Green Jobs (aka Green Collar Jobs)

What are Green Jobs?

It’s easy to limit green jobs to solar panel installers, energy-efficient building architects and wind turbine manufacturers. But green jobs encompass so much more. They include all positions that ensure the well-being of the environment.

The renewable energy sector, of course, employs a lot of engineers and other scientists. Yet green jobs also encompass urban planners, bike repairers, corporate social responsibility advisers and solar sales people. Public transit workers and teachers can have green jobs, too.

(Even my position as a reporter for AlternativeEnergy.com is green because I inform people about renewable energy sources.)

[Photo credit: The Lazy Environmentalist]

Most green jobs are just like any other jobs. They are in major industries such as manufacturing, construction, sales and agriculture. They are both white collar, usually requiring a four-year degree, and blue collar, requiring little prior experience or training.

The majority of green jobs are “middle skill,” necessitating more education than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree, according to the Apollo Alliance, which aims to make green jobs a national priority.

Employees can often transition to green jobs with just a little bit of training.

Construction jobs can be green, for instance, with education in retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency. Electricians can work as solar installers or designers with training in photovoltaic technology.


The Apollo Alliance emphasizes in its report, “Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities,” that green jobs must give employees access to the middle class.

“Put simply, if a job improves the environment, but doesn’t provide a family-supporting wage or a career ladder to move low-income workers into higher-skilled occupations, it is not a green-collar job,” Apollo’s report said. “Such would be the case with workers installing solar panels without job security or proper training, or young people pushing brooms at a green building site without opportunity for training or advancement.”

Another key feature of green jobs is that most can’t be outsourced overseas.

For example, American buildings can’t be retrofitted from China. Green jobs are good for local economies.

The Numbers

Renewable energy is often very labor intensive, especially compared with fossil fuels.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that wind creates 2.4 times more jobs than coal or natural gas during plant construction and 1.5 times more jobs during long-term operations and maintenance. [See The Clean Tech Revolution]

“There’s just not a lot of jobs in drilling and producing oil and natural gas,” said Keith Schneider, Apollo’s communications director. “…Whereas in wind, you’re taking a natural resource and you’re just adding a tremendous amount of value to the product in order to turn it into an energy source. There’s manufacturing, shipping, assembling, maintaining, managing. The same thing with solar.”

But alternative energy is a much smaller industry than energy conservation.

In 2006, 450,000 jobs were created in the renewable energy industry, while 8 million jobs were created in the energy efficiency industry, according to the American Solar Energy Society.

Although wind and solar power are “free,” efficiency is a lot cleaner and cheaper.

Coda

Construction and manufacturing are likely to be the biggest green sectors because of the huge growth in the solar and wind industries. But don’t fret if you’re afraid of heights. There’s never been a better time to get a green job in an increasingly wide variety of fields.

Check out “How To Get a Green Job” for more information.