Isra-Mart srl : Huhne courts union backing for low-carbon transition

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Isra-Mart SRL news:

Energy and climate change secretary urges unions to work with government and outlines strategy to ensure future of energy intensive industries

Chris Huhne today highlighted the vital role trade unions have to play in the UK's low carbon transition, as he addressed the Trade Union Congress (TUC) annual climate change conference in Manchester.

The energy and climate change secretary's speech struck a conciliatory tone, as he urged union members to support the government in greening the economy while attempting to allay fears that climate change regulations would harm energy intensive industries.

Huhne said the government's 2050 analysis suggested that industries such as steel, aluminium and cement manufacturing could have a long term future delivering "the raw and manufactured materials we need to turn our economy off fossil fuels and on to clean growth".

He confirmed the Department of Energy and Climate Change was working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to develop an Energy Intensive Industries Strategy, echoing ongoing work at the TUC which aims to examine how improved industrial processes could reduce emissions without damaging international competitiveness.

Huhne also called on unions to better promote the opportunities provided by new green jobs in innovative industries and drop opposition to greem measures that may lead to the decline of some traditional industries.

"Jobs are important. Growth is important. But we cannot support dirty fossil fuel generation uncritically," he said, arguing that the low carbon economy is likely to compensate for any job losses by employing over a million people in the UK by 2015.

"Just as there is a need for government to make hard decisions to secure the low carbon transition, so there is a choice for organised labour too," he said. "After all, it is in everyone's interest. Jobs in unsustainable industries are by definition unsustainable."

He challenged unions to "represent the industries of the future, not the past ", adding that "short-term protectionism cannot triumph over the long-term health of our economy – or our planet".

Unions had a further opportunity to play the role of advocate, he said, " broadcasting the benefits of the low-carbon transition" to their members and international colleagues.

"We can only achieve the transition if we work in partnership. With business. With unions. And within government," he concluded. "Everyone has a stake in the green growth agenda."