What is the definition of a Green Economy?

We are often asked what we think a “green economy” is, we want a definition that is simple, uncluttered by jargon, usable by a wide range of people.

Our view:

A green economy lies at the heart of a sustainable community. A sustainable community is one in which its people collectively want to be as energy and resource efficient as possible and have minimal negative impact on the environment. It will be driven and managed by an Administration that has a clear cut, unequivocal, central and core policy to, as far as is practically possible, ensure the community produces its own energy and heat locally from non-polluting, renewable sources so as to reduce expenditure to external sources and to secure continuity of supply. The community and its Administration will be infatuated about maximising available resources.


In seeking to achieve these aims, the Administration will have adopted an holistic approach to the delivery of sustainable development values, ensuring cross-departmental involvement and integrated departmental involvement and decision making.


A prime policy will be to use local skills and resources to produce what the community needs, thereby creating work, employment and a taxable wealth that provides the revenue for the community to do what a socially concerned community should be doing. To stimulate this there will be a robust commitment to local procurement wherever possible realising of course that by doing so the carbon footprint will be minimised in terms of product, goods and materials movement. All procurement activity will be approached against the over-riding sustainability objective with carbon costing and whole life cycle costs included which immediately gives preference to local suppliers if they can meet other criteria.


In the delivery of such an ambition the word “waste” disappears from the vocabulary. Anything that cannot be reused should become source for energy and heat production. In terms of resource use, the community will strive to be as much of a closed loop as possible.


Sustainable communities will have sustainability as the key objective of every function and action that makes the community work. It will not just be a rhetorical or aesthetic objective, but the over-riding key objective with budgets set against that objective, key performance indicators aligned to the objectives and management fiscal rewards concreted to those objectives. No success = no salary increment or bonus.


The sustainability objective will not just be cross functional or cross departmental but utterly integrated into the culture of local Administration’s management in every aspect. This will lead to total departmental integration of, for instance, project development. For instance, a retro-fit programme intent upon improving the energy efficiency and insulation values of local housing will not stop at that objective but, in the spirit of an holistic approach, will look at how the provision of such values might lead to a local chp project – which raises the question can the energy or heat generated be used in any other ways –perhaps in transport maybe. And that should align to questions about mobility in the area – why and how people move. Maybe it leads to a green transport scheme in which energy generated initially for the housing scheme now also becomes pertinent to elements of the transport requirements. So any one action is tested to see if it can impact positively on any other aspect of the community’s needs. No longer can departments act in silos. Neither can planning.


Such a philosophical stance will not be restricted to the local authority or any other aspect of the public sector. Indeed, all elements of the public sector in the community will collaborate on issues such as procurement and there will be extensive collaboration between the public sector and the private sector. For instance, if the local authority – driven by objectives to do with carbon emission reduction targets - is to undertake an energy efficiency and insulation programme, it will seek to do so in conjunction with businesses in the area, recognising that the business community has an equal responsibility over such matters. It might be found that collaboration leads to joint ventures which might produce bigger statistical results and enhanced value for money investment.


Funding for such an enterprise should also primarily (if not exclusively) come from within the community in the form of bonds that provide funding for projects, research and development. Bonds will provide a return on the investment for the investors. I believe this is no new idea. If you consider it out of the context of “green” and “sustainable”, local bonds for local community good are the sort of principles that lay at the heart of the long defunct municipal banks.


Budgets will not be managed in isolated silos but in a cross functional manner so, for instance, if people are trained and move from being unemployed to being employed on, for instance, renewable energy activity, the cost reduction to the unemployed register budget will cross over to the renewable energy development budget.


Local, established business will be given fiscal rewards or incentives for the contribution they make to the objective. They themselves will be expected to perform to the highest standards of sustainable development. Indeed, it will be their “license to operate”. If they do not perform in such a manner they will be subjected to punitive penalties.


Businesses inside the community that make tangible contribution to the community’s objectives will be rewarded with tax benefits. Companies seeking to move into the area which have the potential to contribute to the objective will be given tax incentives or grants.


Whilst this is my idealistic view of a green economy, some communities have moved to adopt some of these ideas already. I would like to undertake a review of how communities around the world have responded to this challenge. We are aware of many examples that have in part or in whole adopted a green economy/sustainable community approach. They include Malmo, Gussing, Settle, Community Energy Warwickshire (the latter two being local renewable energy projects locally funded).