Released yesterday, the Pew Charitable Trusts released a report titled “The Clean Energy Economy: Repowering Jobs, Businesses and Investments Across America” defines and quantifies all the jobs in the every state in country and the District of Columbia that are involved in developing the clean energy economy.
To do this, they defined what a clean energy economy is and created criteria to determine which jobs can actually be included in that definition. This report provides a baseline of existing jobs, rates of job growth and analysis of the state and federal policies that encouraged this job development from 1998-2007. Finally, someone is defining criteria for measuring the development of a clean energy economy!
The report states,
A clean energy economy generates jobs, businesses and investments while expanding clean energy production, increasing energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, waste and pollution, and conserving water and other natural resources.
and defines and provides examples of the types of jobs involved in a clean energy economy:
- Clean Energy – Building sustainable energy for the future
- Energy Efficiency – Reducing and managing our energy demand
- Environmentally Friendly Production – Improving our products and processes
- Conservation and Pollution Mitigation – Recycling and remediating waste
- Training and Support – helping develop our clean energy economy
Although I might define the clean energy economy jobs differently, this report at least provides a baseline for future comparison and analysis. By their own admission, the authors of the study suggest that their numbers are fairly conservative and exclude some jobs that others might consider “clean energy jobs.”
The report found that as of 2007, the United States employed 770,385 workers in the clean energy sectors, in all 50 states. While these jobs only represent 0.5% of jobs in this country, the job growth in these fields was 9.1% compared to 3.7% of all jobs. This means that clean energy jobs were growing almost three times faster than all the other sectors. For comparison, in 2007 the established energy sector, which includes coal mining, oil and gas extraction and utilities, employed 1.27 million workers, which is about 1% jobs in America.
These clean energy economy jobs are half of the number of jobs employed in the fossil fuel energy sectors yet have not had the luxury of over a century of government subsidies. Imagine how many jobs we can create if we make a national commitment to a clean energy economy.
A report from the Apollo Alliance in March outlines how 5 million jobs could be produced nationally (and provides the breakdown in each state and in which sectors) if the federal government invested $500 billion in clean energy over the next ten years.
“Clean tech is where IT was 30 years ago and biotech was 20 years ago; we’re way earlier in the innovation cycle,” said David Prend, managing general partner at RockPort Capital and director of the National Venture Capital Association. “We’re just now starting to see the most exciting, true innovation. It has taken time to attract entrepreneurs and scientists. That’s all just starting to hit its stride, with more game-changing opportunities.”
Although the Pew report is encouraging and exciting, it’s important to remember that jobs don’t magically appear out of thin air. These jobs won’t be created by just throwing money around. We need state and federal policies that promote public-private investment, create incentives for small businesses and foreign companies to start new facilities, establish efficiency standards, promote education and training in these infant industries. Government must create the conditions to nurture continued growth of the clean energy economy in a time when we so desperately need these this work.
The report provides a breakdown of existing jobs state-by-state, and the Apollo report demonstrates the potential for new jobs state-by-state. In the Midwest, I’ve seen fierce competition between the states to attract new businesses. There is this sense that it’s every state for themselves. However, as Jeffrey Sachs notes in Common Wealth, “technology has the wonderful property of being nonrival; each person, business or country can adopt the technology without limiting the ability of others to adopt the technology as well.”
While a state may attract specific clean energy companies over others, the economic benefits are not limited to that state. Complementary businesses develop who use the technologies and products of other companies. Clean electricity is transmitted across state borders. Deployment, implementation and installation of clean technologies needs to happen on the local level in each state. Skip Pruss, director of Michigan State’s Department of Labor, Energy and Economic Growth said,
Every state wants to be a leader in the area for clean energy generation and energy efficiency. There’s keen competition; it’s very dynamic. But there’s enough opportunity for everyone to really improve and diversify their economies.
Thanks to the Pew report, we now know how many clean energy jobs exist. Meanwhile, the Apollo report outlines very clear opportunities for growth. The task now is to build from this foundation and bring these possibilities to life.
Crossposted on Breakthrough Generation.
I noticed in Appendix A of the report that natural gas was on the clean energy list. They must have some marketing geniuses.
Funny how PEW failed to mention that energy jobs of other colors grew faster than green energy jobs–coal-mining jobs by 16% and oil- and gas-extraction jobs by 28% for the same time period. They only mentioned the number of workers employed – not the growth rate.