(Bloomberg) -- Britain could create 850,000 new green energy jobs this decade if it uses recovery stimulus to fast-track decarbonization, a report has found.
Financial stimulus being used to kick-start the economic recovery from coronavirus should accelerate the U.K.’s path toward net-zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change, according to a report by a the cross-party IPPR environmental justice committee.
At least an extra 30 billion pounds ($37 billion) a year is needed if the U.K. is to reach net-zero by 2050, the report published Wednesday said. Decarbonizing the economy will require one of the fastest and largest retraining programs the country has ever seen.
“We can build back better,” said Caroline Lucas, a Green Party politician and co-chair of the committee.
The European Union is poised to announce the world’s most climate-ambitious stimulus package Wednesday in a bid to curb pollution and save its economy from the coronavirus pandemic.
A more ambitious, earlier transition to net zero would give the U.K. a head start in accessing the $1.6 trillion to $3.8 trillion global market that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects to be spent in delivering the goals of the Paris Agreement, the report said.
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