Another one bites the dust

Emily Gosden has posted some more good news this afternoon at the Telegraph

Launched in 2013, the Green Deal was touted as a "revolution" in upgrading Britain’s old and draughty housing stock, designed to encourage millions of households to take out loans to install insulation and new boilers.

But on Thursday, with less than 10,000 loans in place, ministers pulled the plug and acknowledged the scheme would be seen as a "total flop".

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said it would provide no further Government funding for the Green Deal Finance Company, which provides the loans, "in light of low take-up and concerns about industry standards". It had so far provided £59 million to the company.

All we need now (well, nearly all) is the end of the Climate Change Act.

TM

Updated 6.18pm

AAAAAGH! Harrabin on BBC Radio 4 PM programme has just declared that the Green Deal would have resulted in a reduced demand for new power stations.

Nonsensical green employment

NHS Wales is facing budget cuts of one percent this year, which brings the total reduction in spending to eight percent since 2010. But Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board still found the money to employ a “carbon manager” on £43,414 a year plus a £6,078 contribution to their pension. The package would easily be enough to employ two newly qualified nurses.

Read more here:

Green jobs disappear

Paul Homewood has discovered, via an FOI request, that the government has decided to quietly shelve its green jobs dataset. Paul surmises, surely correctly, that the promised green jobs have not actually materialised.

I have often noted that to the extent that green jobs are created, the related technologies will be expensive. Mr Davey's great economic breakthrough is to burden the country with technologies that are both expensive, disfunctional, and do not actually create much employment at all.

He has broken the mould.

Green Deal No Deal - Josh 243

Sunday before last there was an interesting story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times. He writes "The Green Deal, the government’s flagship home energy-saving scheme, which was meant to create up to 60,000 jobs by 2015, has instead caused up to 7,000 redundancies, with more likely to follow."

You can read more The GWPF here or at the Sunday Times here.

Cartoons by Josh

More evidence that green jobs are illusory

Pat Swords writes to tell me of an official report that has been published in Germany this week, featuring findings of research commissioned by the German Ministry of Environment (BMU) and the Federal Environment Agency(UBA). The report confirms that the Green economy is a dud, and produces few, if any jobs (source):

A recent contribution to the IZA-Standpunkte series cautions against overly optimistic expectations with regard to job creation through Germany's renewable energy turnaround. To date, there is no reliable scientific evidence on whether additional jobs can be expected from the transition to a green economy. Both a precise definition of "green jobs" and access to the relevant micro data would be essential for a sound judgment. Moreover, it remains unclear to what extent the green economic transition might also threaten "non-green" jobs. IZA expert Nico Pestel, who authored the study, says that "research on 'green jobs' is still at a very preliminary stage. However, the existing evidence suggests that much of the euphoria expressed by green energy proponents is overblown. I don't think Germany will see a 'green job miracle' any time soon."

Click to read more ...

Green jobs figures are fiction

David Rose has a short piece in the Mail on Sunday reporting some FOI work by Ben Pile. It seems that the oft-quoted figures for green jobs are almostly entirely fictional.

The LCEGS figures also include billions of pounds from activities which few people would class as ‘green’ – such as water supply, landfill sites for rubbish and, most bizarrely of all – accounting for almost £9 billion – ordinary windows and doors.

Read the whole thing (it's at the bottom of the preceding article by James Delingpole, which is itself well worth a look).

More from Animal Farm - Josh 186

Cartoons by Josh

The myth of green jobs

GWPF have published a new report on the green jobs that are alleged to be a beneficial side effect of the government's energy policies. It's by Gordon Hughes, an eminent economist from Edinburgh. Here's how Hughes summarises the story.

"Claims by politicians and lobbyists that green energy policies will create a few thousand jobs are not supported by the evidence. In terms of the labour market, the gains for a small number of actual or potential employees in businesses specialising in renewable energy has to be weighed against the dismal prospects for a much larger group of workers producing tradable goods in the rest of the manufacturing sector," Professor Hughes said.

The full report can be downloaded here: The Myth of Green Jobs