Northern Ireland could become ‘green economy’ leader – Gormley

Northern Ireland has the potential to become a leader in the green economy and create thousands of new jobs thanks to its renewable energy potential and industrial skills base, the Green Party Leader John Gormley said in Belfast today.

The Environment Minister was speaking at the annual conference of the Northern Greens, alongside MLA Brian Wilson and MEP candidate Steven Agnew on the subject 'Jobs and the Green New Deal: inspiration from Obama, opportunities for Northern Ireland. He said that an electricity supergrid could extend the potential for renewable energy by green energy producers across Europe with a potential market of 500million people.

He said that a feasibility study, announced by Minister Eamon Ryan last year, into linking the Scottish and Irish electricity grids to extend the potential for offshore wind energy, would begin in the next weeks.

Minister Gormley said: "With imagination, vision, determination – and with Europe's help – our energy could be made up of solar energy from Seville; tidal power from Rathlin island and Torr Head; geothermal power from Rekyjvik; hydro electric electricity from Norway; wind power from Denmark; wave power from the Kerry coast and biomass crops from Germany.

"An energy super grid is one element that could be advanced the Green New Deal – a proposal to create 'green collar' jobs for five million Europeans by mobilising €500bn of private and public investment over the next five years.

"In this new economy, Northern Ireland is uniquely placed, not least in terms of its abundant renewable – and especially wind and marine – energy resources. With the right political, business, union and environmental leadership and partnership, it could become a ‘green economy’ leader," Minister Gormley said.

The full text of the speech follows.

An illustrative map of how the European supergrid could look is available (as a 633k PDF file) at: http://download.greenparty.ie/MAP_revised.pdf

More information on the Green New Deal for Europe is at: http://europeangreens.eu/petition/

High res photos from today's conference will shortly be available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thegreenparty/

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25 April 2009
Radisson Hotel, Belfast

Address by Green Party Leader and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley to the Northern Ireland Greens annual conference

Jobs and the Green New Deal: inspiration from Obama, opportunities for Northern Ireland

"The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline."

These are the words spoken by US President Obama in Iowa on Wednesday, which was Earth Day, as he discussed the importance to the American economy of new green jobs.

He talked about how impressed he was by the wind power that Denmark produces, and how Germany and Japan were well ahead in developing solar energy– despite the fact the America had pioneered the technology in the first place and has more sunshine than those counties!

President Obama, in a very short period of time, has demonstrated how a change of attitude and change of policy has the potential to refocus and repurpose people's attention. He has signaled his intent to turn America away from a dependency on fossil fuels and the consumption of existing resources, and towards an economic model that priorities investment in sectors that will tap into new, renewable energy reserves, and towards technologies that allow us to consume less and recycle more of our world's resources.

In his speech to workers in a factory that used to make washing machines, but now makes wind turbines, President Obama continued:

"We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century […] or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy."

I looked at some photos recently, which made President Obama's speech really click for me. They were pictures of Steven Agnew – our MEP candidate for Northern Ireland – launching his campaign in the Harland & Wolff shipyards about a mile away from where we are today. He was with our MLA Brian Wilson and surrounded by his colleagues in the Northern Greens – and many of you are here today. And he was standing in front of the giant Samson and Goliath cranes that are such a famous part of this city's skyline.

What was one of the world's biggest shipyards is turning towards the renewable sector and has assembled wind farms and the tidal turbine in Stangford Lough that is now supplying clean, green renewable electricity to homes in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland has a great base of industrial and engineering knowledge. But it cannot convince its engineering graduates to stay here because there are not enough jobs. I believe that Northern Ireland could become a world leader in renewable energy if the right conditions could be created.

And that is what I want to talk about here today; a European energy super grid.

Super grid

There is a criticism frequently levelled at wind and solar energy technologies; what happens when the wind stops blowing and when the sun goes down?

This issue of 'intermittency' is hard to answer when we consider the resources we have available to us on this island. We have wind and waves in abundance, that's for sure! But they are neither constant, nor predictable. Solar power is an excellent technology for water heating, but sadly we do not enjoy the time of constant and intense sunshine that, for instance, allows Spain and Germany to build large concentrated solar thermal energy plants.

But when we look across the seas and oceans and consider the resources available elsewhere, we begin to see the benefits to be gained from connecting up our electricity systems.

"When the wind is blowing in Denmark it could provide the power for people to watch Coronation Street in Cardiff; when the sun is shining in Spain the energy could be boiling kettles in Belfast; when four knots of tide is rushing through Rathlin sound it could be heating water for a kid's bath in Donegal. When the waves are crashing off the coast of Mayo the power could be warming living rooms in Edinburgh." Of course we Greens also support what is called micro-generation, and distributed power systems, where small quantities of power are created and consumed locally, but the idea of a Europe-wide super grid really extends the potential of renewable power.

This is no pipe-dream. There are submarine cables already linking the British and Irish power grids, and work has commenced on a new high voltage 'east-west interconnector' between Wales and the Irish coast, north of Dublin.

Additional interconnection between Ireland and the UK, and between the UK and other countries with sources of renewable energy, creates huge potential for electricity generated in the North and south of this island, where we have abundant reserves of wind and ocean power to tap.

Eventually there could be a European supergrid, linking Ireland to the UK, and onwards to France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Denmark and Norway. The UK and France are already connected, likewise Greece and Italy in the south of Europe. But if Europe could link up with North Africa, then the huge potential of concentrated solar power is also opened up.

Interconnection is also economically viable. There is a 600km underwater cable running between Norway and the Netherlands. It cost €600m to build but is already generating cross-border trade valued at €800,000 per day.

With imagination, vision, determination, and Europe's help, our energy could be made up of solar energy from Seville; tidal power from Rathlin island and Torr Head; geothermal power from Rekyjvik; hydro electric electricity from Norway; wind power from Denmark; wave power from the Kerry coast and biomass crops from Germany.

One of the major factors slowing the development of renewable energy is the issue of R&D costs and potential payback. If a wave energy developer could be guaranteed access to a market of 500 million people, there would be few such hesitations.

We policy makers can facilitate this through helping to connect our systems in a European energy super grid. Both in Government in the Republic and across Europe, the greens are working to do just that.

Last year the Green Party's energy minister Eamon Ryan and his Scottish counterpart commissioned a study to explore the possibilities of laying high voltage underwater cables to link together our energy grids and develop offshore wind power in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Western Scotland.

Following consultation with the EU, a feasibility study under the heading of the ISLES project will commence in the coming weeks. This really is the Greens at work putting our vision into reality.

Financial troubles

There is talk of green shoots of recovery in the US, but in Europe the headlines detailing the severity of the economic downturn seem ever more gloomy.

We Greens have long argued that a neo-liberal, light regulation economic model was not sustainable, but it gives us no pleasure to be proven right.

The search is on for ways out of the crisis, and the Greens are proposing that a Europe-wide 'Green New Deal' provides a way out of the financial crisis. In the downturn, the green-tech sector has proven to be one of the few safe bets, and as European and international targets make green businesses more viable, this sector will remain a very safe bet for entrepreneurs and investors alike.

Our Green New Deal also provides a way out of the two other crises that we face: the climate crisis and the energy insecurity crisis.

In getting our financial systems working, and in getting money flowing again in the banking sector – which is a particularly difficult challenge for us at the moment in the Republic of Ireland – we must, of course, implement much tighter regulation of the finance services sector.

With these aims were are very much following Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ programme for dealing with the aftermath of the late 1920s credit crunch. That combination of financial reforms and state programmes did get America out of the Great Depression.

We are facing a similar challenge now, and I believe that the Greens have the experience and the solutions to get people back to work.

Back to work

In doing this we can go one of two ways: we can build roads to nowhere and construct pointless grand projects; or we can create the infrastructure that will let our children live in a world that is safe, fair and as free from pollution as the world we inherited.

The Greens have long held that this is our obligation. And we have waited for decades to the world caught up with us and now agree that wind, solar, and ocean energy projects are not just desirable, but economically vital.

In making our decision to enter government in June 2007, the Green Party gave great consideration to the role that we could play in embedding sustainability in the decision-making system. By that I mean that we wanted to change how the government assesses which projects it should endorse, and which it should not; which policies it should implement and which it should not. We wanted to include sustainability in the cost-benefit analysis of projects outside the departments we directly oversee. And in this endeavour – in achieving these aims – we have been quite successful.

Our New Deal proposes that targeted government investment can facilitate the shift to a low-carbon economy. By investing in renewable energy, upgrading the electricity grid to enable this, creating a ‘carbon army’ to retrofit insulation to our energy-leaking housing stock, we will create thousands of jobs and business opportunities, as well as tackling fuel poverty.

It is already paying dividends for us in the South. Our €100 million home energy saving scheme has been a major spur for the construction sector at a very difficult time. We see huge interest in training courses, and we see that some of the few companies in our economy that are riding out the downturn and are able to grow and employ extra workers, are those that have specialised in this area.

My colleague Minister Eamon Ryan, whose department introduced the scheme, has estimated that this new policy will create an estimated 4,000 jobs, reduce energy bills for over 50,000 homes, and significantly lower emissions of greenhouse gasses.

It is a win-win-win for us.

The number of jobs that could be created in Northern Ireland and the Republic to upgrade the all island electricity grid to make it ready for the renewable energy that we know can be generated here, could run into the thousands.

Governments around the world are spending hundreds of billions attempting to stabilise the global economy. The Green New Deal proposes that some of these stimulus packages should be targeted towards investing in the new economy of the twenty-first century, not maintaining and sustaining the old economy of the twentieth century.

In this new economy, Northern Ireland is uniquely placed, not least in terms of its abundant renewable – and especially wind and marine – energy resources. With the right political, business, union and environmental leadership and partnership, it could become a ‘green economy’ leader.

This is why we need Green Party policies and initiatives, such as the job potential from upgrading the all-island electricity grid. This is why we need Greens in positions of power in councils, in the Assembly and the Dail, in the Scottish and Westminster parliaments, and in the European Parliaments.

Thank you.