Climate 411

The Green Jobs You’ve Been Hearing About

Jackie Roberts The thought of revitalizing the economy with green jobs is inspiring, but how will it actually work? What will those jobs look like? Duke University just released a study that starts to answer that question. It looks at five industries, including LED lighting and concentrating solar power. For each, researchers asked what the value chain is and how jobs could be created.

And right on the heels of that study is this story from CBS News: Former Maytag employees in Iowa are finding new manufacturing jobs making parts for windmills. It’s a great example of the connection between climate solutions and U.S. jobs.

Jackie Roberts is our director for sustainable technologies.

Also posted in Energy / Read 9 Responses

Obama Commits to a Strong Cap-and-Trade System

Tony KreindlerIn a video message delivered this week to a bipartisan group of governors at a global warming summit in California, President-Elect Obama made it clear that his climate change priorities start with a cap and trade system to reduce America’s global warming pollution and unleash a clean energy revolution.

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process. That will start with a federal cap-and-trade system. We’ll establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020, and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050. Further, we’ll invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private-sector efforts to build a clean-energy future.

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It’s a momentous statement that lights the fuse for climate change legislation in 2009. This is exactly what America and the world needs now – a strong cap-and-trade bill will jump-start job creation in new energy industries, and take a huge step toward solving climate change.

This post is by Tony Kreindler, media director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense Fund.

Posted in Economics / Read 6 Responses

The Answer to the Billion Dollar Question

Tony KreindlerThere’s a lot of buzz right now about the potential for "green" economic stimulus – policies and investments that grow the economy, create jobs, and protect the planet at the same time.

 

  • Treehugger reports that energy efficiency investment in California has led to 1.5 million new jobs and $56 billion in savings between 1972 and 2006.
  • An editorial in the Seattle Times explains how heavy investment in green infrastructure can put people back to work as well as solve the climate crisis.
  • A post on Gristmill cites Paul Krugman’s argument that federal spending is the only way out of our economic woes, and suggests that this spending should include a Green Jobs program.

Investing in projects to repair and update our aging infrastructure would pay off in new jobs and a more efficient America. But where will the money come from? Stuck between pay-as-you-go rules and no new middle-class taxes, Congress doesn’t have a lot of options. One could be the auction of pollution allowances under a national greenhouse gas emissions cap. Estimates are that an auction could generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion per year.

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Posted in Economics / Read 4 Responses

Florida Report: Capping Carbon Saves Money

Sheryl CanterThe State of Florida just issued a final report on energy and climate change with some hopeful findings. Its policy recommendations would not only reduce Florida’s greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, but also save the state $28 billion:

The total net cost savings of all Action Team recommendations combined is more than $28 billion from 2009 to 2025. Additionally, the recommendations would increase Florida’s energy security by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels resulting in a total fuel savings of 53.5 billion gallons of petroleum, 200.2 million short tons of coal, and 6.394 billion ft.³ of natural gas during the period of 2009 through 2025.

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Posted in Economics / Read 1 Response

Climate Legislation Buried by Economic Meltdown?

Sheryl CanterThere’s been a lot of buzz lately about the financial meltdown making lawmakers think that climate change legislation is less urgent. But while we worry about the financial markets, global warming marches relentlessly on. The science knows nothing of credit markets and there will be no pause in the march towards catastrophe while we work that out.

In fact, climate change legislation could well solve both problems. David Roberts talked about this at length in a post this week on Gristmill. Here’s an excerpt:

Greens and economists need to be making the point that these green investments are not something we need to do in spite of economic woes, or in conjunction with measures to turn the economy around. They are the measures to turn the economy around. Kudos to Cathy Zoi of We for making the case, but she could use some backup.

There won’t be much time to do something serious on climate. The news from scientists looks worse and worse every day.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Posted in Economics / Read 5 Responses

A Profusion of Green Jobs is Just a Carbon Cap Away

Sheryl CanterThis Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a cover story on green investment titled "Capitalism to the Rescue". We’ve mentioned in other posts that venture capital investment in clean energy is on the rise. This article was interesting in that it profiled one particular venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins. The author interviewed the firm’s partners about why they see clean energy as such a good investment.

To start with, explained partner Randy Komisar, the current energy market is so large and outdated that "green-tech" is a huge and relatively low-risk opportunity. And we’re not, as many think, waiting for the new inventions to come. We’re waiting for federal policy to give private investment incentive. That is, we’re waiting for a mandatory carbon cap.

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Also posted in Energy / Read 2 Responses