Green strategy to create more jobs

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Research for Greenpeace has suggested that investment of £5 billion a year in making buildings and homes more energy efficient would lead to 55,000 direct job opportunities.

Hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs could also be created in a sign of the scale of the work needed to tackle energy inefficiency in UK buildings, said the report.

The Government was urged to adopt a number of measures including setting up a home energy MoT, offering subsidised loans for energy efficiency work and investing in skills to help meet the suggested workload.

Greenpeace said support for creating jobs by greening the economy had so far been poorly funded by the Government.

The research was supported by a number of groups including the Liberal Democrats, TUC and the Federation of Master Builders.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "As thousands of people lose their jobs every month and more businesses go under there is a danger that green issues will slip off the agenda, but protecting the environment offers us the best route to economic recovery.

"Action taken now to insulate schools, hospitals and homes would create thousands of jobs, protect the environment and help families struggling to pay their fuel bills."

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said the Prime Minister's "green rhetoric" was not matched by action, adding: "The Government should abandon the unfocused cut in VAT, which is costing nearly £1 billion every month and divert the cash into an efficiency programme which delivers real value, providing jobs, improving housing, boosting the economy and tackling climate change."

Greenpeace also published new research claiming that new funding for greening the economy amounted to just 0.6% of the Government's financial package aimed at stimulating the economy.