Mini summit on worklessness and green solutions - Colin Hines presentation
Mini summit on worklessness and green solutions - Colin Hines presentation
Purpose of the presentation
Colin's dynamic presentation explored several themes all focusing on the Green New Deal. He explained what the Green New Deal is, what funding is available and what this means to Birmingham and the West Midlands.
Colin explained the background to the Green New Deal and that we need to learn from Roosevelt and his targets of ensuring finance funded 'real things' other than just 'credit'. The Green New Deal focuses on creating green jobs which need to revolve around saving energy and raw materials. This sector will clearly become very labour intensive. To start this process, the ideal would be to look at every building and focus on making these as energy efficient as possible, this will help reduce the carbon footprint of each region or local area and the importance is to focus on a small area and not to act on a big scale. The key will be looking at where you live, and just focusing on this area.
Colin also suggested that every city is focusing on the '3 Bs' - 'Banking, boutiques and buy to let.' He believes these 3 sectors are 'credit sodden' and are now realising this cannot contine. To turn every building into a carbon building, every higher education institution needs to focus on this topic.
Colin warned, as Glynn Jones did in his earlier presentation of a double dip recession if industry is still not given a specific market - this is the ideal opportunity for the West Midlands to raise it's profile and get a good market story and bring in public and private money. There are people now who want a mechanism and safe haven for their money and an investment opportunity - why don't we put this money into a Green New Deal for the West Midlands. We can use the buildings we have as our 'market' and a green industry creating jobs and changing the mentality of our region.
Relevance to the region
This presentation by Colin was very inspiring. By clearly setting out the Green New Deal, its history, how it can help a region such as the West Midlands and some solutions for achieving this, delegates really began to think of ways to develop solutions and how the Green New Deal could become a reality.
What SWM liked
We loved Colin's dynamic approach which really captured the delegates imagination. From this event, we are now very busy helping partners follow up a number of actions from this event, such as exploring potential private sector investment options, supporting mass-retrofit pilots, promoting good practice, raising awareness for the opportunities for existing social enterprise, and reporting recommendations to the regional Economic Inclusion Panel.