Frances O'Grady, speech TUC Green Growth conference, 11/10/2010
Thanks Paul [Noon]
And welcome everyone to the TUC - where green runs alongside red as our colour of choice.
Let me begin by thanking the Secretary of State for taking the time to be with us today and for his thoughtful address.
While he has had to leave, I welcome this opportunity to respond to his speech and to set out some of the TUC's thinking on our low-carbon future.
We want a mature debate about how we can accelerate progress towards a low-carbon, eco-friendly economy; and realise that ambition to increase our renewable energy supply.
And we want to work with ministers and with industry to achieve a just transition to a greener economy.
The TUC genuinely welcomes the commitment that this must be the greenest government ever.
But we are realistic enough to know that free markets alone will not deliver.
And we believe that, important though voluntary action is, the Big Society is no substitute for the role of an active state in creating the financial, economic and social infrastructure on which green change depends.
To give just one practical example:
Tomorrow the House of Commons will debate the £60m plan to upgrade British ports.
This programme is critical for the future of offshore wind.
It is critical for the future of green manufacturing.
And an estimated 60,000 jobs are at stake.
For the TUC there is only one intelligent response - invest for green growth.
But we will have to wait until after the 20th of October to find out whether green theory is matched with green action.
That brings me to the big challenges that we must face; the kind of policy framework we need; an how we build a genuinely sustainable economy.
But before that, I want to put today's debate in its proper context.
Because we have reached something of a crunch point.
The global financial crash, and the deep recession which that crash caused, highlight the overwhelming need to rebalance our economy away from its over-dependence on financial services, the City and the South East.
That much we all agree on.
But what is less clear is how we are going to achieve this transformation in reality, in the midst of austerity, and against the backdrop of a Comprehensive Spending Review that is likely to signal cuts of 25 to 40 per cent.
With economic recovery likely to be anaemic, the private sector busy rebuilding its balance sheets, and the banks still not lending, how are we going to fund the development of a dynamic green economy?
With neo-liberalism dealt a hammer blow by the financial meltdown, what kind of policy approach will best help us reconfigure our economy for a new age?
And with unemployment at 2.5 million and the skills budget under pressure, how are we going provide good green jobs for the workers - and in the parts of the country - that need them most?
If we are to make progress, then I believe we really need to get to grips with three key challenges.
First, we need to sort out the crucial issue of finance.
Economic transformations do not come cheap - a truism for us perhaps but not an easy message to get across when the political discourse is dominated by tackling the deficit rather than boosting investment.
Yet there is an urgent and compelling need to get an effective Green Investment Bank up and running.
Not a bit part player - but a genuine driving force powering economic recovery, funding regeneration in the regions, and strengthening our energy security.
The TUC is not the only voice that sees the economic imperative for a new powerful financial institution.
We have joined forces with a number of other organisations to call for a Green Investment Bank, including BA, BT, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Microsoft - not to mention those left-wing fellow travellers: AXA Investment Managers, Merrill Lynch and the British Venture Capital Association.
We want an organisation with a clear mandate to provide affordable capital for low-carbon projects - including the energy efficiency schemes that are central to the Green Deal launched by Chris Hulne last month, and which could create a quarter of a million jobs.
If this vision is to become a reality, then we also need to explore the potential of new funding mechanisms, including Green Bonds.
And we also need to encourage institutional investors such as pension funds - who collectively control over £2 trillion of assets - to use the huge pool of capital at their disposal to support green growth.
If getting the finance in place is our first major challenge in building the economy of the future, then the second is getting our strategy right.
As the Stern Report famously said, climate change is the most compelling example of market failure in history - underlining the need for an activist, interventionist response.
As you would expect, the TUC believes we can't just rely on the market or market incentives to deliver the change we need.
And this is perhaps where we differ most sharply from ministers.
Since it has come to office in May, the government has: abandoned the low carbon industrial strategy set up by its predecessor; ended targeted support for low carbon industries; closed the Infrastructure Planning Commission; cancelled the Just Transition Forum which brought unions, employers and ministers together; and is disbanding Regional Development Agencies and replacing them with Local Enterprise Partnerships - with no union voice and half the budget.
So where exactly can the national conversation about the Government's call on Europe to up its 2020 emissions target from 20 to 30% take place?
Who is going to ensure that the new target is implemented in a way which is fair and just to the workforce?
The TUC believes that the Government has got this wrong: instead of sitting on its hands the Government should be moving towards an intelligent, active, regionally strong industrial strategy.
One that nurtures the market leaders of tomorrow, learns from best practice in the likes of Germany, and leverages investment in R&D where the Climate Change Committee found we still lag far behind our competitors.
The importance of getting the right support in place is self evident: the global market for low-carbon goods and services is growing rapidly, and over the next five years, there is real potential to create decent green employment here in the UK.
That's why we were dismayed by the coalition's decision to cancel the £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters - a loan, remember, that would have been repaid - which would have enabled the firm to become a world leader in its field.
Naturally, the TUC welcomes the government's continued commitment to the four CCS projects, and we look forward to the forthcoming Growth White Paper and Manufacturing Framework.
But taking a laissez faire approach to companies such as Forgemasters simply isn't good enough.
Strong government - national and local - has a crucial role to play.
For the trade union movement, this is a crucial principle: making sure that workers and their communities do not pay the price for the restructuring that lies ahead.
Particularly those workers and communities who - even today - are still paying the price of the brutal industrial change we witnessed during the 1980s.
This time we need real leadership from government: supporting good green jobs and viable green industries in the regions that need them most.
And this takes me onto our third key challenge: getting the right skills in place.
What the TUC wants to see is an ambitious green skills strategy that is aligned to, and integrated with, industrial strategy.
A plan that addresses all of our skills needs, in particular our shortfall of intermediate and technical skills.
Traditionally Britain's Achilles heel - and a real barrier to growth when it comes to low-carbon industries.
As Ofgem's Project Discovery has acknowledged, there are some big skills gaps in the energy sector that need addressing.
Across the board, there are still too many unemployed young people chasing too few apprenticeships.
And as both the TUC and the CBI have said, we urgently need to increase the supply of STEM skills - science, technology, engineering and maths across the workforce.
That's why, in our submission to DECC's consultation on low carbon skills, the TUC restated the case for a government-led approach - where ministers work in partnership with key stakeholders.
An approach endorsed by other organisations including the UK Commission on Employment and Skills, and the Green Alliance.
Without green skills, there can be no decent green jobs; without decent green jobs, no flourishing green industries; and without these green industries, we will not - cannot - build the green economy of the future.
So the economic case for change is clear: the logic for active skills policy, intelligent industrial strategy and a Green Investment Bank surely indisputable.
And in a year when we have seen environmental catastrophe in Pakistan, let's not forget the moral imperative for action: that climate change is already with us, and that it is the poorest and most vulnerable who are suffering its worst consequences.
Ultimately, this agenda is first and foremost about justice for working people here and on the other side of the world.
And I want the trade union movement to lead from the front.
Showing that through collective action we can we can tackle climate change.
Showing that we can build a fairer, more sustainable economy.
And showing working people that we are ahead of the game and on their side.
Thanks for listening.
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