Good news emerged from the recent Low Carbon Summit hosted by
bailed-out £10bn loss-making bank, RBS. Peter Mandelson got
covered in custard, and the government announced a new
industrial strategy. Apparently 400,000 new “environmental
sector” jobs will be created by 2017, according to Gordon Brown,
who reckoned 1.3 million people would by then be working in
“green” jobs. According to Mandelson, “The huge industrial
revolution that is unfolding in converting our economy to low
carbon is going to present huge business and employment
opportunities.” But what are these jobs – and how did they get
that number? In order to make the argument for the ‘Green New
Deal’, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform (BERR) commissioned Innovas, a market analysis
consultancy, to research the size of the green economy. Innovas
identified three fundamental areas of economic activity in the
‘Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services’ (LCEGS) sector
– ‘Environmental’, ‘Renewable’, and ‘Emerging Low Car