Government’s Role in Green Jobs

The creation and long-term health of green jobs depends upon money. Business profits and private venture capital funding are important. But governments can play the biggest role in sustaining the green economy.

The American Solar Energy Society believes that, with proper public investments, about a quarter of American workers will be in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries by 2030.


Last year, Congress included the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program in its energy bill. The program will provide about $2 billion per year to state and local governments for building and home energy efficiency, energy audits, transportation fuel conservation and installing solar panels on public buildings. It has yet to be fully funded, though.

The energy bill also incorporated the Green Jobs Act of 2007, which provides $125 million for workforce training. It could help train about 30,000 workers per year in green industries.


A Roadmap

The Apollo Alliance, ambitiously, wants the federal government to spend $30 billion per year for 10 years to build America’s renewable energy infrastructure.

(Apollo hopes to galvanize the nation around getting off fossil fuels just as the Apollo program of the 1960s united the nation in putting a man on the moon.)

The federal money would be used for developing new green construction and alternative fuel vehicles, retrofitting existing buildings, improving public transportation, and ramping up solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.

Apollo predicts this will create 3.3 million jobs and boost personal incomes by $953 billion. The more efficient technology would lower energy costs by $284 billion and usage by 16 percent.

The scheme would also put nearly 100 million “advanced technology” vehicles on the road by 2015, help America get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and lower greenhouse gas emissions. [Photo credit: Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education]

(The Union of Concerned Scientists found that a national 20 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2020 would alone create 185,000 jobs. And the Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that extending the federal investment tax credit for renewables by 8 years would create more than 55,000 jobs in the solar sector. [Check out the Environmental and Energy Study Institute])

Perhaps best of all, the Apollo Alliance says the program would pay back the $300 billion expense in 10 years because of increased income taxes from job creation and consumer spending.

State and Local

So far, state and local governments, prodded by constituents, have done more to spur the green economy than Capitol Hill.


Cities such as Chicago, Richmond (California) and Los Angeles have started job training programs for low-income, underemployed residents in solar installation, recycling and retrofitting buildings. [See Apollo’s jobs report]

“It’s a way for millions and millions and millions of people that we’ve been unable to reach to actually reach them and move them into jobs and careers and lives that matter,” said Keith Schneider, Apollo’s communications director.

Studies have shown that low-wage workers, particularly immigrants, lack the skills to move into middle-class jobs. Yet sustainable construction and manufacturing are where the greatest labor need exists. These green jobs provide healthier and economically stronger urban communities. [Check out this Los Angeles Times article]

Also cities have now started mandating greener buildings.

Los Angeles, for example, announced on Earth Day this year that large commercial and residential projects would have to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. The city expects the ordinance to affect 150 new and renovated buildings per year, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 85,000 metric tons.

Los Angeles joins 14 other cities and the state of Connecticut in requiring private developments to be green. And seventeen states and 80 local governments now mandate that new public buildings be LEED certified. [Also see this L.A. Times article]