

So let us meet the most enduring threat to our planet with one of the most innovative and ambitious programmes of job-creation we have known. We long ago proved that green and growth can go hand-in-hand. I will establish Task Force Net Zero to take forward this national priority, and through next year’s COP26 Summit, we will urge countries and companies around the world to join us in delivering net zero globally. The UK was the first major economy to embrace a legal obligation to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And we will harness Mother Nature’s ability to absorb carbon by planting 30,000 hectares of trees a year by 2025, and restore the abundance of nature by rewilding 30,000 football pitches worth of countryside. We will turn the UK into the world’s number one centre for green technology and finance, laying the foundations for decades of economic growth by delivering net zero emissions in a way that creates jobs and allows us to carry on living our lives. And we will help people train for these new green jobs through our Lifetime Skills Guarantee. There will be electric vehicle technicians in the Midlands, construction and installation workers in the North East and Wales, specialists in advanced fuels in the North West, agroforestry practitioners in Scotland, and grid system installers everywhere. This Ten Point Plan to get there will mobilise £12 billion of government investment, and potentially 3 times as much from the private sector, to create and support up to 250,000 green jobs. This is where Britain’s ability to make hydrogen and capture carbon pioneered the decarbonisation of transport, industry and power. British towns and regions - Teesside, Port Talbot, Merseyside and Mansfield - have become synonymous with green technology and the jobs they bring. Around you the air is cleaner, and the trucks and trains, ships and planes are running on hydrogen or a synthetic fuel. You cook your breakfast using hydrogen power before getting in your electric car, having charged it overnight from batteries made in the Midlands. Imagine how our Green Industrial Revolution could transform life across our United Kingdom. Now is the time to plan for a green recovery – with high-skilled high-paid jobs that offer the extra satisfaction of helping to make our nation cleaner, greener and more beautiful. Just as science will enable humanity to rout coronavirus, so we will use the UK’s extraordinary powers of invention to repair the economic damage and build back better.

This year has taken a very different path from any we expected, but I have not lost sight of our ambitious plans to unite and level up our country.
