Centre for American Progress Report: Investment in Clean Energy can Create Millions of Jobs

Late yesterday, another report was released confirming the huge capacity for growth in the green job market. Last week, the Pew Charitable Trust reported that jobs in America’s clean energy economy grew at a considerably more rapid pace than all other sectors of the economy between 1998 and 2007. The Pew report indicated this difference in growth rate magnitude was 2.5 (i.e. green jobs grew 2.5 times faster than the rest of the economy). This rate has been somewhat controversial, so while skeptics may argue over the exact rate, the evidence clearly points to rapidly increasing green job growth.

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The new report released yesterday by the Centre for American Progress is titled: “The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy”. The report lays out a roadmap of how the economic stimulus program and new legislation can boost US economic growth and employment. Their analysis shows that the combination of the clean energy provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus bill) and the American Clean Energy and Security Act (not yet voted on in Congress), could be the foundation upon which $150 billion per year investment in Clean Energy becomes reality. This estimated $150 billion per year investment includes governement money but is dominated by private-sector investments. What do they predict the impact of this investment to be on green job creation? Their analysis shows that the above investments would lead to a net increase of 1.7 million jobs. The actual increase in clean energy jobs is 2.5 million, but the authors estimate that there will be a job loss of approximately 800 million from the fossil fuel industries. If clean energy investment expands faster than the $150 billion level assumed in the report, the authors believe overall job growth will increase accordingly.

One of the findings that I found most interesting was that dollar per dollar, clean energy investments create three times more jobs than investment in the fossil fuel industry. The report is comprehensive and has some great information for the the green job seeker such as Table 6, which lists the major areas for the green investment agenda and the representative jobs that will be created in those areas. Appendix 2 of the report explores the employment impact of clean-energy investments across individual states. The report is an interesting read even if you want to skip over the detailed ananlysis section.

One thing remains certain, the evidence continues to accummulate in favor of clean energy from an economic perspective. This is by far the best scenario to attract business investment to this sector.

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Posted by admin on Jun 19 2009. Filed under Green Career, Green Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry