Twice as Many People Work in Environment ‘Charities’ Than in Wind Power Generation

This post, authored by Chris Morrison, is republished with permission from The Daily Sceptic

British Government Minister Michael Shanks, Under Secretary at Mad Miliband’s Net Zero Energy Department, recently claimed that abandoning Net Zero is an anti-growth ideology that will cost nearly a million jobs.

Like most Net Zero predictions, the million jobs is a through-the-looking-glass fantasy. Back on Planet Reality, the latest ‘Green Jobs’ survey from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has suggested an annual rise of 8% in 2023 to 690,900. As usual, the survey reveals how few so-called green jobs are being created in the real economy.

Desperation rules the day with the ONS job jugglers lumping into the ‘green jobs’ bucket waste disposal, environment charity agitprop, repairing home appliances and controlling forest fires.

The survey was released a few days ago but it does not appear to have been widely promoted by interested parties including the Labour Government. Perhaps this is not surprising since the Government is embarking on a planned de-industrialisation of the British hydrocarbon economy.

Allied to out-of-control state spending for fantasy projects such as open borders and Net Zero, the hard-Left Government has made steady progress in its first year with the loss of 135,000 jobs. Higher employment taxes and more meddlesome labour restrictions promise further progress on this front in the coming years.

It’s possible that piddling increases in the green jobs total – just 2.7% of total employment – were not deemed worthwhile highlighting since doing so might draw attention to actual job destruction in the real economy. Best just to feed the ‘million job’ make-believe out to the believe-anything mainstream media.

The latest ONS report lays bare the shockingly small number of genuinely green jobs that are currently present in the British economy.

The chart above highlights the miniscule growth since figures began in 2015. The largest group titled “waste” is a sleight of hand – dustmen have now been re-badged as recycling and waste disposal operatives – while “repairs” are hardly a new economic activity and “environmental charities” is a euphemism for Green Blob billionaire-funded agitprop.

But the really shocking news is contained in a downloadable database that identifies the jobs total in numerous industries. According to the ONS, offshore wind employs only 16,400 people, while the onshore variety accounts for just 5,900. Despite all the supposed activity of late – and the vast wind subsidies loaded onto British consumers – it would not appear to be much of an improvement on the 10,600 employed in 2015.

It is not as if Miliband and his governing crew have not been told that the negligible number of jobs being created by wind farms has not gone unnoticed. Gary Smith, the boss of the third largest trade union, GMB, has warned  that plans to decarbonise the energy network by 2030 will cost up to one million jobs, decimate working communities and push up bills for the poorest. He did observe some employment created by offshore wind farms, noting: “It’s usually a man in a rowing boat, sweeping up the dead birds.”

Great hope is being placed in some quarters on hydrogen as a future major energy source, but at the moment the real world provides just 2,100 employment opportunities, down from 3,900 in 2015 – a back to the future moment for this unrealistic fuel suggestion. Miliband has recently committed £22 billion of our money to carbon capture and storage and he must be hoping that this pointless activity will move its employment dial from its current level of 500.

Given how many car factories have recently closed and the enormous number of general transport jobs created in the past, you might wish that “low carbon transport” would be providing more than 38,500 jobs. Carry on wishing is the message here. Not so with the Green Blob charities employing 45,200 virtuous middle class elitists, or the 19,400 public sector employees pay-rolled to destroy our economic lifestyle in “managerial activities of government bodies”.

Another coming technology, battery storage, employs just 6,200 people, which might seem a little high since only minute amounts of energy can realistically be stored – about three minutes worth if we are lucky when the breezes and the sunbeams pack up.

Environmental consultancy (17,700) and environmental related education (2,500) – in other words agitprop – look better employment prospects going forward. Since this is mostly parasitical activity drawing resources away from the productive economy, expect more job losses in the wealth-creating sectors – but hey, who cares, we are saving the planet.

With so-called green charities employing more people than the low carbon transport sector, a situation that has not changed for eight years, it’s obvious that the prospects for green jobs is dire in the UK. Jobs making electric cars, windmills and solar panels are mostly occurring elsewhere.

The UK consumer gains little economic benefit, while its ideology-blinded Government throws billions at what are mostly second-rate, unwanted and unreliable technologies. The ONS hides this dire situation by claiming 158,400 jobs in waste disposal, 145,800 in energy efficient products (new windows and lightbulbs) and 11,900 in forest management. In fact, the ONS report shows only too clearly that there are barely 150,000 new jobs in the UK green economy. Meanwhile, the high energy prices and money wasted over Net Zero is likely to lead to job losses on an unimaginable and tragic scale.

Chris Morrison is the Environment Editor of the Daily Sceptic. Follow him on X.

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