Caroline Lucas MP called for Brighton and Hove City Council to launch a local "Green New Deal" scheme to cut the city's carbon emissions while creating hundreds of jobs.
The Brighton Pavilion MP has praised a £100m Green New Deal plan for Birmingham which will involve fitting power-generating solar panels to 10,000 council-owned properties.
Caroline Lucas, a founder member of the Green New Deal Group launched in 2008 to promote investment to tackle both the recession and the climate crisis at the same time, said:
"This is the first big local example of a Green New Deal in the UK and it's exactly what the government should be doing on a massive scale nationwide.
"But the fact that a local authority is already taking steps to do it shows that we shouldn't wait for an austerity-minded government – we could do this here in Brighton and Hove.
"The Birmingham scheme is the Britain's biggest proposal to date for retrofitting houses through an energy efficiency upgrade. It will provide 10,000 warmer homes and hundreds of local jobs in what could be a hugely beneficial industry if we have the courage to invest.
"I want Brighton and Hove City Council to join me in congratulating Birmingham and in deciding to do even more in our own city."
The MP has written to Brighton and Hove City Council's chief executive, to seek to put the issue on the agenda, and will be meeting with some of those involved in the Birmingham initiative in the coming weeks.
Ms Lucas added:
"Of course what Birmingham has done is only a start. Other cities and the country as a whole need to go much further and extend the investment into green energy production, big improvements to public transport, and so on.
"But this shows we have a choice. We can follow the path of austerity, make savage spending cuts, destroy jobs and damage the economy while failing to tackle the climate crisis, or we can adopt the Green New Deal approach – investment to transform the economy, create huge numbers of jobs, provide energy security, stabilise energy prices and ultimately end up with a fairer, more stable economy."
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