Workers at every skill level will be in high demand and have greater job security in key industries that would be essential to building a clean-energy economy in Virginia and fighting global warming, according to a new report released today by a coalition of conservation and labor groups.
"Achieving a clean energy economy through green industries like wind and solar are just part of the story. This report is also about job security. Making homes and offices more energy efficient not only saves money and energy, but also represents growth opportunities for workers who build our communities and keep them running," said Karl Bren, president and founder of GreenVisions Consulting and a member of the Governor's Energy Policy Advisory Council. "We're talking about jobs at every skill level from construction to research, already available here at home."
This groundbreaking report, Job Opportunities for the Green Economy, takes a state-by-state look at existing jobs skills across a wide range of occupations and income levels that would benefit from America's transition towards a clean energy economy. The report quantifies the number of workers who can apply their skills to six categories of green industries - building retrofitting, mass transit, fuel-efficient automobiles, wind power, solar power, and cellulosic biomass fuels.
Tens of thousands of workers in Virginia already possess the vast majority of skills and occupations necessary to reduce global warming and make the shift to a clean energy economy. (See list of the over 336,000 existing Virginia jobs below the fold - stressing the word "existing" as opposed to the "new" jobs that will be created as we transition to a clean energy economy.)
"The commitment to a clean energy economy will not only lead to quality jobs in manufacturing unions and the building trades," says Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers. "It will help stop good-paying jobs from continuing to be exported."
Job Opportunities for the Green Economy studies employment conditions in 12 states - Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. While the report focuses on specific states, it shows that the vast majority of green jobs are in the same areas of employment that people already work in today, in every region and state of the country.
"There is nothing exotic about green jobs. They are many of the same jobs that Virginians do every day. However, with major investments in efficiency, public transit, wind and solar, we will have many new opportunities in the building trades and other existing professions," said Glen Besa, director with the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club.
"Green jobs" are defined in the report as occupations that contribute toward building or producing goods to achieve a 'green' marketplace. At the same time, it links the idea that green jobs should be sustainable employment opportunities-that is, jobs that pay at least a living wage, offer training and promotional opportunities and some measure of security.
The report was authored by Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim of the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and commissioned by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It is being released in cooperation with the Green Jobs for America Campaign, a partnership of the Sierra Club, Blue Green Alliance, United Steelworkers, NRDC and with the Center for American Progress and Green for All.
For more information and the full text of the report, please visit: http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/gjfa.
But when I read this, it still does not help solve the issue of coal in Southwest Virginia.
It seems to me that until the you can replace all the jobs in southwest Virginia and throughout the rest of Virginia that are directly tied to coal, you can never really kill the Wise County plant. As a result, any savings in CO2 emiisions across the state will be offset by the emmissions from the Wise County plant. So, that is great that a lot of green jobs being created can be filled by skilled workers across the state, but as these jobs are created, won't the impact to the envirement be limited because the issue opf coal is still not addressed and decided once and for all?
And all of this has far reaching implicatins for the planet as well. A lot of coal mined in Southwest Virginia is shipped via railraod to Hampton Roads, where it is shipped to China and India.
Until government, industry and envirenmental activists come together to address the econoic issues in Southwest Virginia, not much is going to get accomplished.
I don't know the details - just know that not only is there a huge potential for jobs down there, but these are jobs that won't destroy their landscape or contribute to a falling life expectancy due to coal dust or harm health in other ways - improve the quality of life in a much more comprehensive way than "coal jobs" (which have plummeted while VA's coal production skyrocketed) could ever do.
So green jobs could be made available to everyone in SW and we'd still be getting a brand new dirty coal plant.
See: SCC report that says plant will actually cost jobs, perhaps over 1000.
I wish I had the link to the SCC report, but it's public info and one can google it.