Ed Atkins makes the case for new climate policies that boost local and regional economies. Ed is a Place Fellow at the Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Hub. This blog introduces the work he will be undertaking for the LPIP Hub.
The UK government’s legal obligation to reach net zero by 2050 necessitates wholesale action. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a national policy for a global problem. Yet, policies that lead to net zero will have important implications.
Climate policy is increasingly aligned with broader policies to support job creation, secure supply chains, and boost economic growth. Policies, like the European Union’s Just Transition Mechanism, have repositioned ‘green’ economies as a key route to livelihood resilience and prosperity for many.
Yet, recent years have also seen climate action be politicised as elite-driven, undemocratic and costly. For many, net zero policies come to represent their lives being changed – and not for the better. In the UK, the closure of blast furnaces at Port Talbot is frequently presented as a harbinger of how net zero will lead to job loss.
My work at the Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub explores how climate action and decarbonisation might boost regional economies and create new jobs across the UK. Climate action can be about more than just reducing emissions. It can provide new livelihoods and futures for many, renewing local and regional economies.
Climate action and the future of work
To do so, however, future policy needs to make sense of how such change and transition might be experienced. Work by the UK Climate Change Committee has found that one in five workers will experience this change directly.
This is primarily made up of those working in sectors that will be expanded to support net zero. Only 1% of the workforce (or ~309,000 workers) are currently in sectors that will be phased down (such as those working in oil and gas extraction). 7% (or ~2.1 million workers) currently work in sectors that will pivot to new ‘green’ products or processes (including car, steel, or cement manufacturing).
Up to 725,000 new jobs might be created in emergent low-carbon sectors, such as retrofit, renewables, or electric vehicle manufacturing – sectors expected to contribute broader productivity gains and GDP growth to the national economy.
An emergent policy challenge is found in how the geographies of these twinned processes of industrial change might be aligned – and how some places might experience job loss and change but not job gain. To date, the emerging ‘green’ economy in the UK sits across the traditional north–south economic divide. Yet, new patterns of emergence and change will likely complicate this national picture, leading to new place-based experiences.
To date, investments in green industrial sectors in the UK have been centred in existing industrial clusters, such as Southampton, Merseyside, Humberside, Teesside, and Grangemouth. This is due to the existence of the infrastructure, investments, and connectivity that would support the entrance and development of green industries – as well as an important overlap between these emergent industries and the existing geographies of where high-emission sites are found.
Yet, high-emission sites – where jobs will likely be phased down or pivoted – are found across a far more dispersed national geography. Recent research at the University of Bristol has identified various local authorities as vulnerable to job loss, including communities across the UK and devolved nations.
A common theme found across these areas of risk is the overlap between vulnerability to net zero as an economic shock and previous processes of economic restructuring and job loss. Many are ‘old industrial towns’ or former coal communities: places that developed economically around one industry but suffered as that sector declines and factories closed. In many places, this has overlapped with the deep costs of austerity policies and Covid-19’s impacts to lead to a legacy of economic risk and stagnation and cultural loss extending across generations.
A place-based approach
My work explores how these experiences necessitate a place-based approach to green industrial policy. A place-based approach calls for a move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to net zero, as economic change and a greater understanding of the varied economic consequences of climate action are needed.
To date, net-zero policy has primarily focused on boosting the growth of specific sectors. Whilst this is still evident in new industrial policy in the UK, there is an increased turn to regional and place-based approaches. The expansion of devolution through Mayoral Combined Authorities will allow for more direct regional interventions – with Local Growth Plans (currently being developed) allowing regions to position themselves within national industrial strategy.
A useful first step in determining a place-based green industrial policy is to learn lessons from past transitions. There is a need to dig deeper and understand how industrial policy (or its absence) has taken on place-based dimensions through impacts on workers, changes to regional economies, or highlighting the need for different approaches.
My work at LPIP will use this as a starting point, exploring recent experiences of industrial policy action or inaction in sectors in the UK and beyond to understand the various resonances and lessons for a green industrial policy.
Across these cases, key lessons demonstrate how industrial transitions are multi-scalar. Whilst sectoral or job change responds to changing global markets or international policy, it takes tangible form in the changed livelihoods and lived experiences of individual workers. These are not presented as cautionary tales but, instead, as examples of stories, experiences and expectations that can guide a better place-based green industrial policy.
This blog was written by Ed Atkin, Senior Lecturer, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
Find out more about the Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this post are those of the author and not necessarily those of City-REDI or the University of Birmingham.