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The Green Modernist
Not many people are known for having strong interests in both renewable energy and British Art Deco architecture. Colin Hines is one who does, although it was his green credentials which were on show when he gave a passionate speech at a GBN event about the urgent need for Britain to move to a low-carbon economy. The Art Deco interest came before and after and involved a privately arranged visit to Boots’ classic D10 building and an impromptu tour of the Test Match pub in West Bridgford.
But it was as one of the founders of the Green New Deal group that Hines addressed an audience at BioCity. Hines, author of Localisation: A global manifesto, began the Green New Deal group with such figures as Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott, Friends of the Earth executive director Tony Jupiter, Solar Century founder Jeremy Leggett and Britain’s only Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas. Their core belief is that an ‘environmental transformation’ of the UK economy is needed to address the ‘triple crunch’ of climate change, energy shortages and the on-going financial crises. Putting words into action, Hines was one of the architects of Birmingham’s own £100m mini-Green Deal to put PV on the roofs of 10,000 homes, create energy, reduce carbon emissions and create hundreds of green collar jobs and apprenticeships. With that project now in progress, Hines said the big plan was to spread the model across the region. “The plan is to have a Green Deal consortium across the West Midlands with £1.5bn financing in a few years’ time,” he said. The most interesting aspects of the next stage, he said, was how private sector finance would be leveraged in. The plan was therefore to attract investors by issuing green bonds once at least £300m was in the pot. “Banks won’t really get involved for anything below £50m while the private finance market starts to get interested at about £300m,” he said. The lesson for Nottingham was that local authorities have a key role in formulating and helping to implement such ambitious schemes. Indeed, said Hines, one of his team had already spoken to authorities, including Nottingham City Council, about implementing a Birmingham-style Green Deal scheme. Having started his talk with a heated attack on the public spending reduction measures of the current Government, Hines added: “It’s [the New Green Deal] bubbling up but it needs to be done quickly, otherwise we are going to be in deep trouble,” he added.
The local implementation of that other Green Deal – the one set up by Government which becomes active next autumn – was outlined by Ian Dwyer, who is Green Deal project manager for Nottingham City Council. Why was a local authority even involved in the Green Deal? Dwyer said the answer was found in ‘four Bs’ – brand, balance sheet, borrowing and brokerage. Brand was important because the authority was by and large a trusted brand, which would make it easier to persuade people that the Green Deal would be a benefit to them. Afterwards, Hines, who is author of a book titled Art Deco London, indulged his passion for his other subject by visiting the listed Test Match pub south of the Trent. He declared it to be the best example of an Art Deco pub interior he’d ever seen.
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