Green collar jobs

BY DENNIS CREECH AND ROBERT REED

Matthew Monroe, an EarthCraft House Multifamily associate, performs a duct-blaster test to ensure the integrity of the home’s air-handler system. Monroe is a certified home energy rater. (Photo by Greg Brough.)

Q: Thanks to the current economic climate, I hear reports of increasing unemployment numbers.

But I have also heard that jobs are being created by new technologies connected to renewable energy like wind and solar. What are these “green-collar” jobs, and how can I get one?

A: Van Jones, founder and president of the advocacy group Green for All, defines green-collar jobs two ways: either blue-collar employment that has been upgraded to respect the environment better or vocational employment in an environmentally friendly field. As you suggested, a green-collar worker could work in manufacturing renewable technologies, or they could be a worker in a traditional industry trained to do things in a new way, such as a plumber who installs solar water heaters. Even farmers can be green-collar workers, growing crops to provide biofuels. But green-collar jobs must pay decent wages and provide a career path with upward mobility.

The growth of the renewable technology field not only has the potential to reduce our country’s carbon footprint and dependence on foreign sources of energy, but it can also provide new jobs for those who have become unemployed in the recent economic downturn. Laid-off auto workers could put their manufacturing skills to use producing wind turbines and solar panels. The American Midwest has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind, with the ability to provide up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs according to the American Wind Energy Association. This resource, along with the vast amount of solar potential in the Southwest, remains largely untapped. Construction of this infrastructure could be a major source of new employment.

Delivering this clean energy from remote locations (where it is generated) to the population centers where it will be consumed requires updating our existing power distribution grid to a digitally controlled “smart grid.” This would save both energy and money and allow for a larger distribution of power generation. There have been calls for large government investment in such infrastructure, creating job programs similar to the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. 

In addition to building new energy-efficient green homes, construction workers can be put to work retrofitting existing homes and buildings. The inefficient lighting, and heating and air-conditioning systems in existing buildings can be replaced, and air sealing and insulation can be augmented to increase energy efficiency. These measures would not only reduce overall electric demand and the need for new power plants, they would also put workers in the struggling construction industry back to work.

Recent efforts to promote government funding for green-collar job training have been mixed. In late 2007, the Green Jobs Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush as part of the 2007 Energy Bill. This bill was to provide $125 million to train workers in renewable-energy and energy-efficiency fields. But, so far, only $22.5 million has been appropriated for the program. President Barack Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion over the next 10 years to create 5 million new green-collar jobs.

For now, green-collar jobs are one of many proposed solutions to the nation’s current economic woes. Only time will tell. To learn more, visit Green for All, www.greenforall.org.

—Dennis Creech is the executive director and Robert Reed is sustainable communities design director at Atlanta-based Southface—Responsible Solutions for Environmental Living, www.southface.org.