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| Mon, 23rd Jan 2023 6:40:00 |
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Low-carbon jobs fell after Cameron’s kibosh on ‘green crap’ policies – study |
Exclusive: proportion of green job openings in UK ‘declined significantly’ after 2012, analysis shows
Job opportunities in Britain’s low-carbon economy have fallen sharply since David Cameron’s government decided to cut policies he described as “green crap”, with fewer vacancies now available as a share of the economy than in 2012, a study reveals.
Academics at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment found the proportion of green job openings being advertised in the UK “declined significantly” after 2012.
Analysing the structure of the low-carbon economy using online job adverts, they said the share of green employment opportunities dropped from 1.8% of all openings in 2012, to a low point of just 1.1% by 2018. It then increased to 1.6% in 2021, but remained below the level seen almost a decade earlier.
The report highlighted cuts to government support for green projects under Cameron, who was reported to have told aides in November 2013 to “get rid of all the green crap” from energy bills.
At the time, his team said they did not recognise the phrase, but did not issue an explicit denial, and it came to symbolise the sea change from his previous claim to be leading “the greenest government ever”.
The government then went on to scrap or cut the funding for a wide range of green policies, including support for onshore wind, solar power subsidies and help for homeowners to bring down their energy bills by installing insulation.
The report said the fall in green job opportunities “coincided with removal of funding for various supply-and-demand-side energy schemes from 2012-13 and the decline in broader climate policies during this period.
“While our analysis cannot attribute a causal link between these trends and policy developments, the decline in the earlier part of the sample period coincides with a decline in policy support for renewables and broader climate initiatives.”
It said the more recent increase correlated with renewed government focus on green policies, including Theresa May’s pledge to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050, her industrial clean-growth strategy and Boris Johnson’s 10-point green plan.
Rishi Sunak is under pressure over his support for greening the economy, amid accusations that he lacks the commitment of his predecessor. Tony Danker, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry lobby group, warned last month that Sunak’s government was “going backwards” on plans to build a greener economy, leaving business bosses “confused and disappointed”.
Despite successive governments talking up Britain’s potential to become a world-leading green economy, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the low-carbon and renewable energy sector has failed to grow since 2014.
Tallying with the findings of the Grantham Research Institute study, the ONS also said the number of green jobs had slumped over the period.
The researchers found that the areas of the UK with the highest proportion of green jobs were located outside the south-east of England. Despite there being a high number of low-carbon job vacancies in London, they represent a relatively small share of the capital’s overall labour market.
“These patterns provide some evidence to suggest that the low-carbon transition can provide regionally balanced economic opportunities in the UK,” it said.
Analysis by Carbon Brief, a climate information website, found that maintaining the green policies would have reduced energy costs across the UK economy by as much as £8.3bn a year. It said this had left consumers exposed to higher bills amid the cost of living crisis, equating to a cost of about £150 a year for each household.
A government spokesperson said: “The UK is leading the world on tackling climate change – in fact we’ve cut emissions by over 44% since 1990 while growing our economy by 76%. This net zero transition will provide huge opportunities for UK jobs, investment, innovation and exports – since late 2020 our policies have supported 68,000 green jobs.”
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