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A submission to the ESNZ inquiry from Greener Jobs Alliance, greenerjobsalliance.co.uk/

Authors: Ellen Robottom, Les Levidow, Tahir Latif

1. Introduction

1.1 As a trade union-based, green jobs-oriented organisation the Greener Jobs Alliance, together with its associates, welcomes this inquiry.  We strongly believe that action to combat the climate crisis is necessary both to protect our communities and to secure long-term employment for workers in every sector of the economy.  In this context, we welcome ESNZ’s emphasis on the workforce required to deliver clean energy. 

1.2 Failure to address the current shortfall in practical action relative to hypothetical promises of “green jobs” has serious consequences, not only for the climate but for the credibility of decarbonisation programmes in the eyes of workers and communities.

1.3 To address the question of workforce skills, it is necessary to raise some fundamental concerns about the framing of the Committee’s inquiry, and specifically about the “Clean Energy by 2030” mission itself. Such concerns have implications for assessing workforce requirements, including realistic prospects for decarbonisation and sustained employment.

2. “Clean Power by 2030”: is this the right target?

2.1 The ambition represented by this accelerated target is laudable.  However, decarbonising energy generation is only one part of the problem of decarbonising the energy system as a whole, and it would be regrettable if the focus on clean electricity were to impede and delay that wider decarbonisation. Emissions from generating electricity are substantially less than from either space heating in buildings or road transport: in 2022 the power sector was responsible for 14% of the UK’s total emissions, while transport accounted for 28%, buildings 20% and industry 14%.^[1] The Climate Change Committee recommends prioritising electrification of the latter sectors, since each unit of renewable electricity used directly to electrify heating or transport can reduce about twice as much CO2 emissions compared to using it to displace gas-fired power generation.^[2] Carbon Tracker calculates that an electric vehicle or a heat pump produces lower emissions than a petrol car or a gas boiler, even if using gas-based electricity.^[3]

2.2 This is not an argument for deprioritising the roll-out of renewable produced electricity.  Rapid electrification is key to decarbonising buildings, transport and industry, so an accelerated roll-out of renewables (along with development of storage, interconnection, distributed generation and storage, and flexibility measures) must proceed in tandem with electrification of these sectors and with the drastic reduction in overall energy demand that can be achieved through insulation and other energy efficiency retrofit measures, and through a significant shift to public transport rather than individual road vehicles.

2.3 This holistic perspective on energy decarbonisation, emphasising demand reduction, is not currently coming from the UK government.  Instead, we have seen disastrous reductions in planned funding for buildings decarbonisation, and no serious plans for affordable and sustainable public transport, nor a faster replacement of ICE vehicles with EV. In industry, the focus on carbon capture and on hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas in high temperature processes threatens to “lock out” the pathway of direct electrification, which looks increasingly feasible for most processes^[4], would do far more to minimise gas dependency and would be a more efficient use of renewables than producing green hydrogen as an intermediate energy carrier.

3. The plan for “Clean Power” is not really clean

3.1 Despite acknowledging the need to phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, the government plan for clean energy^[5], based on the 2024 NESO report^[6], retains a significant role for gas-CCS for dispatchable power, and for unabated gas for back-up during periods of high demand/low generation. Hydrogen is also included as part of the projected dispatchable mix for power, and even for home heating and road transport, despite the high supply chain emissions associated with blue (fossil with CCS) hydrogen^[7] and the extreme energy inefficiency of electrolytic (“green”) hydrogen as compared with direct electrification, (mainly heat pumps) for heating,^[8] and batteries for most road vehicles^[9].

3.2 We strongly oppose the government’s announced commitment of £21.7bn to support carbon capture projects, including the autumn 2024 budget announcement of £3.9bn between 2025-2027/8 for projects including Net Zero Teesside Power and the HyNet Hydrogen Production Plant 1 (HPP1).  Methane leakage from gas extraction and transportation is high at best^[10], and gas reserves on the UK (and the Norwegian) Continental Shelf are dwindling, so that DESNZ itself has forecast that reliance on imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) will increase significantly^[11].

3.3 Detailed modelling across a variety of scenarios has established that imported LNG has an exceptionally high GHG footprint, due largely to methane leakage during extraction, production, transportation and storage, but also due to the additional CO2 emissions from those processes^[12].  Likewise, blue hydrogen from imported LNG could have emissions 2.5 times higher than the UK’s low carbon hydrogen standard^[13].  LNG imports are likely to comprise the majority of gas used in new gas-CCS and fossil hydrogen plants, so CO2 from end-use combustion may only account for around 52% of the total LNG greenhouse gas footprint, or 37% based on a more appropriate 20-year comparison period.

3.4 Clearly neither gas-CCS nor fossil hydrogen could be regarded as “clean” energy sources, even with a 95% capture rate. Given that there is no precedent for utility-scale gas-CCS, and that no CCS project (including blue hydrogen)  has ever reached more than an 80% capture rate, with most doing far worse,^[14] there is no reason to assume that 90% or 95% capture rates will be achieved.

3.5 The evidence against such optimistic assumptions has been amply documented.^[15]  Perhaps most worryingly, the only two existing undersea stores (the much smaller Sleipner and Snohvit) have both failed to show the characteristics expected by operators on the basis of surveys and modelling. There is no basis here for confidence in projects at the unprecedented scale and complexity envisaged for the UK “clusters”.^[16]  Yet the government has mendaciously insisted that the technology is “proven”, even “proven to be safe”.

3.6 Further points:

• Contrary to the government’s view of gas-CCS as providing dispatchable power (employed at mid-merit), NZTP has stated that it will need to run at baseload for the first four years of operation^[17].
• BECCS at Drax, should it ever proceed, is also intended to run at baseload, due to the (scientifically disputed[18]) claim that it will produce carbon removals.
• Technical papers for the Teesside cluster project make clear that ramping up and down of carbon capture facilities, plus variable CO2 inputs from different power and industrial projects, pose additional risks of poor performance and breakdown.
• Reliance on gas for dispatchable power means the price of electricity is likely to remain strongly coupled to the marginal cost of gas, failing to create either energy security for households or favourable conditions for electrification of industry, therefore risking mass job losses and missed opportunities for industrial revival.
• Numerous opportunities to deliver clean energy faster are being missed. The government has just announced building regulations which will effectively make heat pumps mandatory in new buildings to achieve the necessary emissions reductions but will not require solar panels. Common sense dictates that heat pumps should be powered by rooftop solar as a major contributor to the “clean” grid.  Requiring solar for newbuild is the low-hanging fruit, easily achieved and desperately required to keep installers in business and to grow the sector with its developing supply chains.
• There is a growing body of research^[19] showing that a 100% renewables energy system is technologically possible (ie, without carbon capture or nuclear energy). Whilst this may not be immediately possible, focusing on rapid large reductions in emissions through genuine renewables, electrification and ambitious demand reduction measures is a no-regrets approach that would take us far along this pathway. Yet government policy blocks or delays such a decarbonisation agenda with measures that divert resources, skills and workforce development and research effort towards locking in fossil fuels.

4. Implications for the workforce

4.1 The government has stated that its support for the CCS clusters (anchored by gas power and fossil hydrogen production) will create 4,000 jobs in Teesside and in the HyNet region, and “support” 50,000 longer-term jobs. However, at least 2,000 of these jobs would be temporary (average 2 years), with no redeployment plans specified for the remainder. The 50,000 jobs “supported” potentially refers to jobs in foundation industries and manufacture that may be lost to “foreign” competition” if they don’t decarbonise.  However, if the global trend continues towards electrification, the opposite effect might occur if UK industries are slow to adopt this option. Such failure would impede the necessary accelerated development of relevant training at FE and HE levels, creating a vicious cycle whereby electrification is delayed by the shortage of skilled technicians.

4.2 A “just transition” must do more than secure good jobs and wages in specific industries: it should be a means to a more equitable economy. By contrast, government policy focuses on “anchor” industries that generate large numbers of induced jobs within a given local economy.  These induced jobs, and many of the contracted or supporting roles directly connected with the industry, are low paid/low quality jobs, few of them unionised. We fully support the demands of workers in high emissions sectors like oil and gas extraction for guarantees of alternative work at equivalent wages and conditions, with guaranteed trade union representation.  However, we also emphasise the importance of sectors that still largely remain to be developed, which can create good jobs in every locality, reduce energy demand, and are potentially more redistributive in terms of income levels and through wider benefits to communities. These growing sectors, often more dispersed in terms of workplace (eg buildings service work in domestic settings), must be unionised with access to collective bargaining and common standards of employment, pay and training opportunities.

4,3 There is already good research about the transition needs of workers in the offshore sector, and its manufacturing supply chains^[20], as well as on the benefits of renationalising the energy system^[21]  – rather than simply using public money to de-risk and catalyse private sector investment, as in the GBE model. Rather than duplicate this research, we will focus on the workforce necessary for retrofitting buildings and installing low energy heating.

5. Barriers to a workforce for energy efficiency and demand reduction in buildings

5.1 There is an excellent discussion and set of recommendations in the TUC’s briefing on the government’s Warm Homes retrofit strategy, including a wealth of richly informative citations^[22]. Here we make some key observations of our own.

5.2 Reliance on the market will not produce the investment, the scale of operation, the jobs (with suitable pay and conditions) or the training required to fulfil the urgent need for a comprehensive retrofit programme that provides the energy efficiency and associated cost savings that communities need.

• The history of energy efficiency retrofit has largely been a history of disaster. Single interventions (eg double/triple glazing, loft insulation, etc) have been made without a proper whole-house assessment to determine where the biggest immediate energy savings can be made, whilst also preparing the ground for a longer-term plan for the optimum energy efficiency for that building. Failure to consider the interface between the different interventions has resulted in disaster for tenants and understandable scepticism by large sections of the public.

• The workforce problem is not just about numbers but quality: depth and breadth of training; monitoring and accountability to residents; individual householders lack of understanding about the most relevant measures for their particular home. In building the workforce, the key interventions need to address training and delivery, addressing employment models and the structure of the workforce.

• The construction and renovation/retrofit sector is heavily dominated by small and micro-businesses, often operating on tight profit margins. Lacking long-term projects on their books, they lack the necessary capacity to train apprentices^[23], or to pay for additional training. Indeed, about half the sector’s workforce is classified as “self-employed.” This poses a major problem for training, since appropriately in-depth training requires a balance of classroom work with work experience; ideally, college-based learning leading to, or integrated with, apprenticeships.

• Construction training in the FE sector is generally organised around specific skills rather than understanding of whole house thermodynamics so that interventions in one area don’t cause problems in another^[24]. This fragmentation is replicated in the construction and buildings services sectors: individual businesses specialise in one area (eg roofing, glazing, insulation, electrics) with insufficient attention to the interfaces between these elements. This situation is reinforced by the long outsourcing chains predominating in larger projects, with different contractors undertaking different elements of the work.

• Targeting support at individual homeowners is the least effective way of optimising energy efficiencies: grants are obscure and confusing, place the onus on untrained householders to select the optimum interventions, and encourage inefficient piecemeal work. Individual grants largely fail to overcome the unaffordability of needed measures to householders. By contrast, the most efficient way to retrofit homes and cut energy waste from domestic heating is on a street-by-street, cross-tenure basis; the most energy efficient heating would be communal ground-source heat pumps (with individual controls) serving a street or a block of flats, or suitable forms of district heating. Such large-scale planned projects fit nicely with the need to provide a reliable pipeline of work in significant volume to support trainees with work experience, attract new trainees by ensuring employment after training and give confidence to supply chain manufacturers.

6. Solutions for a retrofit and domestic energy workforce

6.1 The most effective way to facilitate and integrate all the above-mentioned elements would be to roll out retrofit and installation of low energy heating (heat pumps and solar collectors), solar pv and batteries as a programme of public works. This would be financed from progressive taxation, and managed by local authorities funded for the purpose, in close collaboration with FE colleges and other training providers, trade unions, and residents and community groups, and delivered mainly by direct labour organisations (DLOs), ie employed directly by local authorities. Where contracted workers are required, they should of course have the same pay, conditions and training opportunities as directly employed workers.

• Within such a model, funding could be available for community groups wishing to undertake retrofit projects, with advice from experienced retrofit assessors. Small businesses including cooperatives set up to deliver high quality retrofit, promote good practice, provide training and advice, and enthusing communities, should be assisted, with the aim of ensuring that all workers whether in-house or independent have access to common standards of employment and trade union membership.

• The first phase of work should prioritise eliminating fuel poverty and improving those homes with lowest energy efficiency. During this phase, grants and loans should be designed to incentivise the “able to pay” to implement measures themselves, whilst ensuring that this work still takes place as part of a planned programme of measures, following advice from LA-employed or LA-endorsed retrofit coordinators. Where loans are offered, repayments should not be just marginally lower than notional savings on energy costs but sufficient to ensure that adequate heat is genuinely affordable.

• A street-by-street or whole neighbourhood approach would leave homeowners with the right to opt out, but the advantages of participating in an LA-managed scheme should ensure high levels of uptake. Uptake by landlords would be assured by more stringent regulation. Lower-income communities should be prioritised. Due to the right-to-buy, it is the norm to find social housing, private rentals and owner-occupied homes in the same street or block, so a sensible approach would encompass all tenures, implemented free at the point of delivery.

• In addition to prioritising energy-poor neighbourhoods, the scale of the task coupled with the current very low level of workforce preparedness and the need to build this through provision of apprenticeships, suggest a need to phase the work in such a way as to train and build the workforce over time, whilst ensuring that all homes are first brought up to an acceptable level of energy efficiency (eg, an EPC rating C or above), and then going back with additional measures to bring the entire stock to the maximum possible level of energy efficiency (ie Passivhaus or EnerPhit) standard.

• This would enable rapid cuts in energy use – and scale-up of distributed ed energy generation and storage through installation of solar pv and batteries – to support wider electrification of the energy system, whilst recognising that EPC B/C is entirely inadequate as a medium-to-longer term target, and that the more advanced skills for a high level of retrofit need to be built alongside the roll-out of more basic measures. At the same time, this would allow supply chains to be built in tandem with demand. A suggested two-phase programme of this kind, spanning around 20 years, can be found in the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group’s 2021 publication “Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency)”^[25], and more specifically in the Technical Companion accompanying the “Buildings” Chapter of the report^[26]

• This underlines the importance of long-term planning and coordination, which implies both a broader composition and a more specialised remit than the Office for Clean Energy Jobs. The TUC has suggested that they convene a heat workforce taskforce to bring in TU & worker voices, though the task warrants a broader forum involving trade unions, retrofit specialists, academics, trainers and community representatives. They could develop a detailed plan for the next 20 years; it should be highly visible as a “route map” to provide overarching certainty and guidance to all parties.

• Retrofitting buildings could generate new jobs in manufacturing sustainable insulation materials (including growing crops such as hemp which has synergies with the need to improve sustainability of farming practices^[27]), low energy and recycled building materials to reduce embodied emissions arising from cement production, heat pumps, triple-glazed windows and others. All these should be major sources of employment that contribute to UK-wide economic regeneration but cannot happen without the certainty of such major retrofit projects materialising.

• An essential element is collaboration between the Office for Clean Energy Jobs and the DWP. Currently we have the scandalous situation where job seekers are forced by the punitive benefits system framework to accept poor quality employment.  Job seekers should be supported either to upskill to find employment that builds on their existing work background, or to take part in proper training/retraining programmes. This is something that should be addressed immediately, with adequate grant funding provided for jobseekers to enter training.

• Finally, retrofit and heat engineering needs to be made more attractive at a basic operative level and at the higher levels needed for project planning and coordination^[28]. A high-profile long-term plan with higher visibility in schools’ careers preparation would help. However, this is impeded by the heavy “masculinisation” of the sector, which deters young women who might consider such a career. This more than just and issue of stereotyped expectations: the well-documented level of gender-based harassment in schools^[29] must be considered a factor. This is a further area needing collaboration between government departments, and in particular with teachers, their unions and young people themselves.

^[1] ONS 2024 – Measuring UK greenhouse gas emissions https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/methodologies/measuringukgreenhousegasemissions#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20latest%20year,emissions%20500Mt%20CO2e%2C%20in%202021

^[2] Climate Change Committee 2024 – Progress in reducing emissions: 2024 Report to Parliament https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Progress-in-reducing-emissions-2024-Report-to-Parliament-Web.pdf

^[3] Carbon Tracker – Off Target https://carbontracker.org/reports/off-target/

^[4] Agora Industry (2024) Direct electrification of industrial process heat https://www.agora-industry.org/publications/direct-electrification-of-industrial-process-heat

^[5] GOV.UK – Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A new era of clean energy https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan

Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A new era of clean electricity

^[6] NESO (2024) – Clean Power 2030 https://www.neso.energy/publications/clean-power-2030

^[7] Carbon Tracker – Kind of Blue https://carbontracker.org/reports/kind-of-blue/

^[8] Hydrogen Science Coalition – Hydrogen for heating: a comparison with heat pumpshttps://h2sciencecoalition.com/blog/hydrogen-for-heating-a-comparison-with-heat-pumps-part-1

^[9] Green hydrogen pathways, energy efficiencies, and intensities for ground, air, and marine transportation
Wallington, Timothy J. et al.  Joule, Volume 8, Issue 8, 2190 – 2207

^[10]  Riddick & Mauzerall (2022) Likely substantial underestimation of reported methane emissions from United Kingdom upstream oil and gas activities Energy Environ. Sci., 2023, 16, 295-304

^[11] “…the UK’s import dependence for both LNG and interconnector gas supply is projected to rise from a predicted 13% in 2023 to around 32% by 2030. This is forecast to peak at around 58% in 2045, falling to 50% by 2050”. GOV.UK – Role of gas gas storage and other forms of flexibility in security of supply https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/role-of-gas-storage-and-other-forms-of-flexibility-in-security-of-supply

^[12]  “Overall, the greenhouse gas footprint for LNG as a fuel source is 33% greater than that for coal when analyzed using GWP20 (160 g CO2‐equivalent/MJ vs. 120 g CO2‐ equivalent/MJ). Even considered on the time frame of 100 years after emission (GWP100), which severely understates the climatic damage of methane, the LNG footprint equals or exceeds that of coal” Robert R. Haworth – The greenhouse gas footprint of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported from the United States

https://www.research.howarthlab.org/publications/Howarth_LNG_assessment_preprint_archived_2023-1103.pdf

^[13] Carbon Tracker, Sani (2024) – Kind of Blue https://carbontracker.org/reports/kind-of-blue/

^[14]For example IEEFA – Carbon Capture and Storage https://ieefa.org/ccs

^[15] A good example is the detailed coverage of the issues in the written evidence submitted to the government in autumn 2026 by Oil Change International https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/131580/html/

^[16] See for example CIEL – Deep Trouble: the risks of offshore carbon capture and storage https://www.ciel.org/reports/deep-trouble-the-risks-of-offshore-carbon-capture-and-storage-november-2023/

^[17] See DESNZ – “Multi-Store Development Philosophy” for the Northen Endurance Project and Net Zero Teesside Power https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6294fdb1d3bf7f036bb127c8/NS051-SS-PHI-000-00010-Store_Development_Philosophy.pdf

[18]See, eg Envirotech – Over 650 scientists urge world leaders to stop burning forests for energy on eve of UN nature summit https://envirotecmagazine.com/2022/12/09/over-650-scientists-urge-world-leaders-to-stop-burning-forests-for-energy-on-eve-of-un-nature-summit/

^[19] C. Breyer et al., “On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research,” in IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 78176-78218, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3193402 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

^[20] See eg Uplift- Clean Energy Made in the UK  https://www.upliftuk.org/post/clean-energy-made-in-the-uk

Also Platform London – Our Power https://platformlondon.org/app/uploads/2023/03/Our-Power-Report-1.pdf

^[21] Unite the Union – Unite Investigates: Renationalising energy – costs and savings https://www.unitetheunion.org/what-we-do/unite-investigates/unplugging-energy-profiteers-the-case-for-public-ownership/unite-investigates-renationalising-energy-costs-and-savings-full-report

^[22] TUC – Recommendations for the government’s Warm Homes retrofit strategy

https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/recommendations-governments-warm-homes-retrofit-strategy#footnote49_la8urq3

^[23] Relly S.J., Killip G., Robson J., Emms K., Klassen M., Laczik (2022) Greening Construction: A complex challenge for jobs, skills, and training, March, Edge Foundation

^[24] See eg Linda Clarke, Colin Gleeson & Christopher Winch (2017) What kind of expertise is needed for low energy construction?, Construction Management and Economics, 35:3, 78-89, DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2016.1248988  

Also Campaign Against Climate Change – Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency, Chapter 3: Buildings https://www.cacctu.org.uk/sites/data/files/sites/data/files/Docs/climatejobs-2021-web_0.pdf

^[25] https://www.cacctu.org.uk/climatejobs

^[26] https://www.cacctu.org.uk/sites/data/files/sites/data/files/Docs/climate_jobs_buildings.pdf

^[27] (see eg Technical Companion to the Buildings chapter in Campaign Against Climate Change (2021) Climate Jobs: Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency https://www.cacctu.org.uk/sites/data/files/sites/data/files/Docs/climate_jobs_buildings.pdf

^[28] For more detailed data on existing heat installation workforce see GOV.UK – Heating and Cooling Installer Study (HaCIS) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63cab93ee90e07072004fc27/heating-and-cooling-installer-study-hacis-main-report.pdf

and GOV.UK – Heat Network Skills Reveiw https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5f68740ce90e072b973ba28d/heat-network-skills-review.pdf

^[29] Eg GOV/UK (OFSTED) – Sexual Harassment in Schools and Colleges https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-sexual-abuse-in-schools-and-colleges