
Green jobs were front and centre as Sadiq Khan has launched his election manifesto for 2021
The incumbent Mayor seeks to build on promise to make London carbon neutral by 2030 as he sets out election manifesto
Sadiq Khan has promised to help create hundreds of thousands of green jobs across the UK capital if he is re-elected as Mayor of London next month.
The Labour mayoral candidate yesterday set out plans to support more than 170,000 green jobs through a range of projects, including electrifying London’s bus fleet, increasing the resilience of flood risk areas, and tackling emissions from the city’s buildings.
The commitments build on a series of previous green goals for London established under Khan’s leadership, including making the city ‘carbon neutral’ by 2030 and “ensuring London’s transport system is the world’s greenest”. Khan, currently well ahead in the polls for the upcoming election, also last year pitched a £50m Green New Deal to drive progress towards these targets, arguing that tackling environmental and climate problems “are personal to me”. “I don’t want my children to grow up in a world where our very way of life is threatened by the climate crisis,” he said at the time.
Khan’s green re-election pitch unveiled yesterday includes a scheme to create 3,000 new jobs in electrifying the city’s bus fleet, 4,400 jobs in solar energy and 1,700 in district energy. The first £10m in funding was detailed in November 2020, with a focus on heating and powering London’s buildings, reducing transport emissions by encouraging walking, cycling, and electric vehicles, and supporting the growth of new and existing businesses in the green economy.
“If re-elected, a top priority will be jobs, jobs, jobs,” Khan said ahead of his manifesto launch in central London yesterday. “Good, high-quality jobs for Londoners in future proof sectors such as the green economy which allow us to tackle the climate emergency alongside the looming unemployment crisis.”
Londoners go to the polls to elect their next mayor on 6 May, with the election having been delayed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Khan, who is committed to extending London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) from October this year, is standing against Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey, who has pledged to ditch the ULEZ expansion and reverse previous congestion charge increases enacted under Khan’s premiership.