Policy News

Monday 08 September 2008

Currently MEP for South East England, Caroline Lucas is now targeting a seat at Westminster with low carbon energy a policy priority

The Green Party's new leader Caroline Lucas has called for a £50 billion "Green New Deal" to help steer the UK away from recession with a "massive" government investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Dr Lucas was speaking at the party's annual conference in London on Saturday, attacking both the government and the mainstream opposition parties for not having the "courage or commitment to carry through the kind of green energy revolution that we urgently need".

And, the Green Party's first leader reserved particular criticism for Gordon Brown, saying: "We have a Prime Minister who insists that his government is taking a global lead on climate change, while throughout his time in Number 11 and Number 10, carbon emissions have been not falling, but rising."

The Green MEP for South East England harked back to 1930s America and President Roosevelt's New Deal, which tackled the Great Depression with a major investment in the country's infrastructure partly funded by taxing "big business".

Dr Lucas said the current economic climate in the UK amounted to a "triple crisis" combining the "credit-fuelled financial meltdown, accelerating climate change, and soaring energy prices, underpinned by an encroaching peak in oil production".

"These three overlapping challenges threaten to develop into a crisis even more severe than the Great Depression - we need a Green New Deal in response," she said.

Dr Lucas was speaking the day after her election as the UK Green Party's first ever leader, replacing the party's male and female spokespeople as the party seeks a higher profile with a more conventional system under a single leader.

Her first major policy announcement as leader, the Green New Deal, would see reforms of the taxation system coupled with a "sustained programme to invest in energy conservation and renewable energies, coupled with effective demand management and reduction".

Green New Deal

The policy has been drawn up by a Green New Deal Group, which includes former Friends of the Earth directors Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett as well as the founder of solar energy firm Solarcentury, Jeremy Leggett, and Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott.

Dr Lucas wants to see a "windfall tax" on the profits of energy suppliers, but is also suggesting local authority bonds could raise funds for energy efficiency schemes.

She said of the plan: "The core would be a 21st century project to make the nation's buildings truly energy efficient, with local authority bonds being issued to raise the necessary funds for a major investment in insulation, efficiency and renewables, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process."

The Green New Deal report calls for mobilisation "as though for war" to head off dangerous climate change. It calls for £50 billion a year - 3.5% of GDP - to be spent "building new energy-supply systems - including energy-efficiency, combined heat and power and renewables for millions of homes and other buildings".

This would be an increase on the expected £100 billion total investment up to 2020 as predicted within the government's draft Renewable Energy Strategy published this summer.

"Hopeful"

Other recommendations within the Green New Deal report include:

• The Climate Change Bill should require regular annual emissions reductions on a pathway toward hitting a cut in carbon emissions of at least 80% by 2050.
• An all-encompassing "every building a power station" programme of energy-saving measures, combined heat and power and greatly accelerated uptake of renewable technology.
• An Oil Legacy Fund, paid for primarily by a windfall tax on oil and gas company profits, to help the most disadvantaged households to increase energy efficiency and fit renewables.
• Government and local authority bonds to raise revenues from individual and institutional investors, council bonds to fund low carbon energy systems in council housing and buildings.

The report suggests: "The advantage of the massive required scale of this energy transition will be that millions of jobs can be created. Thousands of new and existing businesses and services will benefit, and a large increase in tax revenue will be generated for the government from this new economic activity."

Dr Lucas said of the policy document: "The Green New Deal is one of the most hopeful ideas in British politics today, a vision of a society where people and the environment come first."

The new Green Party leader is now targeting the Brighton Pavillion constituency at the next General Election, attempting to become the first green in Parliament. The constituency is held by Labour MP David Lepper, but with the Greens outscoring Labour to claim a 30% share of the vote in last year's local elections, the Party sees the seat as winnable.