The Oakland-based Applied Research Center released a case study today, providing details about the Los Angeles Green Retrofit Ordinance.

The case study, titled Greening Los Angeles: A Model Case Study of Green Retrofits of City Buildings provides context for how the policy will help address poverty and unemployment, and describes how SCOPE and the Los Angeles Apollo Alliance mobilized community and coalition support needed to pass the ordinance through City Council.

The Los Angeles Green Retrofit Ordinance was finally approved in March of this year, after more than two years of hard work, and will soon begin the process of implementation.

The case study is part of ARC’s Green Equity Tool Kit released earlier this month, which provides a range of tools for policy makers and advocates making sure that green jobs are good jobs accessible to all.

On Friday, Nov. 6, the Apollo Alliance awarded its 2009 Right Stuff Awards to five individuals whose work exemplifies Apollo’s clean energy, good jobs mission. This year’s honorees were Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund; Barbara Byrd, secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO; Keith Cooley, president and CEO of NextEnergy; Sally Prouty, president of The Corps Network; and Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers International Union of North America.

Fred Krupp has been the head of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) for 25 years and is widely recognized as a champion of harnessing market forces for environmental ends.

Barbara Byrd is the secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO and heads up the Oregon Apollo Alliance. She has been at the forefront of Oregon’s efforts to create green jobs and become a more energy-efficient state.

Keith Cooley, president and CEO of NextEnergy, one of the nation’s leading accelerators for alternative and renewable energy technologies, is striving to make Michigan the Silicon Valley of alternative energy production.

Terry O’Sullivan is general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA). Working with the U.S. Department of Labor, Terry and LIUNA have developed a breakthrough national weatherization training program.

Sally Prouty, president of The Corps Network, has been the driving force behind a national Clean Energy Service Corps that will help to retrofit American cities and put corps members on pathways to successful careers in the clean energy economy.

Click here to read more about the award winners and watch short videos about their fantastic work.

Earlier in the year, Apollo gave a special Green Award to Farouk Shami, the founder of Farouk Systems, Inc. Farouk’s mission is to provide hair dressers with a safer workplace environment, free of harsh chemicals. He invented and patented the first ammonia free hair color without hazardous chemicals, and to avoid electro-magnetic fields (EMF), he invented and patented CHI appliances with NASA Advanced Technology. Farouk also recently moved all of his company’s manufacturing jobs from China to Houston, Texas. Click here to see photos of Apollo’s Jerome Ringo presenting the Green Award to Farouk Shami.

The Applied Research Center (ARC), one of America’s leading think tanks on racial justice, has just released the Green Equity Toolkit: Standards and Strategies for Advancing Race, Gender and Economic Equity in the Green Economy. ARC’s goal is to help community organizations, public agencies and individuals maximize and share the benefits of green-collar jobs. The toolkit provides a guide for creating high-quality jobs that are fully accessible to people of color and women.

According to ARC’s press release, “More than $200 billion in the Recovery Act was earmarked for green jobs programs. Though stimulus recipients must comply with anti-discrimination laws, racial and gender equity are not mandated in the recovery, nor is race or gender data being collected. The Toolkit highlights the impact of recovery monies and provides analysis of recently released Recovery Act data.”

Visit www.arc.org/greenjobs to read and download the toolkit.

Urban Agenda, the convenor of the New York City Apollo Alliance, also established the The Green Collar Jobs Roundtable, a multi-stakeholder New York City-based campaign.  Recently, the Roundtable released its Roadmap—a strategy to ensure that the green economy’s growth creates broadly shared prosperity for businesses, communities and workers in New York City. The Roadmap offers more than 30 recommendations on how a coordinated, city-wide agenda that advances sustainability initiatives and prepares New Yorkers for green collar jobs can be a cornerstone of strategies to navigate New York City out of today’s recession.

The Roundtable is a participatory effort of over 170 job-training organizations, community-based programs, businesses, and labor unions. Over a year, data on green jobs and workforce development best practices were collected, with working groups looking at all aspects of the green economy including the current landscape, training, employers, job standards, and target populations. The findings point to the city’s existing lack of training, recruitment, business services, pre-employment, and job-readiness infrastructure to meet ambitious sustainability goals and further develop emerging high-growth green sectors.

“The Roadmap addresses this issue head-on,” said J.Mijin Cha, Director of Campaign Research at Urban Agenda, and chief coordinator of the report. “It spells out our collective vision, which is an inclusive green economy that employs thousands of New Yorkers in good, green jobs that help upgrade our infrastructure, improve the health of our communities, and reduce the country’s reliance on imported energy that degrades the environment.”

“Environmental sustainability is only half of this vision,” stressed Edward Ott, Chair of the NYC Apollo Alliance, “equally important is that green collar jobs are also good jobs that offer family-supporting wages, benefits, and opportunities for career advancement.” The NYC Apollo Alliance is a coalition of labor, environmentalists and environmental justice advocates, businesses, educators and community-based groups advocating for public policies that target job creation and environmental stewardship.

This Roadmap is an exciting development for New York City and a great example of making real the Apollo Alliance’s vision.  The Roadmap’s comprehensive approach and multi-stakeholder participation is an impressive example for other cities across America on how to chart a sustainable and equitable economic future.

You can visit Urban Agenda’s website to read both the Executive Summary or the full report here.

There has been a recent rash of news stories and reports about the fact that clean energy manufacturing jobs are going overseas. This isn’t too surprising – U.S. manufacturing jobs have been leaving our shores for quite some time now – but it is frustrating. For one thing, American workers are hurting for jobs really badly at the moment, especially workers in traditional manufacturing states whose unemployment rates are at all-time highs. For another thing, for those of us who promote green jobs as a way to revive the economy, we need to pay attention to policies that can keep the clean energy manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Otherwise, we’ll see green construction and operations and maintenance jobs grow without seeing a revival of American manufacturing.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story (Chinese-Made Turbines to Fill U.S. Wind Farm) about a Chinese wind-turbine company that is going to be the exclusive supplier to one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S. The development, which will be located in West Texas, is ostensibly going to create 2,800 jobs, but only 15% of the jobs will be in the United States. The rest will be in China.

On Sunday, the Green Inc. column on the New York Times website took up the same topic (Chinese Involvement in Proposed Texas Wind Farm Stirs Passions) and included lots of angry comments from readers who wanted to know why U.S. companies—rather than a Chinese company–couldn’t and shouldn’t be manufacturing these wind turbines. The column also mentioned that China’s foray into the American wind power market comes alongside its dominance of the solar panel manufacturing industry.

But let’s not focus too much on China when what we should be focusing on is whether there are U.S. policies that can encourage the clean energy manufacturing jobs to land in the United States instead of somewhere else. One policy to consider is U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s IMPACT Act, which would make loans available to small and mid-sized manufacturers that want to retool and get into clean energy manufacturing. Senator Brown is working to get the IMPACT Act incorporated into the Senate climate and clean energy bill. Click here to learn more about it.

By:  Ron Ruggiero

What happens when you combine cutting edge clean energy policy with the tried-and-true principles of community engagement?  Just ask the Green Justice Coalition, which convenes the Massachusetts Apollo Alliance.

Over the past several months, the Green Justice Coalition tackled the thorny issue of how to make the utilities’ energy efficiency programs both more equitable and effective.  They knew that they could make these programs create solid economic development and high quality jobs in their communities, save families money on their utility bills, and do their part to tackle climate change.

That’s when they came up with their winning recipe:  add one part innovative policy, mix it with another part mobilized community, and then get some unusual cooks together into the same kitchen to put on the finishing touches.

According to Darlene Lombos, co-director of Community Labor United, “We are about to see what the green economy can look like when unions, community based organizations in working class communities of color, and environmental organizations work together. The utility companies are going to guarantee all the key ingredients an equitable green economy needs: High job quality, up front financing for working class families, and community based mobilization. Partnerships really are a winning strategy.”

What is fueling Ms. Lombos’ excitement?  On October 27, 2009, Massachusetts adopted a $1.4 billion plan that will:

–create high-quality jobs in the state’s highest unemployment communities;

–provide up-front financing so that low- and moderate-income families can afford to do deep retrofits of their residences and maximize their savings;

–cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Given our current economic troubles, the promise of not simply “jobs” or even “green jobs”, but good green jobs creation is welcome news to many, including Rich Rogers, Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council and Community Labor United Board Chair.  ““In the middle of a jobless recession and a jobless recovery, this Green Justice Coalition is about to create, not just ‘green jobs’ but access to union careers in a rapidly expanding green economy. We are committed to making green jobs good jobs.”  In fact, the plan passed on October 27th includes provisions to ensure that quality contractors are used to do the work–which will maximize the economic development of the program.

At Apollo, our hats are off to our Massachusetts Apollo Alliance and the Green Justice Coalition for helping to make such a victory possible.  They are proving possible the Apollo vision of combining strong energy policy with an economic development plan and brought to fruition by a broad and diverse coalition of unlikley partners.

To learn more visit or to learn more about Community Labor United go here

A new study released today by Ceres, Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) and the Clean Economy Network shows that comprehensive clean energy and climate policies (such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would create jobs, increase consumers’ income, and strengthen the U.S. economy.

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Illinois, Yale University and the University of California. It found that comprehensive clean energy and climate policies would create as many as 1.9 million new jobs nationally, increase annual household income up to $1,175 per year and boost GDP up to $111 billion by 2020.

The study also looked at state-level job creation. It found that national climate and clean energy policies could create up to 61,000 jobs in Ohio; 78,000 jobs in Pennsylvania; and 45,000 jobs in Indiana.

The national and state-level results can be viewed at the E2 website

Weatherization and job training got a big boost today in New York. Governor David Paterson signed the Green Jobs/Green New York Act.

The Green Jobs/Green New York Act (A.8901/S.5888) establishes a revolving loan fund for energy efficient retrofits and green jobs training programs. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will run the programs using proceeds from carbon emission auctions credits of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Governor Patterson said:

I have laid out a New Economy jobs plan that will help to put New Yorkers back to work through innovation and technology, and have set a goal to meet 45 percent of our electricity needs through energy efficiency and renewables by 2015. The Green Jobs/Green New York Act is an important tool in achieving these energy and economic goals.

Governor Paterson also announced the following:

• $7 million to launch a Green Jobs Corps programs that will provide green job skills training and subsidized employment opportunities for public assistance recipients and low-income individuals.
• A New York focused green jobs website – www.greencareersny.com – that will house job opportunities as well as training programs.

New York Apollo was at the bill signing and was very excited to have been thanked for helping with its passage.

As Congress considers sweeping energy and climate legislation, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio has developed a strategy to improve the long-term competitiveness of American manufacturers and increase domestic capacity for manufacturing clean energy technologies. It’s called the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009.” You can help!

Write a Letter to the Editor to your local newspaper.

Helpful Hints on Writing a Letter to the Editor.

Sample Points for IMPACT Act.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, more than 150 businesses from 45 states sent representatives to Washington, D.C., to advocate for comprehensive climate and energy policies that will create millions of new jobs, cut carbon pollution, restore America’s competitiveness, and increase our economic and national security. The Apollo Alliance helped recruit more than a dozen businesses to participate in the advocacy effort, including SunRise Solar of Indiana, Infinia of Washington, Gamesa of Pennsylvania and others.

Businesses understand that the economy is in the beginning stages of a transition from fossil fuel-based economy to one based on clean energy. It’s time for the government to realize this so that the United States can be a world leader in the new economy and not be left behind.

“Comprehensive climate legislation will benefit our planet and economy and, if done right, signal the rebirth of American manufacturing,” said Bill Keith, founder and CEO of Indiana-based Sunrise Solar, Inc. “With clean energy demand on the rise, domestic manufacturers need a level playing field so we can ensure that American workers are building the parts and systems of the clean energy economy.”

The Senators from Indiana didn’t meet with Bill, but his Michigan counterparts had more luck. And it was made clear that manufacturing states need to be taken care of in order to get the votes. The ultimate result of remains to be seen. We hope, of course, that the businesses convinced their congressional leaders that a climate/energy legislation similar to the ACES Act is what they need to take the reigns of the new clean energy economy.

Read coverage from The New York Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Thanks to CERES and Climate Action Network for organizing the lobby day.