GREENSBURG, Kansas - The worst thing that ever happened to the more than 1,400 residents of this southwest Kansas farm town was the tornado that 26 months ago turned nearly every house and commercial building into scattered piles of splintered wood and broken bricks.

The best thing that ever happened to the 900 residents who remained has been a reconstruction effort based on a $100-million clean energy economic development strategy. Greensburg’s clean energy development plan has attracted the attention of two presidents, generated some of the most energy efficient homes and public buildings in the United States, and turned Greensburg into, arguably, the greenest small town in America.

On this July 4, Greensburg, like a growing number of communities across the country, is celebrating its steadily evolving program to deploy the latest in energy efficient design and clean energy technology to lower energy costs, improve economic opportunity, achieve energy independence, and build a safer and cleaner American way of life.

“In Greensburg, people saw that a terrible tragedy could be made into something valuable and durable and better,” said Daniel Wallach, founder and executive director of Greensburg Green Town, a non-profit organization that has provided technical assistance and organizational support for the reconstruction. “They focused on remaking themselves as cleaner and greener and more energy efficient. They said look what we can do when we think about this in a new way.”

Coast to Coast Traction
The same ideas and values also are celebrated today by the Apollo Alliance and its partner organizations in the labor, environmental, social justice, and business communities. The clean energy economic and environmental vision first introduced by the Apollo Alliance in 2003 - to invest $300 billion in clean energy development in order to create jobs and rebuild the middle class, achieve energy independence, and solve climate change - is becoming a reality.

On June 26, the House of Representatives approved legislation that sets a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and invests billions to retool American manufacturers to build the components and systems to meet the new standard. The House vote is just the latest momentous step in Washington on clean energy development. Since February, the White House and Congress have committed more than $300 billion to clean energy investment and generating millions of green-collar jobs. Not since the 1956 Highway Act and the Apollo Space Program of the 1960s has the nation made such a sweeping commitment to establishing a new economic path. The goals of the federal clean energy program - much of it developed and advocated by the Apollo Alliance - are to generate broadly shared prosperity, enhance national security, and provide immense new job opportunity.

“The American Clean Energy And Security Act is a giant leap forward to establish energy security, reduce harmful carbon emissions, and create millions of green jobs that will put our citizens back to work and get our economy back on track,” said Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance. “Its investments to help U.S. manufacturers retool plants and retrain workers to meet the demands of the clean energy economy will keep new green jobs here at home and help revive America’s long suffering manufacturing sector.”

Greensburg is on that very same path. “Just a few days after the tornado, a bunch of us were talking and the idea of green just came up,” said Mike Estes, manager of BTI Greensburg, which owns a John Deere dealership in Greensburg built to LEED Platinum standards. “It came up because of the name, Greensburg. There’s something providential about that. We knew that we had to do something unique. Building green industries is unique. We had the chance to start over. What do you do when you start with a clean slate? You want to build it better. Right?”

Green Town
Greensburg’s redevelopment as a center of innovation for energy efficiency, clean energy construction, and new clean energy businesses - including a new wind turbine sales and service business - is a microcosm of both the quickening pace as well as the stubborn cultural and economic impediments to clean energy development throughout the nation.

The town’s new City Hall, school, hospital and business incubation center, financed in large part with low interest federal loans and other public monies, are all LEED platinum certified, the highest designation. Greensburg built a 32-unit LEED platinum certified public housing development. Many of the more than 200 homes that have replaced those that were destroyed were constructed with design techniques and advanced energy efficient equipment - such as geothermal heating and cooling units - that have lowered energy costs and water use while increasing property value. Passive solar design, R values, the heat island effect, and other clean energy terms rarely heard here before the 2007 tornado are now part of every day conversation.

But even as Greensburg makes headway in its plan to be a center of clean energy innovation and new green-collar jobs, obstacles similar to those that have hampered national progress to scale up the clean energy sector are interfering with Greensburg’s efforts as well.

The town’s 19-month-old land use and development plan, which detailed Greensburg’s strategy of building energy efficient homes and businesses in order to attract new businesses and reverse decades of population losses, has come under attack as inflexible, unworkable, too slow, and too expensive. Steve Hewitt, the Greensburg city administrator, said the criticism does not represent the majority view, and much of it is either wrong or misplaced.

And though Mike Estes has opened Greensburg’s first post-tornado clean energy business - a sales, distribution and service dealer for small wind turbines capable of powering homes and businesses - the Endurance Wind Power Incorporated machines are made in Canada. Roughly 70 percent of all the components and equipment of America’s clean energy sector are manufactured outside the United States, according to the Apollo Alliance.

Jobs
“Still, the new dealership is bringing six to eight new technical level jobs to Greensburg that will pay $50,000 to $60,000 a year, a handsome wage on the high plains of southwest Kansas. Moreover, Estes is at the center of a $20 million wind development project - financed by John Deere Renewables, the company’s wind energy finance arm - to install 10 utility scale 1.25 megawatt windmills three miles from Greensburg. The wind farm will generate 100 percent of the town’s power, with any surplus going into the Kansas Power Pool.

“Our goal was to be 100 percent renewable in our power needs, and we achieved that with this project,” said Steve Hewitt, the city administrator. Hewitt added that Kansas ranks third among states in the potential to generate electricity from the wind, a fact confirmed by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Construction on Greensburg’s wind farm is scheduled to begin this summer.

Across the country, similar evidence of success in America’s unfolding clean energy economy is appearing daily. Toledo, Ohio, is replacing jobs lost in the sagging auto parts manufacturing sector with jobs in the photovoltaic manufacturing sector. The city and surrounding region have developed 6,000 new jobs, which pay union-quality wages, in the high-tech thin film photovoltaic manufacturing sector. Texas is the largest buyer of wind turbines and developer of wind farms in the world. The Port of Duluth, Minn., at the far western coast of Lake Superior, is experiencing a boom as shipments of wind turbine components to and from the West increase. On Earth Day, President Obama visited Newton, Iowa, where state and local development officials have successfully recruited American manufacturers of wind towers, blades, and other clean energy components to build new plants that employ nearly 2,000 people. New energy efficient light rail and bus rapid transit systems have been built in more than 30 American cities since 1990, strengthening metropolitan economies.

These and thousands of other stories of investment, job growth, and research breakthroughs have yielded lower energy costs in cities and private homes, restored dwindling hope in hard-hit manufacturing communities across America, and stirred promising new scientific activities in the nation’s universities.

Economic Benefits
A report by the Pew Charitable Trusts in June found that jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007. In 2007, more than 68,200 clean energy sector businesses operated across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, accounting for approximately 770,000 jobs.

The Apollo Alliance, from its start in 2003, anticipated the economic and environmental benefits of investing in clean energy enterprises. Last year, one of the three primary messages that helped to elect President Barack Obama was his call for investing $150 billion in clean energy to generate 5 million new jobs. With the help of the Apollo Alliance and a number of our allies, the president has already committed to spend twice that amount over the next two years. The president and democratic congressional leaders also vow to enact a climate and energy bill this year that accelerates the nation’s transition to a clean energy economy.

“As we transition into this clean energy economy we are going to see, I think, an enormous amount of economic activity and job production emerging,” said President Obama after the House energy bill vote. “I know that opponents of this bill kept on suggesting this was a jobs-killer, but everybody I talk to, when we think about how are we going to drive this economy forward post-bubble, keep on pointing to the opportunities for us to transition to a clean energy economy as a driver of economic growth.

“We know that our buildings are hugely inefficient. Every time we provide incentives for making our buildings more energy efficient, those are jobs for welders, jobs for engineers, jobs for a construction industry that obviously is going to be in a tough way for some time to come. High-skill and relatively low-skill jobs are going to be generated in this process. When you look at our renewable energy standard — wind, solar — as a consequence of our Recovery Act you’re already seeing thousands of jobs being produced. This bill will build on that. Every time we make a wind turbine, you’re looking at 400 tons of steel, you have the potential for jobs not only in design but also in manufacturing of wind turbines.”

Another result is the economic optimism that has settled over places like Greensburg. Dea Corn, a Greensburg realtor and banker whose home was ruined by the tornado, said families with young children are starting to buy homes in town with the intent of sending their children to the greenest school in America, which is under construction. Home values have risen for the first time in generations. And Greensburg residents, she said, like the attention that comes with being a pioneer and an innovator: “You know, a lot of the things we’ve done here weren’t that weird to us. Our grandparents used the wind to get water. They were thrifty and efficient because they had to be. To a lot of us, using the wind and the sun, being more energy efficient, putting the “green” in Greensburg - it was an easy sell.”

Keith Schneider, who writes for the New York Times, Yale Environment 360, Circle of Blue, and is the former communications director at the Apollo Alliance, is director of media and communications at the U.S. Climate Action Network in Washington, D.C. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org.

The Seattle Machinists Apprentice program, which has existed since 1941 but seen a recent surge in popularity, currently boasts 34 participants. The program graduates four to eight apprentices every year.

“Journeymen are retiring and this is viewed as a dying trade,” said Kristin Nottingham, an organizer with IAM District Lodge 160. “Most people don’t think of taking classes to become machinists. But this is a great way to break into the industry.”

Most companies involved in the program are union shops, and employers cover all costs for schooling or supplemental instruction, usually at nearby Renton Technical College, which offers training for careers in assembly, gear, maintenance and marine machining, soft tooling, and tool-and-die making.

Applicants must have graduated high school or hold the equivalent of a GED, be at least 18 years old, and be physically able to perform the trade. Potential apprentices apply directly to employers that are pre-approved by the union’s apprenticeship committee. The union itself neither teaches nor trains apprentices, nor does it act as a referral. But the committee does evaluate each applicant’s prior experience and work history in order to place the trainee in the appropriate program. The apprenticeship committee also ensures that employers comply with the Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council’s rules, including the rule that companies employ at least one journeyman-level worker for every apprentice.

The machinist apprenticeships typically require nearly 8,000 hours of training over a four-year period. Apprentices are paid 68 percent of the journeyman rate to start and receive four-percent raises every 900-1,000 hours worked until their pay reaches a journeyman’s salary.

The program recently added a 7,424-hour gear machinist apprenticeship, specifically for a local gear manufacturing and repair company called Gearworks. Considered a model employer for the apprenticeship program, Gearworks currently employs nine apprentices who are learning to make and maintain gears for wind turbines.

Wind now represents 25-30 percent of Gearworks’ business. The company was founded in 1946 and is now one of the largest gear manufacturers in North America, but it didn’t branch into the booming wind energy sector until 12 years ago, when it began redesigning wind turbine gearboxes for California-based EnXco.

“In five years, we expect to be doing 30 to 40 percent of our business in wind, or more,” said shop superintendent Mike Robison.

The Gearworks apprenticeship program requires between 160 and 1,000 hours honing the following skills: engine lathe, milling machine, drill press, tool & cutter grinding, keyset and spline broaching, small gear hobbing, small fellows gear shapers, thread milling, large gear hobbing, large fellows gear shapers, maag gear shapers, bevel gear generators, CNC gear hobbing, gear grinding, and gear measurement and inspection. Though the program includes supplemental instruction at Renton Technical College, the vast majority consists of on-the-job training.

Once hired full-time, Gearworks machinists make a journeyman’s rate of approximately $26 per hour with handsome retirement benefits.

Thirty-year-old apprentice Michael Bowman made $15 an hour as a cook before joining Gearworks three years ago. He enjoyed working with his hands, and machinery work was in his bloodline — his great grandfather was a mechanical engineer with the German navy. Bowman also knew that he’d reached the apex of his career as a line chef and that the booming wind sector offered far more room for professional growth.

“It’s nice to know that we’re part of the future, pushing toward more green energy,” said Bowman.

Gearworks currently employs 100 workers, nine of whom are apprentices. The program may soon expand to keep pace with graduating apprentices and retiring workers. The average age of a Gearworks employee is 40 years.

“The most important skills are learning how to work with the equipment,” said vice president of marketing, Jerry Magnuson. “Anyone can crunch numbers and formulas on paper, but doing it with the machinery requires a very skilled employee. A wind turbine gear is a special gear, maybe one of most accurate gears made in the world.

“If [entry-level employees] express interest and have a good work ethic and aptitude, we encourage them to take basic classes at a local community college. If we have an opening for an apprenticeship, we hire them.”

Twenty-seven-year-old Aaron Grieler has completely nearly three years of his four-year apprenticeship. Grieler came to the job with prior experience. He took machining classes for two years in high school and subsequently worked in a tool and die shop. He worked in construction before landing at Gearworks.

“This job fits my mechanical aptitude,” said Grieler. “I grew up working on cars, and I’ve always been fascinated with mechanical devices. Wind turbines are unique in their own way. Every gearbox manufacturer has their own special technique.”

Last year, Gearworks posted sales of $25 million — its fifth straight year of record revenues. The economic recession has thrown a wrench into the company’s plans, however, and management has reduced the workweek to 32 hours for 60 percent of its employees. But Magnuson believes that 2009 will prove to be a temporary setback, given wind energy’s bright future.

Gearworks also builds gears for the mining and aerospace industries, works with marine propulsion and gas compressors, and even contracts with the Department of Defense. But wind, which could generate 40 percent of the company’s revenues by 2014, is Gearworks’ fastest-growing sector.

Gearworks made its foray into wind energy when it began retrofitting 300-kilowatt machines for EnXco. “The number of wind turbines being installed is growing every year, so business for us has naturally increased,” said Magnuson. “We expect that to continue.”
The company’s longest-running project is with FPL Energy, a leading U.S. wind energy developer. Since 2000, Gearworks has rebuilt approximately 300 gearboxes for FPL’s wind farm of 250-kilowatt turbines in California. Rebuilding the gearbox costs approximately $40,000 per wind turbine.

Magnuson explains that each gearbox for a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine weighs 35,000 to 40,000 pounds and requires a 2,000 horsepower load test to make sure it performs properly. Building the infrastructure and equipment for testing gearboxes will cost an estimated $3 million, Magnuson believes. The company plans to seek approximately $5 million in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build a large gearbox test facility at its Seattle plant, which would employee 30 to 40 more workers.

TOLEDO -This worn Lake Erie city is an unlikely launching point for Ohio’s new clean energy economy. Dark storefronts and empty homes in Toledo, like the missing teeth of a tired grin, scar the shrinking city of 295,000 that once declared itself the auto parts capital of the world. Tall grass grows in the cracked asphalt of empty parking lots by closed factories that once made steel and glass and manufactured parts that kept America behind the wheel.

But it is along Toledo’s west side avenues, and in the industrial parks of nearby suburbs like Perrysburg, that the cold lonely winter of Ohio’s industrial decline is gradually turning into a new season of economic opportunity fostered by the sun, wind, geothermal, fuel cells, next generation batteries, and the electric vehicles that use them.

An example is the Xunlight Corporation, which two years ago moved into a 122,000 square foot research and production facility on Nebraska Avenue in Toledo to make thin-film photovoltaic cells to produce electricity. The seven-year-old company employs more than 80 technicians, tool and die craftsmen, and line workers. Last month, Xunlight announced that it had developed a state of the art manufacturing process that attaches its silicon cells to flexible sheets of stainless steel three feet wide and up to a mile long. Commercial production is expected to start later this year.

Xunming Deng, the Chinese born physicist and University of Toledo solar researcher who founded the company, predicts that Xunlight’s sales could grow to $400 million a year and support 5,000 jobs in the region.

“Basically, for every 100 megawatts we can create over 1,000 jobs,” Deng said in an interview earlier this year with Sramana Mitra, a California-based technology consultant. “We would like to grow to around 500 megawatts. That would allow us to create about 5,000 jobs. There will be a lot of new jobs with vendors. My estimate of 5,000 jobs includes the entire supply chain. In our plant we would probably have 750 jobs.”

For More Information

Make It In America

Executive Summary

Wendy Patton Policy Matters Ohio Email: wpatton@policymattersohio.org Ohio Department of Development Tom Maves Wind Industry Lead Phone: 614-466-8425 Email: tom.maves@development.ohio.gov Manny Anunike Advanced Energy –Solar Email: manny.anunike@development.ohio.gov Jim Zuber Advanced Energy Manager –Biomass, Biofuels, Agricultural Energy Efficiency Email: jim.zuber@development.ohio.gov Nick Milano Advanced Energy Manager - High Performance Building –Solar, Efficiency, Geothermal Email: nick.milano@development.ohio.gov Ohio Wind Working Group Ohio Third Frontier Fund Wright Center at the University of Toledo Environment Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Report Apollo Alliance GreenMAP Proposal and the Ohio Economy Venture Capital Fund - Cleveland Prometheus Institute Case Western Reserve Great Lakes Energy Institute Lessons From Europe on Clean Energy Manufacturing The New Apollo Program Signature Stories The Green Room

New Development Strategy for Ohio
Xunlight’s business plan reflects a deliberate economic development strategy that the Toledo region and the state have pursued since early in this decade to encourage entrepreneurs and existing companies to build parts and equipment for the clean energy sector.

The state, through various public and private financing mechanisms, has built an interlocking network of research universities, state agencies, public and private economic development organizations, and business incubators - all designed to encourage entrepreneurs and existing companies to jump into the growing market for clean energy components, products, and systems. The ultimate goal: rebuilding Ohio’s prosperity through its traditional strength in manufacturing, which employs one of every five Ohio workers.

While still in its earliest stages, the development of a clean energy manufacturing sector in Ohio nevertheless shows enough promise that successive governors of both parties have called it the most potentially significant economic transition since the internal combustion engine replaced the horse and buggy.

In March, Environment Ohio published Growing Ohio’s Green Energy Economy, an economic assessment that found 60,000 workers and 502 companies already involved in wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, and fuel cell development in the state. “Ohio has the resources right here at home to leverage its strengths and grow its economy through clean energy,” said the report’s authors.

Supporting Reports
In June, the Pew Charitable Trusts published a national survey of clean energy and green-collar job development that found Ohio ranked fourth among states in the number of green-collar workers and sixth in the number of clean energy companies.

Also in June, Policy Matters Ohio published a study that identified more than 3,000 Ohio facilities - employing 250,000 workers - that could easily retool to manufacture components for the clean energy sector. In order to support retooling in Ohio and other manufacturing states, the Apollo Alliance joined Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in introducing the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act (IMPACT) Act of 2009.”

The measure, which was also introduced and approved on June 26, 2009 in the House version of the new national energy policy now making its way through Congress, would establish a $30 billion revolving loan fund to help small and mid-sized manufacturers invest in energy efficiency and retooling to expand into the clean energy supply chain.

Senator Brown based his proposal on the Apollo Alliance’s Green Manufacturing Action Plan, which was introduced in April and lays out aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient.

The recovery bill signed by President Obama in February, the appropriations bill enacted in March, and the budget agreement approved in April commit more than $300 billion to clean energy investment and green-collar job generation. These investments will create vast new markets for clean energy, but “without a program to support our own domestic manufacturers, policies that create new demand for clean energy will just lead to more imports,” said Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance.

Sen. Brown Introduces Manufacturing Legislation
Apollo estimated that Sen. Brown’s IMPACT legislation, if approved, will create at least 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs nationally and 1,972,000 indirect jobs over the next five years. “The domestic manufacturing industry helped build our nation’s middle class and is critical to national security,” said Sen. Brown. “It accounts for 12 percent - $1.6 trillion - of the U.S. gross domestic product and almost three-fourths of the nation’s research and development. Despite this, the U.S. manufacturing industry has contracted for 16 consecutive months.”

Here in Toledo, the transition from the flagging auto industry to the new clean energy sector was fostered by administrators and researchers at the University of Toledo; a number of timely state and federal investments; and by a group of pioneering industrialists led by Harold McMaster, a noted inventor and glass industry executive who in 1987, helped found the first of Toledo’s four solar energy manufacturers, Solar Cells Inc., which as it grew became First Solar.

First Solar, expected to produce $1.2 billion in revenue this year from sales of thin-film solar cells, operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in nearby Perrysburg that employs 700 people. The company is building a 500,000 square-foot addition that will employ 135 more people when it opens next year.

Indeed, the city over the last two years has emerged as one of the important solar energy manufacturing centers in the United States.

Last year, Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC spent $7 million to buy a 262,000 square-foot former television component manufacturing plant in Perrysburg to manufacture thin-film solar panels. In March, CEO William R. Mitchell told the Toledo Blade he planned to hire 400 people at an average wage of $21 an hour by the end of the year. And nearly two years ago, Q Cells, a German company, purchased Toledo-based Solar Fields, joining the Ohio solar research company to its Calyxo brand thin-film solar photovoltaic panel production division. Q Cells’ Toledo office employs about 25 people.

A Growth Sector in Sun
In all, nearly 1,000 people now work in the four Toledo-based high-tech solar companies, producing photovoltaic cells to generate electricity, and perfecting manufacturing techniques to reduce costs and compete worldwide. According to the Regional Growth Partnership, Toledo’s primary economic development agency, roughly 5,000 more people in the area, including a team of researchers and economic development specialists at the University of Toledo, support the growing solar sector here.

“We’re building on the strengths that we have, and that is knowing how to build things,” said Megan Reichert-Kral, the director of incubation at the Office of Research Development, a division of the University of Toledo, which has fostered the research and helped to attract the financing that led to the solar sector’s development. “We have the people that know how to put complicated things together the right way. We have the universities that are producing the new ideas. We have manufacturers that are willing to stay in the game over the long term.”

Ohio has a storied history of linking research, public investment, and entrepreneurial industrialists to produce new economic eras. After all, the nation’s seventh largest state is the birthplace of Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and John Glenn.

But rarely has a Midwestern state so effectively aligned its politics and policymakers, its state agencies, research institutions, and sizable pools of public and private capital to support the development of a new industrial sector.

Bipartisan Support
In 2002, former Governor Robert Taft Jr., a Republican, successfully campaigned to launch the 10-year, $1.6 billion Third Frontier Fund to finance promising research and technical development in new Ohio industries. The fund has proved pivotal to building the statewide interlocking network of research groups, economic development organizations, technical support firms, and capital accounts that has been crucial to the early development of Ohio’s clean energy startups, among them the Xunlight Corporation.

Current Democratic Governor Ted Strickland, who asserted the need to develop Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors as a central feature of his 2006 campaign, is now making the development of these sectors a centerpiece of his economic policy. Last year alone, Ohio approved a $1.57 billion stimulus program that directed significant resources to clean energy development and green-collar job creation. Gov. Strickland also signed a renewable energy standard on May 1, 2008, requiring utilities to produce 12.5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass. Of that amount, 0.5 percent must be generated from solar energy. The law also requires electric utilities to achieve energy savings of 22.5 percent by the end of 2025 through energy efficiency programs.

The new statutes are providing financing and a large built-in market for Ohio manufacturers to produce the parts, equipment, and processes to meet the new standard.

“While our energy bill is expanding the market for advanced energy in Ohio, our jobs stimulus bill is building on that commitment by investing in Ohio companies that can supply the component parts, install the hardware, and harvest the power of advanced energy,” said Strickland earlier this year in the annual State of the State address. “Ohio is key to meeting the energy needs of the nation and the world - and we are already seeing promising results. Over the last three years, Ohio has led the nation with 350 new or expanded facility projects in the renewable energy sector.”

Wendy Patton, a senior associate at Policy Matters Ohio, noted in an interview that two historic trends have merged in Ohio to produce opportunity for clean energy companies.

First, she said, is the enormous urgency that is leading lawmakers, banks, business executives, and workers to embrace a strategy that will help reverse the steady decline of Ohio’s manufacturing sector. Since 2000, Ohio has lost 550,000 jobs, more than half of them in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median income is slipping, and 300,000 people migrated out of Ohio in the last eight years.

Second is the clear consensus that has developed in the business and political communities of Ohio, Michigan, and other Heartland states that the energy markets of the 21^st century will favor clean sources, and that supplying those markets with globally competitive products is a blockbuster economic opportunity that no state should miss.

“Clean and green is happening in the industrial base across the state,” said Patton. “You can see it. It’s making progress because we have a huge manufacturing base, and companies want to get involved. It is clear that the strong public policy direction of the state has sparked the development of new companies. I think what is less apparent is the extent to which existing companies are quietly adding clean energy to their portfolios as well.”

A Network Statewide to Support Clean Energy Entrepreneurs
Economic development specialists have a different take, asserting that state and regional guidance, university incubators, technical assistance, and funding have made it possible for new companies to start and older companies to change their product lines and practices.

Xunming Deng’s success so far with Xunlight is a case in point. The basic research for developing the company’s thin-film solar technology was supported by federal, state, and regional grants. The business plan also was developed with the help of experts at the Wright Center for Photovoltaic Innovation and Commercialization, a technical advisor and business incubation program at the University of Toledo that was launched in 2006 with an $18.6 million Third Frontier Fund grant.

Various regional and state economic development executives also have assisted Dr. Deng in securing $20 million in government loans, and $40 million more in private venture capital. The University of Toledo retains rights to licensing fees and royalties, and has a small ownership stake in Xunlight.

“They were happy because of all the grants coming in,” said Dr. Deng, referring to the University of Toledo. “When you have a spinoff company, everyone wins. That is the type of situation that worked out perfectly for the state because it can invest in emerging technology.”

Still, Toledo’s solar sector is just one measure of Ohio’s steady emergence as a base of American clean energy manufacturing. Ohio also is developing other regional centers of clean energy innovation and manufacturing.

Akron is becoming a center of fuel cell development. Researchers and economic specialists in Dayton are focusing on technology developments to help Ohio’s existing manufacturers convert their production lines to build the specialty equipment and parts to supply the clean energy sector.

In Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State are anchoring new startups in wind and battery technology. Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin, for instance, a world leader in hydraulic systems and motion control, is developing a more durable and easier-to-operate hydraulic pump to replace the conventional gearbox in a utility-scale windmill.

Another Cleveland company, Stratum Technologies, is developing a more efficient manufacturing process for polymer lithium-ion batteries in an automated, state-of-the art production facility. In nearby Shaker Heights, Contained Energy is developing direct carbon fuel cells with 30 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, making them useful in storing energy from wind and solar, and for powering next generation vehicles.

Still, no region of Ohio has matched Toledo’s clean energy development. In March, Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC, the newest solar energy manufacturer in the region, invited Gov. Strickland to tour its new plant in Perrysburg. The company plans to start annual production of 2 million solar panels and has been assisted by a $5 million state economic development loan and a $500,000 grant.

In his remarks, Strickland scanned the dark economic landscape left in Ohio by the old economy and also saw something new and fresh and possible. “When you look at the challenges facing us, when you look at the way the economy is changing, the fact that we have a new company like this with a new, highly technical, highly efficient product to create energy. It’s very exciting,” he said. “Our economy is in a state of transition. Everyone knows that. As this company grows, a lot of auto workers that may have lost their jobs in the auto industry will be able to find employment with this company.”

Keith Schneider, a journalist and communications strategist, served as communications director of the Apollo Alliance from March 2008 to June 2009. He is soon to join the U.S. Climate Action Network as director of media and communications. Reach him at kschneider@climatenetwork.org.

“The goal of our program is for participants to find jobs in the green-collar sector with opportunities for advancement and further training,” said MCCDC executive director Makini Hassan.

The MCCDC works with adults from participating families for up to five years and track their progress toward achieving self-sufficiency wages in the green-collar industry. The training series begins with a two-week classroom experience focused primarily on work maturity and job readiness skills. The classroom component also provides participants with a background in the renewable energy field intended to convey a sense of the larger meaning of their work.

Upon completing the classroom portion, trainees will move on to occupation-specific training. Participants whose interests and aptitudes align with a career in the solar industry will participate in an occupational-skills seminar with either GRID Alternatives or GreenLeaf Solar. Those more likely to thrive in a career in energy auditing or home weatherization will be mentored by PG&E or the Marin Builders Association.

Participants are then connected with a paid on-the-job training experience at one of 21 affiliated business and organizations. During the pilot phase of the project, which lasted from last fall to this spring, the 47 graduates trained with a diverse cross-section of businesses, including SPG Solar, Sun First Energy Systems, Real Good Solar, PJ Nelson Marine Services, and Whole Foods. Although these on-the-job training experiences do not result in official certificates or professional licenses, companies typically write a recommendation for the trainee that carries significant weight with future employers.

Trainees are considered ready to search for full-time employment after they have completed their on-the-job training. To connect graduates with entry-level jobs, MCCDC recently partnered with a green staffing company with established relationships with local green-collar employers. For those seeking advanced training or professional certification as a solar installer, the MCCDC has established a referral program with the nearby College of Marin’s Solar Technician Training Program. The MCCDC is also working diligently to establish apprenticeship opportunities for their graduates with local construction trade organizations.

“The vision for Green Energy Empowerment is to provide skills training aligned with industry needs that prepares residents for entry employment with pathways for middle class careers,” said Ms. Hassan. “We want to link with union apprenticeships, with vibrant community college certification programs, and with built-in opportunities in Marin City to provide lasting, well-paying jobs for our graduates.”

William’s Story
William Greene is one of the individuals to participate in the MCCDC’s pilot program this past year. In early 2008, William lost his job of seven years after falling victim to the wave of layoffs sweeping the construction industry. A single parent of one son, William needed to find a job quickly in order to support his family.

In July 2008, William signed up for the training workshop, which was (and still is) offered free-of-charge through funding from the Marin Community Foundation, Citibank Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, PG&E, and the Marin County Board of Supervisors. The MCCDC was also able to subsidize William’s transportation to-and-from work and secure childcare for his son while he worked.

Shortly after graduating the program, William was interviewed and hired by Bayside Solutions to work on a residential solar installation in Tiburon, CA. Since then, William has been working as a solar installer on a contract basis with SPG Solar and Real Good Solar, and his wage has steadily increased along with his experience, from $18/hr to as much as $31/hr. William is now taking classes at the College of Marin to expand his knowledge of solar science and obtain certification as an industry-recognized installer.

“William is truly a success story,” said Ms. Hassan.

Plans For The Future
The Green Energy Empowerment program is likely to produce many more stories like William’s, especially in light of the additional federal funding they expect to receive as a result of the government’s embrace of clean energy. The MCCDC has already received some new funding this year from the Workforce Investment Act for use in their youth training initiatives. The County of Marin has also applied for stimulus money made available through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program and the State Energy Program. If these funds come through, the MCCDC will likely be a beneficiary.

With the expected influx of money, the MCCDC will hire the additional teachers and staff members needed to keep up with demand for their program (the waitlist currently exceeds 80 people). With added capacity, the Green Energy Empowerment program will be able to touch more lives and develop a built-in army of green collar workers should Marin City choose to invest in a citywide weatherization initiative.

The MCCDC has also recently embarked on an innovative microenterprise initiative with noted social entrepreneur Gunther Pauli. The program is aimed at helping Marin City residents develop their own green small business in fields as diverse as sustainable agriculture and solar panel maintenance and repair. This green microenterprise initiative will open opportunities for residents more interested in owning their own business than participating in training or apprenticeship programs.

With the launch of Green Energy Empowerment this month, Marin City appears poised to assume a vanguard role in our nation’s transition to a clean energy, good jobs, equal opportunity economy.

“Green Energy Empowerment is a program that is great for the community in every way,” said Ms. Hassan. “Not only are we engaged in job creation through a social enterprise model, we are training workers to have a positive impact on society through environmental protection.”

Derek Fletcher was an intern based in the Apollo Alliance’s San Francisco office.

Recology, which until this spring was known as Norcal, has also been a boon to workers. When San Francisco donated the land now occupied by Recycle Central, Recology’s state-of-the art recycling center at Candlestick Point, the city required that any company bidding for the site recognize a union that signed up a majority of the workers. The winning company also needed to hire residents from three of the city’s most economically distressed neighborhoods, including those near Candlestick Point. 

“When we built the recycling plant in a big shed on a city pier - in a separate location from our other facilities - we agreed that we would try to fill all of the positions with workers from two zip codes impacted by that location,” said Recology’s CEO, Mike Sangiacomo. Recology currently employs 2,100 workers, 80 percent of whom are unionized.

Recology also uses energy efficient vehicles to transport the materials it recycles and composts. Two years ago, Recology converted its entire fleet of 400 trucks to run on locally-produced B20 biodiesel fuel - which means 20 percent of the fuel comes from vegetable or corn oil. Sangiacomo said the next step for Recology is to work with next generation battery and truck manufacturers to enable its vehicles to run on electric motors.

The company’s trucks pick up recyclable and compostable material from approximately 2,100 restaurants and 75,000 homeowners in San Francisco, according to Waste News. Much of what they receive is already sorted, thanks to Recology’s grassroots efforts to promote recycling.

Color Coding Works
San Francisco residents get color-coded plastic bins affectionately known as the Fantastic Three. Recology provides a blue cart for paper, glass, plastics and metal; a green one for food and yard waste; and a black cart for landfill-bound waste. Recology was the first company in the nation to provide green bins citywide.

Food waste is transferred to long-haul vehicles that travel to one of the company’s two California composting facilities. Paper, plastic and hard materials are taken to Recycle Central.

The $38 million facility opened in 2003 and features conveyor belts capable of sorting and baling single-stream and co-mingled materials. Recology recycles 350 tons of yard and food waste and 750 tons of paper, plastic, and other household and industrial materials every day.

Worker-Friendly, Community-Friendly
Teamsters Local 350 organized the workers and negotiated one of the best labor contracts in the industry with Recology. The starting wage is $20 an hour, and maintenance worker John Andrews and others at his pay grade earn $29.50 an hour, with $42.81 per hour for overtime. Andrews, who lives in the nearby Hunters Point-Bayview neighborhood, began on the sorting line in 1999, handling garbage.

Employees start with one week of vacation per year and can build up to eight weeks of vacation after 30 years on the job. Recology provides quality health insurance for workers and their families- what Sangiacomo calls a “Cadillac plan.”

“This company has taken care of its people,” said Sangiacomo. “We’ve raised a tremendous amount of families and seen their kids grow into good people. A number have come back and now work for us.”

In terms of worker safety, the Recology facility is considered superior to most other recycling operations. Local business agent Larry Daugherty was quoted in Teamster Magazine as saying that Recycle Central is “definitely a state of the art facility- especially in comparison to many nonunion facilities I’ve seen. It is fully automated. The materials are presorted by machinery and it all goes up on belts, which makes it much safer because the workers can see everything that goes up instead of just reaching blindly into a pile.” And unlike many other recycling sites, Teamster workers at Recology get high-quality protective gear.

Another sign of Recology’s devotion to the local community is its artist-in-residence program, which the company has sponsored since 1990. During a four-month residency, local artists receive a stipend and access to a well-equipped studio. They create works out of trash and recycled material and display them at Recology’s headquarters. Sangiacomo estimates that more than 70 professional artists and several hundred student artists from the San Francisco Art Institute have benefitted from this innovative program.

Rise of Recycling
Mike Sangiacomo’s story parallels the rise of recycling in San Francisco. When he was young, Sangiacomo accompanied his Italian-born father on a garbage collection route through San Francisco’s famed Chinatown. The work was dirty, salaries were paltry, and people often didn’t pay their garbage bills.

Jobs collecting San Francisco’s garbage and recyclables have traditionally been filled by immigrants. Sangiacomo remembers the days when scavenger companies comprised mostly of immigrants would scour the city’s streets for anything they could sell or reuse.

“Not only did they collect paper and cardboard, newspaper and office paper, they collected bottles and actually washed them and resold them,” Sangiacomo recalls. “(Companies like Sunset Scavenger) had a rag-washing plant, before the days of synthetic fibers. They had a crew of Russian immigrant women who would cut off buttons, size pieces, wash them, bleach them, and then sell everything from wiping rags to Turkish towels.”

When people realized that garbage landfills were harmful to the environment, the recycling movement began to regain momentum - not just as a way of reducing costs, but to protect the environment. Twenty years ago, Norcal established a curbside recycling program in San Francisco. More and more communities recognized the benefits of recovering materials and putting them back into reuse.

In 1990, California initiated an ambitious law calling for 25-percent waste diversion by 1995 and 50 percent by 2000. But as the millennium approached, Norcal found itself stuck at around 35 percent, in an industrial urban environment that didn’t produce much clean waste.

“Between yard waste, paper, bottles and cans, most communities can get to 50 percent,” said Sangiacomo, who became CEO in 1991. “We couldn’t. So we started looking at what could help us get there.

“What could we do with food? The only thing we could think of was to compost it.”

Norcal learned how to establish an industrial-scale food-waste composting system almost from scratch. At the request of then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, Norcal visited restaurants, produce markets, and grocery stores and established a successful composting program in the East Bay that recovered nearly 100 percent of food waste.

Future Growth
Today, Recology is the largest employee-owned company in the solid waste industry, and a key player behind the city’s push toward zero-waste.

Recology provides waste management services to more than 570,000 residential and 55,000 commercial customers in California, mostly in the Bay Area. The company collects and processes garbage in more than 50 California communities and is currently the 13th largest waste management firm in the United States.

The company is still expanding, with the acquisition of two Oregon composting companies in Portland and Salem and a contract to provide collection services for much of San Mateo County in 2011. According to Sangiacomo, Recology’s annual revenues, which now total half a billion dollars, have increased by 7-8 percent annually over the last five years.

“Most of the work we do is with franchises or municipalities,” says Sangiacomo. “That growth can come in decent-sized chunks. We don’t go out and get a new customer at a time. We go out and get a new city at a time.”

Jacob Wheeler, a writer based in Chicago, is a regular contributor to the Apollo News Service. 

CONTACT: Sam Haswell: (415) 371-1700 x201

SAN FRANCISCO - Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance, today issued the following statement praising the U.S. House of Representatives for approving critical investments in domestic clean energy manufacturing as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act:

“The Apollo Alliance commends Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, and other members of the House for their leadership and determination in passing this seminal legislation. The American Clean Energy And Security Act is a giant leap forward to establish energy security, reduce harmful carbon emissions, and create millions of green jobs that will put our citizens back to work and get our economy back on track.

“In particular, the bill’s inclusion of investments to help U.S. manufacturers retool plants and retrain workers to produce the systems and components of the clean energy economy is a major victory that will keep millions of new, green jobs here at home and help revive America’s long suffering manufacturing sector. We offer special praise to Representatives John Boccieri, Zachary Space, and other members of the Ohio Congressional delegation for their insistence on including these investments in manufacturing jobs in the House energy bill.

“The new energy policy will significantly increase demand for clean energy, and we now have a mechanism for meeting that demand and weaning the nation from its dependence on foreign energy suppliers. In addition to creating and keeping jobs in America, investments in domestic manufacturing will allow manufacturers across the country to tap into clean and efficient energy markets.

“As the Senate resumes work on its version of the energy bill, the Apollo Alliance will continue to press legislators on both sides of the aisle to support investments in our domestic manufacturing sector to meet the demands of the new clean energy economy.”

In April, Apollo Alliance released its Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which detailed aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient. Last week, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009.” Based on Apollo’s GreenMAP, the IMPACT Act would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.

“This confirms that clean energy legislation is an opportunity for Ohio manufacturing,” said Brown. “I applaud Rep. Boccieri for fighting to include the IMPACT Act in the House bill. By creating a funding source to help Ohio manufacturers retool, we can revive Ohio manufacturing through investments in clean energy. This will go a long way toward making Ohio the Silicon Valley of clean energy manufacturing.”

For more information, visit ApolloAlliance.org.

The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of labor, business, environmental and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs

CONTACTS:
National: Sam Haswell: (415) 371-1700 x201
Missouri: Joe Thomas (314) 494-9890

SAN FRANCISCO – The Apollo Alliance today announced the formation of its Missouri affiliate, a broad coalition of labor, environmental, community and business leaders that will promote policies and projects to help revitalize the Missouri economy by creating a new clean energy, good jobs economy.

Since its founding in 2003, Apollo Alliance has worked at the local, state and national levels to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs by promoting investments in energy efficiency, clean power, mass transit, next-generation vehicles, emerging technologies, and clean-energy education and training.

Missouri, which is coping with nearly nine percent unemployment and the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years, stands to benefit from the new jobs that will be created in the clean energy economy. With significant investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency manufacturing – as called for by Apollo Alliance in its Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP) – Missouri could gain thousands of well-paying building-material and energy-efficient appliance manufacturing jobs. Such investments will also lead to jobs in finance, transportation, installation, and other related businesses.

“We are thrilled to welcome our new Missouri affiliate into the Apollo fold,” said Phil Angelides, Chairman of the Apollo Alliance. “We’re on the verge of making an historic leap from a country than runs on fossil fuels to one that runs on clean energy. To fully realize this transition, we’ll need the kind of strong, on-the-ground organizing presence that Missouri Apollo will provide.”

The steering committee of the Missouri Apollo Alliance includes: Emily Andrews, Executive Director of St. Louis Regional Green Building Council; Liz Forrestal, Executive Director of Missouri Votes Conservation; Lara Granich, Executive Director of Missouri Jobs with Justice; Melissa Hope, Sierra Club; Garry Kemp, Secretary of Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council; Clyde McQueen, President and CEO of Kansas City Full Employment Council; Erin Noble, Energy Policy and Outreach Coordinator for Missouri Coalition for the Environment; and Emil Ramirez, United Steelworkers, District 11.

Missouri joins more than a dozen state and local Apollo affiliates around the country. The Alliance is particularly strong in the Midwest, where Apollo affiliates in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are already working to ensure a just transition to a clean energy economy.

A modern economy based on fossil fuels is destined to fail. National unemployment reached 9.4 percent in May 2009 – the highest rate in 25 years. Business as usual just isn’t working anymore.

America is on the verge of transforming our economy from one that is dependent on foreign oil to one that’s based on clean energy produced in America.

The first step in the transformation - the stimulus and other policies being considered in the energy bill, such as a Renewable Energy Standard or a cap on carbon – will generate unprecedented demand for clean energy labor, systems and components.

But what happens in step two?  Viable reform requires more than job creation; we need to implement a clean energy domestic manufacturing program that will retool and revive our manufacturing sector and create a new generation of green-collar jobs; we also need to encourage standards of employment, production, and consumption that are sustainable.

Join The Apollo Alliance and Demos for a lively discussion tackling these interrelated challenges: reviving the economy (e.g. expanded opportunity and shared prosperity) and reversing environmental decline. The sustainability movement is just beginning, and we have a chance at real reform.

Demos Senior Fellow Richard Benjamin will moderate a discussion with author and New York University professor Andrew Ross and Adam Werbach, the Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S and one of the foremost experts on sustainability strategy.

For more information and to RSVP, visit their website.

Senator Brown (pix left, with Angelides center, and Blue-Green Alliance Director David Foster on right) based his proposal on Apollo Alliance’s Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which was introduced in April and lays out aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient.

The country’s manufacturers are poised to act on our recommendations. The recovery bill signed by President Obama in February, the appropriations bill enacted in March, and the budget agreement approved in April commit more than $300 billion to clean energy investment and green-collar job generation. These investments will provide vast new clean energy markets, but “without a program to support our own domestic manufacturers, policies that create new demand for clean energy will just lead to more imports,” explained Angelides.

IMPACT Act
We estimate that Sen. Brown’s IMPACT legislation, once enacted, will create at least 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs nationally and 1,972,000 indirect jobs over the next five years. “The domestic manufacturing industry helped build our nation’s middle class and is critical to national security,” said Sen. Brown. “It accounts for 12 percent - $1.6 trillion - of the U.S. gross domestic product and almost three-fourths of the nation’s research and development. Despite this, the U.S. manufacturing industry has contracted for 16 consecutive months.”

Earlier this month, Angelides, Apollo Alliance President Jerome Ringo, and Board Member Michael Peck joined several prominent business, labor, and policy leaders in calling on Senate leaders to make significant investments in retooling plants and retraining America’s manufacturing workers.

Letter to the Senate
“Including investments in domestic manufacturing in the energy bill will deliver economic rewards to all 50 states,” they wrote in a letter to members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Some committee members hesitant to support the legislation may be pleased to learn that their constituents will benefit enormously. The states hit hardest by manufacturing job losses over the past few decades - states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri - are the ones that have the most potential for a revitalized manufacturing sector capable of making the clean and efficient energy systems that will be the backbone of the new energy economy.”

An aggressive program based on Apollo’s GreenMAP that focuses on manufacturing would benefit tens of thousands of U.S. firms capable of building the equipment and components of the clean energy economy, the majority of them located in the 20 states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses.

Green-Collar Jobs Are Here by the Thousands
A number of new studies of the clean energy sector, including one made public this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts, confirm that manufacturers and states all across the country are poised to benefit from a major federal investment. Pew researchers found more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, many of them manufacturers, and 770,000 jobs in the clean energy sector. Over the last decade, jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a rate of 9.1 percent nationally, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent. (URL to our blog on the report)

Be sure also to keep track of the quickening pace of state and federal action on clean energy policy on our Apollo Blog and Daily Digest.

Most importantly for us, on Wednesday with Apollo chairman Phil Angelides at his side, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009,” a bill that would put America’s ailing manufacturing sector on the road to recovery by facilitating the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.

Also on Wednesday, Apollo president Jerome Ringo, talked up the need for retraining workers and retooling manufacturers at the Senate Democratic Green Jobs Summit.

And reports galore were issued. All of which provide more evidence that the clean energy economy is alive and thrivin’.