to do to halt climate change. On December 5 there
will be a big national demonstration in London over climate change, as part of
global attempts to bring pressure on the United Nations talks on a new climate
treaty. We need union banners and union members all over that demonstration.
We also
need national limits on total emissions, and
government regulation of flights, appliances, housing and so on. Then
there are the campaigns and direct actions against plans for new developments
of roads, airports and power stations that will hurt the climate.
The most
important kind of action, though, will be the fight to defend jobs at
workplaces threatened with mass redundancies or closure.
For
example, the Vestas wind turbine blade factory on the Isle of Wight faced
closure this summer. Seventeen workers
occupied the plant and held it for 18 days. They have now been evicted, but are
fighting on.
But the
Vestas workers only started talking about an occupation two months after
redundancies were announced. They only occupied the factory after most
production was finished. If they had moved immediately the redundancies were
announced, they say, they would have had 400 workers in the occupation, not 17.
Even
without that, the resonances of the Vestas occupation have been enormous. In
the early days of the occupation, hundreds of Vestas workers stood outside the
plant in support. It is now difficult to find anyone on the island who did not
support the occupation. The Tory council has swung to support for the workers.
The occupation was on national television, and in the newspapers in Britain,
the United States, Denmark and all over the world.
That's the
resonance when 17 workers fight for their jobs and for the planet. Imagine a
million.
We need
more fights like Vestas. They were lucky, it was a wind power factory. But the
great advantage of a widely known national plan for a million jobs is that
workers can fight to be a part of it. Car factories are shrinking or closing
all over the world. Those car workers can demand that the government rescues
their jobs and they retool to build electric buses or cars. Building workers
facing the sack can demand insulation work. Factory workers can demand they be
funded to retool and make low energy washing machines.
This means
we can fight for a million climate jobs as national government policy from the
top down. But we can also fight for climate jobs from the bottom up, workplace
by workplace. That will make national campaigning stronger. And if we have
workers in different parts of the country occupying the same time and fighting for their jobs and
our planet, the resonances will be global and the pressures on the government
immense.
It may
take even more than that to move the government of the day to hire a million
workers. It may take a national strike by one union, or by several unions. We
should be prepared to do that if we have to.
Of course we cannot solve the climate crisis just by cutting emissions in the UK. We are too small. But in another way, we can. If we do win a million climate jobs in the UK, our example will be seen on television in every country. All over the globe, workers will know what to do. And they will do it. That will change the future of the planet.
[i] See footnote on page xxx on transport jobs
[ii] Renewable energy is more expensive than coal and gas. That is why
it needs a subsidy. The reason it is more expensive is that it takes more
labour more jobs to produce the same amount of power.
[iii] The estimate of 800,000 jobs is based on the Scottish input
output tables, looking at similar industries. This assumes that the job
stimulation will be roughly in line with that in similar industries. It also
assumes that xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[iv] Footnote Neale and other book xxxxxxxx
[v] International Monetary Fund, Global Financial Stability Report,
April 2009, page 36. The figures are given in dollars: $110 of writeoffs up to
the end of 2008, and a further $200 million expected in 2009.
[vi] European study, euromod and Murphy.
[vii] Calculations based on the figures in Mike Brewer, Luke Sibieta, and
Liam Wren-Lewis, Racing Away: Income Inequality and the Evolution of High
Incomes, Institute of Fiscal Studies Briefing Note 76, 2008, page 9. This
paper uses data from 2005-2006, and the numbers would be slightly higher now.
[viii] This example is taken from Richard Murphy, 'Cut Governemnt Debt by
Increasing Spending', www.compassonline.org.uk, 10 July 2009. We have
left child benefit out of the calculations, because it is the same whether or
not you are in work. We have also left out employers national insurance
contributions, because if the worker is in public emloyment these are equally a
cost and an income for the government.
[ix] Footnote Alley xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[x] For a readable summary of many of the possible feedbacks, see Fred
Pearce, xxxxxx. The recent and worrying climate science is summarised in
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
[xiii] Here are the calculations.
In 2008
the total UK supply of electricity was 401 TWh. 7 TWh of that came from wind.
In 2008 the UK had 3.4 MW of installed wind power. So approximately 2 TWh of
electricity were produced that year for each MW of installed capacity. 150 MW
of installed capacity should produce 300 TWh, half of current electricity
production.
In 2008
the US wind energy industry employed 85,000 workers directly. The US had 25 MW
of installed capacity, including 8MW installed that year alone, but many
turbines were imported.
Germany
had 38,000 directly employed wind workers and 23MW of installed capacity,
including just less than 2MW installed that year. But Germany was a major
exporter of turbines.
If we add
the German and US figures together, we get 123,000 workers employed directly,
10 MW of capacity installed each year, and 48 MW of total installed capacity.
If the
comparison holds, we can install 15 MW a year for ten years, produce half of current
electricity from wind within ten years, and employ 189,000 wind workers
directly.
But we
will need more wind workers in the UK, because much of our wind will be
offshore, which is more expensive. A rough guess would be 300,000 workers if
half the power comes from offshore wind.
That would
give us three quarters of our current production levels from wind. However, ten
years from now energy efficiency savings should also have reduced the amount of
electricity needed. But more electricity will be needed in transport and
housing to replace fossil fuels. These figures also do not allow for rising
productivity on the one hand, or the need for increased capacity because of
intermittency on the other.
Source:
[xiv] 27% if you don't count emissions from international
aviation and shipping, 25% if you do.
[xv] The following section is based on a background
paper for this report by Fergus Nicol on 'The Building Industry'. There is also a very useful summary of the
numbers is in Department for Communities and Local Government, Review of the
Sustainability of Existing Buildings: the Energy Efficiency of Dwellings
Initial Analysis, 2006. The numbers below are based on Box 1 on page 7. We
have not included combined heat and power, because of questions about the use of
biomass.
[xvi] Nicol, 'The Building Industry', estimates this
from Energy Efficiency of Dwellings, Box 1 on page 7, on the assumption
that there would be one job for each £50,000 expenditure. It is likely that
both technology and skills would increase greatly with mass production, in
which case we would need fewer jobs. The calculation that it would reduce
energy use by more than half comes for potential carbon saving in Box 1.
[xvii] Figures for solar water heating and PV cells
come from Energy Efficiency of Dwellings, on the same assumption of
£50,000 per job. We are assuming that some of the jobs would be in
installation, but many would be in manufacture.
[xviii] Footnote McKay for use of various appliances.
[xix] See Nicol, 'The Building Industry'; and R.
Gupta and S. Chandiwalla, A critical and
comparative evaluation of approaches and policies to measure, benchmark, reduce
and manage CO2 emissions from energy use in the existing building
stock in cities of developed and rapidly-developing countries - case studies of
UK, USA, and India, Research paper
for the World Bank, 2009.
[xx] Transport is sometimes counted as 24% of 'domestic' emissions, but
this does not include international aviation. Include that, and the percentage
rises to 28%. A conservative estimate of the impact of CO2 released by planes
into the atmosphere is that it doubles the warming effect. Allowing for that,
transport emissions would be 34% of the UK total. Calculations based on the
figures in Transport Statistics Great Britain 2008, page 56. The data
there are for 2006.
[xxi] See Neale, other sources in Neale, MacKay, Carbon Pathways Analysis,
and Transport Statistics Great Britain.
[xxii] The source for the statistics here is Department for Transport,
Transport Statistics Great Britain 2008. The key tables are table 1.1 on page
14 and table 3.7 on page 56. I have arbitrarily assumed that one half of light
van mileage is similar to car travel, and one half similar to HGV useage.
[xxiv] John Stewart, Who Says There Is No
Alternative: An Assessment of the Potential of Rail to Cut Air Travel,
report for the RMT union, June 2008.
[xxv] All the lorries together currently emit 43 times as much CO2 as
all the freight trains together. But the lorries are only carrying seven times
as much freight as the trains. That means that lorries are emitting six times
as much per ton as freight trains. See Transport Statistics Great Britain
2008, pages 56 and 66: and Department for Transport, Carbon Pathways
Analysis: Informing Development of a Carbon Reduction Strategy for the
Transport Sector, July 2008, page 18. These calculations are only for the
fuel used diesel in both cases. They do not take account of the CO2 emissions
from building lorries and roads, or from building trains and railways.
[xxvi] Studies comparing the costs of rail and road construction produce
conflicting results, but tend to favour roads. We have been unable to find any
studies that compare the emssions.
[xxvii] It is easy to exaggerate the savings from electric cars. There
are two common ways of doing this. One is to compare the energy used for the
electric car in KW with the energy used in a petrol car. But an electric car
can use less energy to run, while still having almost the same emissions if you
count the emissions way back at the power plant.
Another way to exaggerate the saving is
to say the following: 'Electric cars run on coal and gas fired power stations
are respsonsible for smalller emissions than petrol cars. But if half of the
electricity supply on the grid comes from renewables, then the emissions due to
the electric car are cut by half again.'
This sounds reasonable. However,
imagine that we have replaced three quarters of current UK electricity with
renewables. So we now have 400 TW hours of electricity a year, and 300 of that
comes from wind and other renewable energy. Then imagine that we add another
100 TW hours of electricity demand from electric cars. We have not yet built
any more
[xxviii] See John Cowsill, In What Ways can Electric Vehicles Assist
the UK Renewable Energy Strategy?, University of East London thesis, 2008.
However, we cannot cut emissions from
electric cars by half if half the grid supply comes from renewables. This is
because the electric cars would make extra demands on the electricity supply.
If the supply of renewable electricity remains the same, the only way to charge
the electric vehicles is to preserve more of the old fossil fuel supply for the
power stations.
[xxix] This assumes that electric cars using fossil fuel power plants use
produce two thirds the emissions of petrol cars, and that the same is true for
electric buses. It also assumes that buses and trains are responsible for a
third of the emissions per passenger kilometre, which assumes somewhat better
passenger loads in public transport outside peak time than we currently have.
In fact, the saving is likely to be more than half. This is because we have
used conservative figures for the savings from electric vehicles, and because
commuting to work would be proportionately more likely to switch to public
transport. This matters because passenger loads for commuters are close to one
person per car, while for leisure use and school runs they are about two
persons per car. For all uses, there are about 1.5 people in a car on average.
(See Transport Statistics 2008, table 1.5 on page 17.) All comparisons here
with buses and trains have taken this into account we are comparing passenger
miles, not vehicles.
[xxx] This would cut almost half of flights, but a
smaller proportion of passenger miles. However, this is based on John Stewart's
study of flights from Heathrow, and it may be that if you include all traffic
from UK airports, then European and domestic flights may account for more than
half of passenger miles.
[xxxi] According to Transport Statistics Great Britain 2008, 84% of
passenger kilometres are by car and
taxi, and 13% by rail and bus. If car and taxi miles fall by half, that will be
42% by car and taxi and 55% by rail, a four-fold increase in public transport
passenger kilometers. And then we have to add the effect of moving half of
aviation miles to rail.
[xxxii] Accurate statistics for public transport employment in the UK
are surprisingly difficult to find. But the Unite union has 95,000 member in
passenger transport. This includes some taxi drivers, but is mainly bus
workers. The RMT has 80,000 members, mostly on the rail and buses. The TSSA has
another 30,000, mostly in rail. Most bus workers are unionised, but many track
workers for contractors in the rail system are not, and no one knows how many
of them there are. These figures also do not include the workers who would make
rolling stock. Nor do they include workers making buses, but in the medium run
there would be less workers building buses than the jobs lost making cars.
Taking all these considerations together, 250,000 to 300,000 rail and bus
workers now is a reasonable approximation.
According to Transport Statistics,
84% of passenger kilometres are by car and taxi, and 13% by rail and bus. If
car and taxi miles fall by half, that will be 42% by car and taxi and 55% by
rail, a four-fold increase in public transport passenger kilometers.
[xxxiii] This is working from the figures for 2007 in Joanna Jackson et
al (AEA), Greenhouse Gas Inventories for England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland, 1990-2007, September 2009. I have adjusted these figures
to take account of the CO2 emissions from international aviation and shipping,
which they do not include.
[xxxiv] The next few paragraphs lean on the statistics in Jackson et
al, Greenhouse Gas Inventories; National Farmers Union, Agriculture
and Climate Change, November 2005, especially pp 41-44: and Barbara
Harriss-White, background paper on 'Agriculture' for the Union Climate
Commission, 2009.
[xxxv] See the background paper on 'Agriculture' by Barbara
Harriss-White.
[xxxvi] For an idea of some of the possbilities
here, see Lovins, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx