Prime Minister Gordon Brown, along with other western country leaders wants to create a green collar economy to help us on the road to economic recovery by creating thousands of new renewable energy jobs.
The PM wants to attract manufacturing business like the wind turbine plant recently set up in Detroit, US creating 250 jobs. The credit crunch, however, has pushed up the cost of financing UK renewable energy and energy efficient projects, while the appetite of investors to back new, risky technologies has slowed considerably.
Tomorrow Gordon Brown will announce the UK’s annual budget. He is expected to talk about a pilot scheme for a network of electric car charging points and potentially a £5,000 subsidy for buying plug-in hybrid and electric cars. However this is only likely to kick in 2011/12, which is when many conventional car manufacturers expect to be producing low carbon emitting models.
The wind energy industry want UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to help fill the funding gap or else see the green economy stumble not long after leaving the starting blocks. Financial assistance for offshore wind energy and low carbon buildings is anticipated by both the wind and house building industries.
