Even if the wind turbine manufacturing plant in Newport, Isle of Wight, closes today as the Danish owners intend and they regain legal possession of the site from the workers’ sit-in, the dispute has highlighted two lessons that will not dissipate. One is that the perceived conflict between jobs and environmental protection is now changing and they may well in future reinforce each other strongly. Of course there are still differences of interest in some sectors – most notably over nuclear, airport expansion and the third runway at Heathrow – but the centre of gravity in the economy is unmistakeably shifting from the old, traditional industries to the green, sunrise industries and the new, cleaner technologies. The latter is now the second largest (after IT) and fastest growing global industrial sector and is expected to be one of the main drivers leading the world out of the credit crunch. Which is precisely why the precipitate closure of Britain’s only major wind turbine factory is so embarrassing to the Government after it has trumpeted hundreds of thousands of new jobs deriving from the green recovery.

A second lesson from this episode is that behind the rhetoric a Government that has espoused neo-liberal worship of unfettered markets finds itself helpless in achieving what it clearly sincerely wants. Britain still has the lowest percentage generation of electricity from renewable sources of energy (mainly wind, wave and tidal power, solar, and biomass) of any of the 27 EU countries with the sole exception of Malta. While Germany, France and Italy generate 10-25% of their electricity from renewables and Scandinavia 35-50%, Britain manages just 4%. According to the ECC Department, the share of renewables in the final consumption of all forms of energy (space heating and transport as well as electricity) is a miniscule 1% in Britain, compared with 10% in France, 17% in Demmark, 23% in Austria and 41% in Sweden (and 19% in Romania!). Since Britain now has a mandatory EU target of 15% to achieve by 2020, the need not just to preserve operations like the Vestas plant in Newport, but to expand the extent and range of renewable projects right across the country, now becomes paramount.
Yet at the first hurdle the Govenment drive slips. Vestas claims lack of demand, which seems odd in a glonal marketplace when the company is moving production to the US. It is also citing opposition in the UK to onshore wind farms, and here the Government has done far too little to ease blockages in the planning process, or to resist pressure from the fossil fuel industries (particularly nuclear) to crowd out renewables, or to provide fiscal support for new burgeoning renewables on anything like the scale of tax-breaks for the old fossil fuel polluters.
The killer argument is of course: if the Government can spend an eye-watering £900bn on supporting the banks, as it has already done, why can’t it spend £100m in promoting recovery and expansion in a sector which it has itself identified as a key one in leading Britain out of recession? And if the banks can be nationalised, even against the Government’s wishes, in order to keep finance flowing through the economy, why can’t mainstream projects in the renewable energy sector be similarly preserved in public ownerhip, with a different management and a commitment to UK policy objectives? Of course the answer is that the banks are seen as central to the viability of the neo-liberal State, but that is merely to expose the hypocrisy of the Government’s claims to be doing all it can to protect the real economy (it isn’t) and its unwillingness to intervene in a landscape of unbridled markets (it won’t). There could not be a clearer indication of the urgent need for decisive public investment in green energy in the face of lamentable market failure in the private sector.

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