Maybe there really is a tangible green economy. But a cynic might also claim it is all just clever marketing

GREEN ECONOMY:IS IT JUST ME or is anyone else dubious about the notion that we can develop a green economy?

Or deliver a green financial services centre? Green used to be the colour you turned when overwhelmed by envy. Or if you were described as green, it meant you had no experience and were too young to have a clue.

Now that colour is being attached to efforts meant to bring about our economic resurrection. We are going to promote a green agenda to deliver green jobs using green technology and make a lot of money in our burgeoning green economy.

But what does all of this actually mean? Unless you were seeking election as a member of a political party of the same name recently, it is popular to talk green when discussing tourism, jobs, agriculture, sustainability and such. But is any of it real?

I am mindful when writing this of several attempts to foster rapid growth in information technology jobs by creating “digital” centres such as the Digital Hub in Dublin city centre or “science parks,” where IT companies are encouraged to cluster together, in the process creating jobs and wealth.

I am not criticising these developments, the Digital Hub is a terrific idea – if it ever pans out. The assumption is that if you provide good infrastructure, companies will want to flock there to set up enterprises. If you build it they will come. Unfortunately they built it (or started to) but they haven’t come yet, at least not in the way envisaged by its government backers.

I have a feeling that the green economy is something similar. It is being described as a financial reality that can be defined but it looks more like a carpet bag full of disparate parts. Its promoters are simply assembling ordinary financial activity, for example waste management or domestic insulation services or green energy supply or cost-controlled agriculture, and dressing it up as the green economy.

Bunk. It is just the economy doing what the economy does. But if you colour it all up as green, then you can claim to be protecting the environment.

Renewable energy and waste-water treatment used to be categorised as different activities, but now we can clump them together as the green economy. Reducing nitrate use in agriculture used to be about not wrecking the environment but now we can call it green agriculture and add it to the green economy.

You could argue that the green economy is really a state of mind; being mindful when making decisions about products, services or lifestyle choices, you should reduce your impact on the wider environment. But that runs counter to what is happening on the political front. Our politicians have to be seen to be green.

The new programme for government has a section on green jobs, but what is included in this? State support for insulating your home will be doubled and there will be more of a push behind renewable energy programmes – at least until 2013.

Then the gravy train stops and we have to pay for these ourselves.

It also includes this line, though I have no idea what it means: “We will seek to establish Ireland as a renewable manufacturing hub to attract international and domestic investment.” What?

The previous government was also chasing green jobs and money. In May 2009 it announced the creation of “a high level action group on the green economy”, one that included a very high quality membership. The associated press release was peppered with figures indicating the vast amounts of money we could capture.

It valued the global green environmental goods and services market (what does this include or more to the point what does it exclude if anything) at more than €950 billion. We were told that this market in Ireland alone was worth €2.8 billion in 2008. Imagine, if we captured only 1 per cent of world trade in this sector we could earn €9.5 billion and pay off a chunk of our bank debt.

The green economy isn’t just an Irish thing, however. People are after this business all around the world. Montgomery County, Maryland in the US organised its own green economy taskforce, issuing a report just one year ago. It thinks it can deliver 20,000 jobs for its citizens.

Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, also undertook a report that promises a similar number of jobs and still another was done by Silicon Valley. It anticipates creating 25,000 clean-tech jobs over the next 15 years.

Maybe there really is a tangible green economy such as the international trade in carbon credits. But a cynic might also claim it is all just clever marketing, an example of governments everywhere attempting to promote their supposed commitment to the environment by declaring a concerted engagement with the so-called green economy.