Lecture shone like an emerald

May 18 2009 by Kevin Rowan, The Journal

THE Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University is to be congratulated for the latest of its Regional Insights lectures.

Last week Joan Fitzgerald from Northeastern University in Boston and author of the forthcoming ‘Emerald Cities’, a study of cities that have sought to grasp the green opportunity in formulating their economic development strategies, gave great encouragement to the significant potential in the North East in this area.

Having studied a number of city region economies the US and Europe have sought to get ahead of the curve on the renewables agenda, responding to the increasingly inevitable low-carbon future, we are now able to begin to understand from Fitzgerald’s work some of the characteristics of failure and some of the key factors of success.

The strategic economic and social levers ought to be pretty clear; the repeated ambition to secure 20% of our nation’s energy production from renewables technologies is a major policy driver. The creation of a specific Government department, the Department for Energy and Climate Change, ought to be recognised as a further indication of the current Government’s commitment.

Wind power related industries are the fastest growing sector in Europe. We might not have the seemingly endless resource of sunshine enjoyed elsewhere, but wind isn’t something we’re short of, especially off the North East coast. The Crown Estates’ proposal to license a number of wind farms is the second major policy lever embedding strategic policy leverage.

These national drivers complement regional and local strengths very well. The combination of location, current skills base, regional strategy and sufficient private sector entrepreneurialism to kick start developments in this area, along with the added advantage of NaREC, place the North East in an advantaged position.

The next generation of offshore wind turbines will be the equivalent size of putting the London Eye on the Eiffel Tower – they are enormous. Constructing structures of this size, shipping them to their sea base, embedding them and securing a connection to the grid – they are all areas of skill and expertise the region already has, through the offshore engineering businesses currently operating in the North East.

According to Fitzgerald these factors – a clear set of policy drivers providing the ‘green’ impetus, a coherent regional economic strategy supporting the critical advantages of manufacturing and a clear economic interest – combine in a key coalition of forces that make this sustainable development plausible.

People can almost be forgiven it will be a case of ‘when’ not if this development comes off, especially with all of the key global players looking at the region’s offer, but we’re not there yet and we do have to maximise the opportunity. A key observation in Fitzgerald’s analysis is that the majority of the ‘good’ jobs are in the supply chain. Attracting the big players is a major prize, but developing the supply chain is a potentially bigger one and, ironically, one that will make catching those big fish even more likely.

Kevin Rowan is Regional Secretary of Northern TUC