Green-Collar Jobs in the Heartland

[irishbobcat]

Green-Collar Jobs in the Heartland

Over the last three months, with determination and legislative success born of economic urgency, the White House and Congress have done more to treat America's addiction to fossil fuels than any government in history. The $787 billion Recovery Act enacted in February and the appropriations bill approved in March invested nearly $200 billion to scale up wind, solar, clean fuels, next generation vehicles, a smart energy grid, energy efficiency, and transit. President Obama's budget outline, approved in April, calls for $150 billion more in clean energy development.
Now, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are working on a new energy policy that, if done right, would put a cap and a price on carbon emissions and drive demand for a whole new generation of jobs in the clean and efficient energy sectors.
The debate in Washington has largely - and wrongly - focused on the economic ramifications of limiting carbon and trading emissions permits. Rather than a policy dispute over economic performance, the carbon cap should be seen as an opportunity to set a national pollution limit and foster the development of the equipment and systems of the clean energy sector to meet it.
Green-Collar Jobs in the Heartland
Before the economic downturn, clean energy was the fastest-growing industrial sector in the United States. Even Michigan, which lost more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs this decade, has produced roughly 3,000 new jobs - mostly in the solar and wind industries - over the last 20 months. Nearly 100 manufacturers, including Cardinal Fastener, the Cleveland-area maker of specialty bolts for wind generators that President Obama visited in January, make up Ohio's clean energy supply chain.
Many of the states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses over the past decades - states like Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania - are the ones with the most to gain from a revitalized manufacturing sector capable of making the clean and efficient energy systems that will be the backbone of the new energy economy.
Michigan's Road To Clean Energy Future
This week, Apollo staff members went to Michigan to meet with our colleagues from Apollo affiliate organizations around the nation and to join more than 1,000 business leaders, citizens, and job seekers at the Michigan Green Today, Jobs Tomorrow conference. Co-Director Kate Gordon was a featured speaker –
To understand how deeply Apollo's clean energy, good jobs development strategy has penetrated across the country consider that over the last year or so Gov. Granholm and the Michigan Legislature made clean energy the focus of the newly named state Department of Energy, Labor, and Economic Growth, and have approved new policies that mandate utilities to generate 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015. Gov. Granholm noted in her own remarks at the conference that Michigan had approved $700 million in state funds to foster new clean energy industries, particularly next generation battery manufacturing for clean vehicles, and solar and wind energy. The fastest growing companies in the state, according to a new study, are those in the clean energy industry.
Cap Carbon
In Washington, lawmakers are closing in on another critical step to advance the clean energy, good jobs economy. Capping carbon, arguably the single most important environmental and economic decision of the century, sets a clear national pollution control goal that can only be met by shifting how we power the nation. With proper investments in domestic clean energy manufacturing infrastructure, such as those articulated in the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan, the new energy bill is a once-in-a-generation chance to revive our ailing manufacturing sector and rebuild America's middle class through high-quality, family-supporting green-collar jobs.
Though the government is clearly taking steps to build a safer, cleaner and more prosperous nation neither the stimulus, appropriations, or energy bills will deliver on their economic promise without a guarantee that the components and systems of the American clean energy sector are made by American workers.
Take care and talk to you again next week.
Yours,

Keith Schneider
Communications Director
Apollo Alliance
keith@apolloalliance.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Who will build Ohio's road to the future?

Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/