October 17th, 2008
Rosanne Albright knows brownfields. Albright is the Brownfields Project Manager for the Office of Environmental Programs for the city of Phoenix. Thanks to funding from the EPA, Phoenix won a grant last year to establish a job training program to create green collar jobs for residents of Phoenix’s economically challenged brownfields or industrial corridors.
The six-month program offers training for future environmental technicians (who work in the field assisting scientists doing assessments); asbestos abatement workers; waste water technicians; and solar workers.
“Our goal is to place all of our trainees in a job,” says Albright. “By the end of the six-month program, they are certified to work in such fields as environmental technicians, water distributors or waste water treatment workers.” Prospective students must be at least 21 years old.
The training is free and the jobs are well-paying: a beginning environmental technician earns between $12-$16 an hour; a water technician earns about $19 an hour, according to Albright. If the students are willing and able, the Brownsfield program can educate them, she says.
Established organizations nationwide are advocating for such green-collar work.
Economists with The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., recently proposed that the federal government develop a Green Recovery program. The program would spend $100 billion over two years to create 2 million new jobs, with a large proportion in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors.”
Using a strategy of investing in the greening of the economy “will create more jobs, and better jobs, compared to continuing to pursue a path of inaction marked by rising dependence on energy imports alongside billowing pollution,” according to CAP.
CAP economists go on to say that the Green Recovery program would:
- Triple the number of good jobs, ones that pay at least $16 an hour compared with spending the same amount of money within the oil industry
- Help lower oil prices by moderating domestic energy demand
- Provide opportunities to rebuild career ladders especially offering “pathways out of poverty to those who need jobs most.”
- Set America on a course for “a long-term transition to a low-carbon economy that increases energy independence and fights global warming.
”Ambitious? Yes. Impossible. Absolutely not, according to activists.
Another D.C.-based organization, the Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP), provides information and analysis to accelerate the use of renewable energy. Recently, it provided stats on how many jobs could be created per megawatt of different types of renewable energy. For example, REPP says, solar energy could generate 22 jobs per megawatt; while construction and installation of solar panels could provide seven; and construction and installation of wind turbines could generate six . (Formed in 1995, REPP is funded by several foundations as well as the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.)
Although, it’s primarily focused on solar energy, the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) concerns itself with all renewable energy. One of the oldest nonprofit environmental groups (founded in 1954), ASES’ goal is to increase the use of solar energy, as well as energy efficiency and other sustainable technologies throughout the U.S. Last year, the ASES released a report , “Green Collar Jobs: The New Cash Crop.” In it, the ASES states that the renewable energy and energy efficient industries generate 8.5 million jobs in the U.S., and with supportive laws in place, these jobs could increase to 40 million by 2030.
In other words, as many as one out of every four workers in the U.S. could be working in these industries by 2030.
“The green-collar job boom is here,” said Neal Lurie, Director of Marketing for ASES. “Renewable energy and energy efficiency are economic powerhouses.”
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