In a speech at the Jobs Summit on 12 January 2009, Lord Mandelson stressed the potential of low carbon industry to create jobs and economic growth. But he warned that "this is going to be a fearsomely competitive sector". The government appears to have found the competition rather too fearsome, and rather than taking advantage of the UK's unique renewable resources and history of engineering innovation to become a world leader in clean energy, Brown's stimulus package has committed less investment to the green economy than any G7 leader apart from Berlusconi.

Nathan Argent, Greenpeace's Senior Energy Solutions campaigner said -

"Mandelson has talked of industrial activism and now is the time to show it in practice.

If this Government wants to create tens of thousands of British jobs and tackle fuel poverty, energy security and climate change in the fastest and most cost-effective way possible then they should invest in renewables and a serious energy efficiency programme.

With the best renewable energy resources and the worst housing stock in Europe, there is no better time to turn the recession crisis into an opportunity."

Energy efficiency:

Energy efficiency is the quickest way of reducing emissions and increasing energy security. It also has important advantages as a fiscal stimulus measure as it is labour intensive benefitting the construction industries, trades and light manufacturing. Investing in energy efficiency keeps jobs such as skilled builders, fitters and joiners, energy auditors and managers in the UK as it is largely domestically produced and does not rely on imports - important with a weakened sterling. It is often cost-effective.

The largest and most ambitious retrofitting project is the German Alliance for Work and the Environment created or saved 140,000 jobs.

Across the EU, case studies indicate that an additional €1 million of investment creates between 8 and 14 job years, with indirect employment effects contributing a further 9-40 person years of employment. Case studies from UK suggest these figures tend to be higher for the UK than for the EU average.

Government figures show that there is the potential to save over 30% of all energy used in the UK solely through efficiency measures that would also save more money than they cost to implement.

Amongst other measures, Greenpeace are calling for the government to

• Provide incentives to upgrade energy efficiency include the waiving of stamp duty or rebates on Council Tax for any household upgrading between energy performance level.
• Tackle fuel poverty with energy efficiency. Use the £2.7 billion spent on the annual Winter Fuel Payment towards improving housing stock while maintaining payments to those worst off.
• Upgrade the public estate. The government should upgrade the energy efficiency of the building stock in the public sector estate. Savings of up to £45 million per year could be made from the central Government estate alone.

Industrial CHP:

Industrial Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is a developed technology which massively increases the efficiency of power generation reducing fuel imports and has been proven to work across Europe. It could play an important role in maintaining the industrial competitiveness of manufacturing industry by lowering fuel costs. This has been demonstrated by a joint letter to Alistair Darling from Greenpeace and Ineos Chlor, Eon, and WWF calling on the Chancellor to extend the existing support mechanism (Climate Change Levy exemption) for industrial competitiveness reasons.

Europe's leading energy experts, Poyry Energy Consulting, have calculated that there could be up to 13GW of power from just nine major industrial sites. 13GW is the same capacity as eight nuclear power stations, but could be delivered much more quickly and more cheaply than nuclear, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10 million tonnes.

Offshore wind:

The ambitious renewable energy targets that the UK needs to meet requires a huge expansion in the UK onshore and offshore wind capacity. The UK is obliged to deliver this and needs to upgrade provisions on grid access and simplify and adequately resource offshore planning to make it happen. Assuming this happens the question is - who gets the manufacturing jobs?

The UK share of the offshore wind jobs market range from around 23,000 up to 70,000. Where we end up depends on Government policy. If we want to end up at the top end we need real ‘industrial activism' including adjustments to renewable energy support mechanism if market conditions require, loans underwriting or a guaranteed ‘green loans' fund such as the one which the Irish Government made a requirement when they bailed out their national banks. We need upgrades to key ports to address the skills gap in the UK for big renewables delivery. There is a manufacturing base (for example the aerospace, offshore oil and gas industries and others) which could be encouraged to shift its focus by the Government.