ShareAction's new online tool.
Billions of pounds are currently flowing into dangerous fossil fuel projects every year.
A massive chunk of this money comes from our savings.
Our pension funds are currently the silent players funding companies who are destroying the climate. And this will continue until people tell them that enough is enough.
But, if these savings were to be moved out of dirty fossil fuels, the financial power of our pension funds could be a major force for good.
Instead of investing in dirty energy, they could be investing in projects and companies that are building a safer, greener economy.
A small number of pension funds are already leading the way with low carbon investment.
With enough pressure, the rest of the pensions sector will follow.
It's your savings they're investing - so if anyone has the power to intervene, it's you.
A new campaign, "Green Light" - run by ShareAction and supported by unions UNITE and UNISON and NGOs including WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Christian Aid - is set up to help both pension fund members and managers support a fruitful and clean energy transition.
British pension funds are currently responsible for the equivalent of almost a quarter of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions through the companies they invest in.
With an inherently long-term perspective, these investors are seen as a key player in the financial industry's role at mitigating climate change.
ShareAction have created the first of a series of online tools, which will allow savers to contact their own pension fund, asking them to divert money away from dirty energy sources and into low-carbon projects - including renewable energy, water and energy efficiency, forestry, recycling etc.
Joining other savers across the UK and around the world, you can put pressure on pension funds.
Individual savings might not seem like much, but combined with thousands of other savers, they make a powerful economic force that can shift the priorities of UK pension funds.
If even a small fraction of the trillion pound pension industry was put to work supporting a low carbon future, we'd see thousands of green jobs created and clean energy powered by new technologies.
This would begin the transition to a safer planet for us to enjoy today and for future generations.
Join the thousands of savers taking action today. Ask your pension fund to invest in a better future.
Contact your pension fund >>
"WIND AND SOLAR ENERGY PROJECTS DON'T CREATE A LOT OF JOBS AND THE ONES THEY DO CREATE DON'T PAY ALL THAT WELL"
BY MARJORIE GRIFFIN COHEN AND JOHN CALVERT
"Vancouver Sun"
October 27, 2011
The energy sector is often promoted as an area where a "winwin" situation exists for labour and climate change policy. The prevailing view is that the economy will create many good new jobs as it shifts from dirty energy production to clean, renewable energy.
We wish this were so, but our study of employment in the energy sector finds that these claims are largely wishful thinking. While there are new developments, overall Canadian energy policy is "more of the same." It is explicitly driven by private-marketbased decisions, rather than careful planning by governments to ensure both good environmental and labour outcomes. To the extent that there is public planning, it is focused on delivering outcomes the energy industry wants. This planning failure has implications both for the lack of greening of the energy sector, and the types of jobs being created.
In the oil-and-gas sector, despite industry "green" washing, employment growth is largely based on increasing production from non-conventional fossil fuels (oilsands, shale and tight gas). These newer extraction methods are environmentally even more damaging than conventional oil and gas production.
According to the National Energy Board, by 2020 the oilsands will account for 75 per cent of the oil industry and shale and tight gas will be 66 per cent of the gas industry. The resulting jobs are similar to those created in the past, with a heavy reliance on construction trades, particularly in the oilsands, but also in other areas such as pipeline construction. Government reliance on market forces has resulted in a failure to take advantage of the full employment potential of valueadded manufacturing and fossil fuel processing.
New, renewable industries, such as wind and solar, are more labourintensive than existing electricity production, but still constitute a very small proportion of the energy market so far - less than one per cent. While these industries are likely to grow their job creation potential is relatively small. But most significant is that the new jobs are often not good jobs and employment conditions are generally inferior to those in publiclyowned utilities.
The B.C. government, through its various energy initiatives during the past decade, shifted new electricity generation from BC Hydro to the private sector. This is a very expensive development, primarily because this generation is private and smallscale. But despite the high cost, it has resulted in less secure, less wellpaid work mainly because the private power industry has a much lower rate of unionization than its public counterpart. Almost all of the jobs created are short-term construction jobs with comparatively few permanent positions.
In virtually all areas of energy development there are skills shortages and the need for additional training, including in the renewables sector. These shortages are found in a wide range of different occupations and point to the pressing need to expand Canada's training and apprenticeship system. The traditional energy labour force has been largely male and drawn from within Canada. However, to meet anticipated skills shortages employers are actively looking for other demographics within Canada and, increasingly, from developing countries, although under immigration arrangements that usually entails low wages and less favourable working conditions. A good start would be training support that focused on training women and other groups that are vastly under-represented in this industry.
Our study also examines the role of organized labour in advancing green jobs in the energy sector. Trade unions have developed a number of concrete proposals, defined as a "just transition" strategy to meet the challenge of global warming. Their goal is both to expand green employment and to ensure that new "green" jobs are decent jobs. However, neither federal, nor provincial governments have included trade unions as players in the policy process. They should be because they have much to offer.
The lack of a coherent national green employment strategy is a reflection of the larger failure of Canadian governments to recognize the seriousness of the climate crisis. It underlines the need to establish a national policy that focuses on restructuring the economy - and the energy sector - to respond to this crisis. Most significant for this will be linking energy production with the manufacturing sector because this is where most 'green' jobs can be created.
A national energy strategy must include a much stronger government role in including working people and environmentalists in shaping Canada's energy and environmental security. It should also include a comprehensive training and employment program based on the premise that green jobs should be decent jobs and available to a wider range of workers.
"Marjorie Griffin Cohen is a professor of political economy at Simon Fraser University and John Calvert is an associate professor in the faculty of health sciences. Both are members of the SFU Morgan Centre for Labour Studies."
Credit: renewable-energy-world.blogspot.com
