Green economy a big employer has been revealed by a new report published yesterday – with more than one million workers now
employed as part of the UK’s green economy, where earnings are 11% higher than the national average and they contribute a combined £105bn in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy.
The report was commissioned by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) with analysis provided by the independent consultancy CBI Economics and The Data City. This, the fourth annual report on the scale and nature of the UK’s net zero economy, found 22,700 small firms (employing less than 50 people) and six ‘billion-pound’ economic hotspots spread across the UK including in Scottish Central Belt, West and North Yorkshire, and North Wales and Cheshire.
Officially launched in Hull, the report found that Yorkshire and the Humber region leads the way in England with the highest shares of net zero GVA as a proportion of the local GVA (4.4%). Yorkshire and the Humber’s net zero economy supports over 79,000 jobs.
Responding, Sandra Bell, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “The numbers speak for themselves. At a time when our economy and jobs market are faltering, green industries are employing more than a million people in well-paid jobs while generating
enormous economic benefits. “The naysayers calling to dismantle climate action clearly don’t want what’s best for Britain or the millions of people struggling with the cost of living, otherwise they’d be pushing to reap these huge rewards. Instead, they’d prefer to keep us on the back foot in the global race to building a thriving green economy and locked into dying industries. “Our booming green economy is a beacon of hope. That’s why investing in measures such as ramping up our production of cheap, clean home grown renewable energy, supporting workers to reskill and retrain in zero-carbon industries and insulating our energy and heat-leaking homes are simply common sense – for our climate, for jobs and for our economy.”