Job Creation - Renewables | Green Energy News

April 13, 2003 – Vol.8 No.3

JOB CREATION - RENEWABLES.

What the world needs now is economic growth, the U.S. included. Renewables could help with that. Here’s one example.

According to a study prepared by Global Insight, a business and economic forecasting company, construction of Cape Wind, the planned 400-plus megawatt offshore wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts, would be a job creator and permanently benefit the state’s economy.

During construction the local economy would have 75 additional construction jobs, with labor income statewide increased between $32 - 52 million, state economic output would increase between $85 - 137 million annually, and tax revenues (state and local) would increase between $9 -14 million.

When built and providing clean energy to the grid, 154 permanent jobs would be created including 50 maintenance and operations jobs with an average salary of over $ 50K per year (such as people that climb turbine towers high above the ocean waves to maintain machinery ), total Massachusetts economic output would increase by $22 million annually, labor income would increase by $6.9 million, and tax revenues for state coffers would increase by nearly half a million per year.

Cape Wind would take about 18 months to build, but full approval for the offshore wind farm is still a year or so away. Visit Cape Wind at http://www.capewind.org/ , Global Insight at http://www.globalinsight.com/ .