Can Renewables Create Jobs? | Green Energy News

December 15, 2002 – Vol.7 No.38

CAN RENEWABLES CREATE JOBS?

George II may be slogging along in the same rut as George I : presiding over an economy barely moving ahead. Only some sectors are eking out meager profits, but not enough to warrant new investment and create a surge of new jobs. The muddy road brought down father, it could have son packing his bags in two years.

The Clinton/Gore team jumped on emerging technologies (telecommunications), twenty-five year old ones (the Internet), even green technologies (the Partnership for New Generation Vehicles (PNGV) program for example) to create new industries that, in turn, created new jobs in the 1990’s. If Bush were to boldly move away from his close relations with the fossil fuel companies, and put his passion behind renewable energy, would he save the economy and his perhaps his presidency? Maybe, maybe not, but a new report from the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) buttresses claims that renewable energy is a job creator. And this economy, the world’s economies, really, really need to create new jobs.

The report Job Jolt compiled by the University of Illinois for the ELPC shows that at least in the 10 U.S. Midwestern states 210,000 new jobs could be created by 2020 in renewable energy technologies that would bring $20 billion in additional economic output to the region.

But beyond rosy numbers, the report is also realistic. For the nation or even individual states to move away from the dominance of fossil fuels would be tough. Governments would need to adopt long term policies that mandate the growth of renewables. Then much investment would be needed to build renewable capacity. And on top of that it would take 20 years of hard work - mentally and physically - to make the conversion from conventional to green.

The report is available from the ELPC at http://www.elpc.org/ (revisit if the .pdf file is unavailable).