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More than a million jobs will be created by the low carbon industries, according to Business Secretary Lord Mandelson speaking at the Prime Minister’s job summit, Lord Mandelson said that the low carbon sector of the economy was set to grow dramatically and that it could help ease rising unemployment figures.

Lord Mandelson said:”The global market for low carbon and environmental goods and services is currently worth about £3 trillion, and it is projected to grow strongly over the next decade as both the developed and the emerging world makes the shift to low carbon or post-carbon.”

He added: “We could see more than a million jobs in this sector by the middle of the next decade”.Last year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that people facing unemployment could find jobs in the green industries and offered retraining for some to learn to install insulation.

An Oxfam report recently noted that environmental issues and poverty should be tackled side by side and pointed out that insulation helped people cut both their energy bills and their carbon emissions.

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The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the national trade association of America’s wind industry, emphasises that the wind power industry combated challenges in 2010 and laid the foundations for a strong return in 2011.

While the industry “saw the all-too-real impacts of having no long-term US policies toward renewable energy”, the industry nevertheless made significant advances in 2010, said Denise Bode, CEO of the association.

Bode highlighted that wind power supply chain manufacturers continued to announce new US plants despite an uncertain economic climate. The industry reached over 50% domestic content for turbines installed in the US. In addition, advances were made in regional transmission plans, the market for smaller turbines grew 15%, and offshore wind took major steps on the path to the first US installations, said Bode.

The year 2010 closed out with Congress extending by one more year the Section 1603 Investment Tax Credit for renewable energy, a policy that helped the industry emerge as a bright spot in the US economy and keep 85,000 Americans working even at the depth of the recession, Bode said.

The numbers posted by the US wind industry in the third quarter of 2010 made for its slowest quarter since 2007. According to AWEA, once the year’s final numbers are tallied, they are expected to show that China installed approximately three times as much wind-powered electricity as the US in 2010, and Europe twice as much, as US installations fell to just over half of 2009.

Factors in the US decline included an absence of long-term US energy policies (such as a Renewable Electricity Standard), resulting in an unstable business environment, and utilities being less eager to enter wind energy power purchase agreements.

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From LowCarbonEconomy

The total annual retail value of consumer goods sold in the UK bearing the Carbon Reduction Label has reached £2 billion, and could double in the next two years, according to a report by the Centre for Retail Research.

The announcement comes as new research shows that 9 out of 10 homes in the UK bought a carbon labelled product last year.

The milestone figure was reached after Tesco confirmed it has added the Carbon Reduction Label to its own brand dried egg and dried Finest pasta. It means that the average UK household spends £77 on carbon labelled products per year.

If sales of business (B2B) products were added, the total sales value of goods bearing the label would rise to approximately £3 billion. CEMEX UK, Marshalls plc and Continental Clothing all feature the label on their B2B products.

The Carbon Reduction Label also continues to grow internationally. Last summer, Aldi put the label on the bottles of its own-brand olive oil in stores across Australia. And last month, the New Zealand Wine Company became the first wine maker to measure and commit to reduce the carbon footprint of a bottle of wine, putting the Carbon Reduction Label on their Mobius Marlborough sauvignon blanc.

Euan Murray, director of footprinting at the Carbon Trust said:

“It’s great to see carbon labelling growing both in the UK and internationally through our partnership in Australia with Planet Ark. With the emergence of a carbon conscious consumer we are confident that more and more international brands will commit to carbon labelling as it will help deliver the triple benefits of reducing cost by reducing energy spend, boosting their company’s reputation and helping to ensure customer loyalty.”

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