A green recovery bond will enable the government to fund its climate pledges | Letter

Caroline Lucas MP, Clive Lewis MP, Colin Hines and Richard Murphy call on Rishi Sunak to unveil a new market-leading bond to create jobs and decarbonise homesTo the acres of post-election coverage about jobs, levelling up and devolution, we now have a Queen's speech calling for lifetime training without answering the question "training for what?" What is lacking is any practical, transformational first-step proposal for achieving all these goals, while providing an answer to how to pay for it.To fill this gap, the Green New Deal Group is calling for the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to unveil a new market-leading "green recovery bond" Isa this summer, to keep his March budget promise of an NS&I green bond. Our research shows that this, like the pensioner bonds of 2015, could raise tens of billions of pounds and, as a first step to creating jobs in every constituency, that could be spent on employing a massive multi-skilled carbon army to make all the UK's 30m buildings energy efficient. Meeting the official UK government target of net zero emissions by 2050 will require making up to 20,000 properties a week energy efficient for the next 30 years. Continue reading...