Clean energy jobs
Green City Times has written about the recent, substantial increase in clean energy employment opportunities. Clean energy jobs include jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency; and range from wind turbine technician and solar panel installer, to maintenance of smart meters, to manufacturing LED light bulbs and electric cars. In fact, in the United States, clean energy jobs outnumber fossil fuel jobs by 5-to-1, and employment opportunities in wind and solar energy are growing at 12 times the rate of jobs throughout the rest of the U.S. economy.
It is high time that all public policy officials from local municipalities' city council members to state and federal representatives and senators focus on the quickly growing segment of the jobs market that is clean energy jobs.
The Democratic governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, has put together an extensive, detailed plan to create a substantial uptick of clean energy jobs in the United States. He developed this plan as a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful before he ended his 202o campaign, but the Inslee Plan remains relevant -
"The Inslee Plan sits on five pillars:
- Investing in a nationwide effort to deploy clean energy technology.
- Spending billions on American infrastructure with a focus on clean energy structures.
- Incentivizing companies to increase energy efficiency by creating an Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit.
- Increasing federal investment in clean energy research by five times, to $35 billion each year.
- Helping workers reunionize as a way to build an Evergreen Economy.
In total, the plan would see the federal government spending $3 trillion on investment in fighting climate change and green technology over 10 years. Inslee believes the plan would also leverage an additional $6 trillion over the same period in private money.
The plan would create a $90 billion Green Bank to help deploy green technology to communities and launch a Clean Water for All initiative that would spend $82 billion to close the ... annual funding gap in critical drinking water, stormwater and wastewater infrastructure.
The proposal would also boost the investment in electric vehicle and battery technology, as well as establish a "federal 'Buy Clean' Program to help close the carbon loophole and support domestic industries and workers." - from: https://www.cnn.com/jay-inslee-2020-jobs-plan-clean-energy-infrastructure
Please also see this article from Climate Nexus for more on this topic:
Overall, when you add *clean energy jobs to jobs directly in renewable energy, there are currently over 3 million jobs in clean energy in the United States, including energy efficiency-related jobs, clean energy storage jobs, and clean transportation jobs, in the United States. Employment that is directly in renewable energy in the U.S. features, most prominently, jobs in solar and wind, although jobs in geothermal energy, biomass, and hydroelectricity are also included.
*Employment in clean energy features, first and foremost, jobs in energy efficiency including jobs in Energy Star and green building,and in LED and CFL lighting, among other employment in clean energy efficiency. Jobs in the smart grid, maintaining smart meters, and in clean energy storage are also included in the over 3 million clean energy jobs in the United States figure. With regard to sustainable transportation, jobs in electric vehicle, plug-in hybrids, and hybrid vehicle production, in addition to jobs in sustainable mass transit, and in biofuel production are included.
Wind turbine technician is the single fastest growing job in the United States. Solar energy also has impressive employment growth statistics, with about 1 in 50 new jobs created in the United States coming from the solar industry. The fastest growing job in solar is solar panel installer. Sustainability professional, sustainable builder, and clean car engineer are also among the fastest growing jobs in clean energy, and the United States as a whole.
A look at clean energy jobs in the United States (2018)There are over 3 times more jobs in the clean energy sector than in fossil fuels. Over 1/3 of workers in the energy sector have jobs in energy efficiency fields. Almost 40% of construction jobs in the energy sector are in wind or solar energy. The future of employment in the energy sector is in renewable energy, not in fossil fuels. The dominance of clean energy jobs over those in fossil fuels is true even in the Midwest United States, as depicted in this chart--
