U.K. Green Deal to Support 250,000 Insulation Jobs Nationwide, Huhne Says
The British government will create a “whole new industry” supporting as many as 250,000 jobs insulating 26 million homes, said Chris Huhne, the Cabinet minister in charge of climate and environment.
The “Green Deal” measures are aimed at curbing heat loss in homes, which account for a quarter of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, Huhne said today at the Liberal Democrat Party conference in Liverpool. He said the British use more energy to heat homes than in Sweden, where average temperatures in January are 7 degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit) colder.
“We might as well be standing outside burning 50-pound notes,” Huhne said, according to a text of his speech at the meeting in northwest England. Fifty pounds is about $78. “By stopping this waste, we can make big savings on bills, and use them to pay businesses for the cost of insulation.”
U.K. utilities need to spend 200 billion pounds over the next decade to replace plants and infrastructure, according to the energy regulator Ofgem. Huhne said he’ll push to develop renewable energy, nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage for both coal and gas-fired power plants to bring down emissions.
“The days of dirty fossil fuels are over,” Huhne said. “We in Britain can become to clean coal and gas what Germany is to solar and wind, and France is to nuclear. And our low-carbon policy will insure consumers, and businesses, against the oil price shocks to come.”
Huhne plans to publish a draft law by year-end to make Centrica Plc, E.ON AG and other energy providers pay to insulate every home in the country, recovering the costs through savings on customer energy bills. The Green Deal measures could see the insulation industry expand from 26,000 jobs today to as many as a 250,000, he said.
Nuclear Vs. Renewables
Huhne’s party is the junior partner in a coalition government led by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. Huhne said he will deliver on both Liberal Democrat policies, and Conservative measures such as boosting nuclear power that are opposed by his party, though included in the coalition agreement.
“I’m fed up with the stand-off between renewable and nuclear which means we have neither -- we will have both,” he said. “We will have low carbon energy, and security of supply.”
Calling climate change “the challenge of a generation,” he said he’ll aim to boost the use of electric cars, high-speed rail and ground and air-source heat pumps.
The lawmaker also said he will use his ministerial powers to intervene if energy companies don’t tell customers about price rises, and the government will insist on energy bills providing more information about better deals available to clients.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net.
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