Pew Charitable Trusts reports 770,000 green jobs in ‘07, growing nearly three times as fast as mainstream job sectors

In Washington, the Pew Charitable Trusts released its Clean Energy Economy report, the first state-by-state survey of green-collar jobs. Pew found that green-collar job hiring increased 9 percent between 1998-2007, more than double the rate of conventional jobs, but slowed during the recession.

Pew said that 68,200 businesses filled 770,000 clean energy jobs in 2007, with California leading the way with 124,000 jobs and 56,000 in Texas.

A $100 billion investment in infrastructure to launch a “comprehensive clean energy transformation” for the United States is the subject of an ambitious set of proposals, titled “Green Recovery”, authored by Dr. Robert Pollin and a UMass team of researchers, and released by the Center for American Progress.

The report, here, proposes a series of measures that will provide, according to the authors, a four times better return on investment than the oil industry and create 2 million jobs. The program includes measures for:  Retrofitting buildings to increase energy efficiency; expanding mass transit and freight rail; constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems; wind power; solar power; and advanced biofuels.

The authors conclude that the proposed program would reduce the cost of imports from 22 percent of household expenses to about nine.

Late last year, the Apollo Alliance of business, labor and environmental leaders announced its New Apollo program to increase investment in energy efficiency in buildings, a retooling of auto technology, a national energy innovation fund to invest in promising clean technologies, a carbon emissions cap, and a worker training and scholarship program for green jobs. The Alliance specifically called for a 30 percent increase in energy efficiency by 2030, and an overall investment of $500 billion over 10 years, creating 5 million green jobs in the process. The Apollo Alliance members pointed out that public investment in R&D was down to $4 billion per year, down from $7.8 billion in 1979 using constant dollars.

The United Nations has published a report, “Green Jobs: Towards Decent work in a Sustainable, Low-Carbon World”, estimating that 700,000 workers are employed in the ethanol industry in the US and Brazil (200K US, 500K Brazil). The report found that an average 50 Mgy corn ethanol project in Iowa has created 35 direct and 100 indirect jobs, less than originally projected by many project developers. The report also found that mechanical harvesters are reducing Brazilian sugar cane plantation employment, and that working conditions are poor.

Meanwhile, researchers at Bio Economic Research Associates have forecast that the advanced biofuels industry will create 190,000 jobs and $37 billion in direct economic impact by 2022. Indirect economic impact is forecast at $148.7 billion in the same period, while US oil imports would reduce by $350 billion over the 2010-2022 period.

The findings were highlighted by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) at a news conference to present “U.S. Economic Impact of Advanced Biofuels Production: Perspectives to 2030,” a new report from bio-era.

BIO projected that increasing advanced biofuels production to 45 billion gallons by 2030 would create as many as 400,000 industry jobs and 1.9 million jobs within the biofuels sector.

Findings include:

·  Direct job creation from advanced biofuels production could reach?29,000 by 2012, 94,000 by 2016, and 190,000 by 2022.
·  Total job creation, accounting for economic multiplier effects, could reach 123,000 in 2012, 383,000 in 2016, and 807,000 by 2022.
·  Direct economic output from the advanced biofuels industry is estimated to rise to $5.5 billion in 2012, $17.4 billion in 2016, and $37 billion by 2022.
·  Taking into consideration the indirect and induced economic effects, the total economic output effect for the U.S. economy is estimated to be $20.2 billion in 2012, $64.2 billion in 2016, and $148.7 billion in 2022.
·  Advanced biofuels production under the RFS could reduce U.S. petroleum imports by approximately $5.5 billion in 2012, $23 billion in 2016, and nearly $70 billion by 2022.
·  The cumulative total of avoided petroleum imports over the period 2010–2022 would exceed $350 billion.

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