Data Points: Green-Collar Jobs

When people talk about green-collar jobs, two questions always pop up. What is it? And how many are there?

“Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities,” the Apollo Alliance’s March 2008 report, defines the term this way: A job qualifies as green-collar if it provides high enough wages and good benefits to support a family, opportunity to advance and build a career, and reduces waste, pollution, and other environmental risks.

For more information Send dispatches about green-collar jobs in your community to: Keith Schneider Communications Director keith@apolloalliance.org

What we know so far

The Apollo Alliance also describes a green-collar job as doing the sort of high wage skilled work that can’t be outsourced. Among the green-collar jobs that are gaining in number and popularity are machinists, technicians, service workers, equipment and installation specialists, construction workers, and managers of all kinds.

Job Numbers, Hard to Calculate
Do we know how many green-collar jobs there are? We have a good idea.

First, everyone calculates these numbers differently. Some people include indirect jobs and induced jobs. Others only include direct jobs. Should jobs that would be created anyway be included or only new jobs?

Second, the ‘green’ industry is relatively new, and most data are estimates. What follows is a summary of what we do know. The information you’ll find below includes national job numbers, energy jobs broken down by sector, jobs in energy efficiency, construction jobs, and transportation jobs.

Check back with us, too. We are busy conducting research and will periodically update this work.

National Numbers

1. A $300 billion investment in America’s economic and energy future over 10 years would produce 3.3 million jobs and a $1.43 trillion gain in GDP.
2. 932,000 of the jobs are in energy diversity.
3. 900,000 jobs in industries of the future — hybrid cars, energy efficient appliances.
4. 827,000 in high performance buildings
5. 679,000 in infrastructure investment

Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

Energy efficiency is more labor intensive than energy generation and thus creates more jobs. Example: For every $1 million invested 21.5 jobs are created by pursuing energy efficiency compared to 11.5 jobs for new natural gas generation.
Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

Renewable energy creates four times as many jobs per megawatt of installed capacity as natural gas.
Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

Renewable energy creates 40% more jobs per dollar invested than coal fired plants.
Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

A national Renewable Portfolio Standard of 20% by 2020 would create 185,000 new jobs from renewable energy development.
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2007

If automakers are required to have a fleet-wide average of 35mpg by 2018, car manufacturers wouldn’t lose jobs, they’d gain 23,900 jobs, and nationwide there’d be an increase of a total of 241,000 jobs by 2020.
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, June 2007

Wind

70,000 megawatts of wind power will be put online worldwide over the next decade, representing $75 billion worth of investments.
Source: Apollo Alliance, 2004 published report, New Energy for America

Edward Rendell, the Governor of Pennsylvania, announced in March 2008 that the alternative and renewable energy sectors created 3,000 new good-paying, skilled jobs and funded $1 billion in private investment. He also noted that his state’s unemployment rate has been below the national average in each of the last 13 consecutive months.
Source: State of Pennsylvania

Denmark’s wind energy sector created over 20,000 jobs and supplied 20% of their electricity in 2004.
Source: Danish Wind Energy Association, 2004

Spain’s wind industry employs about 35,000 people.
Source: European Wind Energy Association

The U.S. has 18,000 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity. In 2006, the wind industry created 16,000 direct jobs.
Source: American Wind Energy Association, March 2007

The Renewable Energy Policy Project predicts that 50,000 megawatts of added wind capacity across 25 states will generate well over 100,000 jobs in manufacturing generators, rotors, towers and other turbine components.
Source: Renewable Energy Policy Project, 2004

An old freight car plant in Clinton, Illinois shut down in 2002, and was converted to produce wind towers for Trinity Industries, a Texas company. The plant now employs 140 people.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy 2007

The Spanish wind developer Gamesa built its first U.S. manufacturing plant in Ebenburg, Pennsylvania that now has 276 well paid, unionized employees.
Source: Apollo Alliance

In Iowa, 1,800 jobs are connected with wind energy, according to the Iowa Department of Economic Development. That number keeps going up. GE Energy announced in November 2007 that a new wind turbine blade factory will employ 5,000 people in Newton, Iowa.
Source: Businesswire

Solar

California’s Million Solar Roof Initiative will create 15,000 new jobs.
Source: Environment California Research and Policy Institute, March 2007

Texas can add 123,000 new high-wage jobs by 2020 if they aggressively move toward solar power.
Source: IC2 Institute at the University of Texas, June 2007

The solar energy industry employed over 20,000 people in 2001. That number is expected to increase 7.5 times — to 150,000– by 2026.
Source: United States Photovoltaic Industry, May 2001

Solar Richmond provides low cost and free solar system installation to low-income homeowners and trains low-income residents from the community to do the work. As of December 2007, a total of 32 Richmond residents completed the training program. All of them received interviews with companies within several weeks of graduation and all but five program graduates had been hired by local solar and construction firms.
Source: Apollo Alliance case study

Chicago attracted two solar power manufacturers to the city by committing to purchasing solar panels. As a result, Chicago has over 2 megawatts of solar generating capacity, more than any U.S. city outside of the Southwest. According to Sadhu Johnston, Chief Environmental Officer for the City of Chicago, the implementation of the city’s comprehensive climate action plan could add 5,000 to 10,000 jobs annually in construction, weatherization, engineering, auditing, and other areas.
Source: Apollo Alliance case study

Bio-fuels

Three hundred union tradesmen built the Imperium bio-fuel plant in Grays Harbor, Washington. The plant employs 60 well-paid people. The Port of Grays Harbor conducted an economic analysis that found 350 indirect jobs are created as a result of the Imperium plant.
Source: Apollo’s Fire, Apollo Alliance, 2008

Ethanol production created 5,300 jobs in Minnesota, 5,200 jobs in Iowa, and 3,000 jobs in Nebraska.
Source: Renewable Fuels Association, February 2007

Other Sectors

The clean energy sector in Massachusetts provides over 14,000 jobs and will soon be the 10th largest sector in the state.
Source: Renewable Energy Trust, August 2007

California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard goal of 20% by 2017 has been pushed up to 2010. Environment California predicts that by meeting the goal, 119,000 person-years of employment will be created at an average salary of $40,000.
Source: Environment California Research and Policy Institute, July 2003

The Geothermal Energy Association reported 4,600 direct jobs in 2004 with an average salary of $40,000-50,000.
http://www.geo-energy.org/aboutGE/employment.asp

California firms are hiring:

1. Solarcity of Foster City, CA, which manufactures and installs solar energy systems, plans on adding 200 workers in the next two years.
2. Borrego Solar, doubled revenue in 2007 and grew its staff 70 to 120 people. They expect to double again in 2008.
3. Bio-diesel manufacturer Blue Sky Bio-Fuels hopes to hire 24 people in the next year.
4. PG&E expects to need about 1,000 new workers in the next five years as it changes its electricity generation from mainly natural gas and coal-powered plants to include more wind energy, solar, hydroelectric and thermal power.

Source: Oakland Tribune, April 20, 2008

If California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires California to reduce carbon emissions 25 percent by the year 2020, were adopted nationally, 241,000 jobs would be created
Source: Daniel Kammen of the Energy and Resources Public Policy Program at the University of California, Berkeley

The agency responsible for efficiency programs in New York, NYSERDA, estimates that for every gigawattt/ hour they save, the agency’s programs create or retain 1.5 jobs.
Source: Center of Wisconsin Strategy

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy predicts 14,000 new jobs by 2023 in Florida jobs if the state implements a proposed policy plan for expansion of energy efficiency.
http://www.aceee.org/pubs/e072.htm

For every $1 million invested in a typical owner-occupied residential efficiency retrofit in Wisconsin, 14 onsite jobs are created in the community, plus an undetermined number of manufacturing jobs that may be in the community or elsewhere. Milwaukee estimates it needs $243 million in residential retrofits that equals 3,400 jobs, 20% of which are skilled or supervisory.
Source: Forthcoming study by Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the University of Florida’s Powell Center for Construction and Environment

The Milwaukee Energy Efficiency, or ME2 project aims to retrofit as many of the city’s residential, commercial, and institutional buildings as possible. The goal is a significant reduction in overall energy use and corresponding cost savings. ME2 will train and employ Milwaukee residents of underserved communities to do much of the work, estimated at up to 7,000 person-years for efficiency-measure installation.
Source: Center on Wisconsin Strategy

Heidi Pickman, a broadcast producer and journalist, is communications associate at the Apollo Alliance in San Francisco. Reach her at pickman@apolloalliance.org.