FURTHER investment in improving and increasing the world-leading facilities at NaREC in Blyth are clearly welcome, the North East has the potential to achieve status as a European or even global centre of excellence in greening our economy.

The region would do well from continued investment in this area and is still well in the running for thousands of manufacturing and support industry jobs in the sector.

The government needs to recover some ground here too. David Cameron’s pre-election pledge to be ‘the greenest government in history’ is a long way from the reality since last year’s election.

The CBI, among others, delivered a stinging criticism at the government’s failure to effectively support the development of low carbon industries. The recent decision to cut funding of the development of marine technologies by 60% did nothing to convince industry or climate change campaigners of the government’s green credentials.

Of course, the Conservative-led coalition will argue that financial limitations are the reason for reduced investment. Dragging their feet on initiatives that could create 40-50,000 jobs, however, seems a strange approach to growing the economy, especially given the recent dismal predictions for economic growth.

Creating new jobs in the sector is only one half of the argument. The introduction of carbon taxes without having developed either carbon abatement technologies or agreed global, binding arrangements on carbon reduction runs the risk of seriously damaging the industrial economic base in the UK, an issue felt especially hard in the North East where there is a relatively high proportion of energy intensive industries.

It is critical that the government gives a much stronger focus to industrial interventions for Carbon abatement. Failure to act quickly can only have negative economic consequences.

:: Kevin Rowan is regional secretary of the Northern TUC