Energy Exchange

Smart Grid Jobs Booming In Bay Area

By Jamie Fine / Published: October 31, 2011

Source: Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force

This commentary was originally posted on the California Dream 2.0 Blog.

There’s something happening here. What it is, is perfectly clear: the smart grid is creating jobs in Silicon Valley and across the San Francisco Bay Area, according to a report just released by the Silicon Valley Smart Grid Task Force, which EDF oversaw as an advisory council member.

A well-respected research firm, Collaborative Economics, asked local businesses about their jobs in the smart grid sector. The results are early since the smart grid is still mostly in the planning stage but indications suggest it’s a job-engine that California can rely on.

The report divides the industry into four sectors:

  1. power management and energy efficiency,
  2. energy storage,
  3. local clean energy (distributed generation such as rooftop solar, small wind turbines, plus equipment manufacturing and installation), and the
  4. delivery of electricity (transmission and distribution).

During the depths of the recession from 2008 to 2009 when national unemployment doubled from 5% to nearly 10%, smart grid employment in Silicon Valley actually grew.

Manufacturing jobs in the industry are shining brightly against the dark cloud of declining blue-collar employment in the state. Today, more than half of the 12,500 smart grid jobs in the Silicon Valley are in manufacturing.

Investment activity across the diverse smart grid sectors has been robust since 2005 and with strong venture capital (VC) investments. California accounted for 69 percent of total US VC investment in 2010 and total amounts increased 66 percent from 2009 to $2.8 billion.

Investor interest in smart grid is no surprise, since the potential benefits of smart grid are significant and potentially very lucrative:

  • cleaner air,
  • reliable electricity supply,
  • low-cost electric vehicle charging, and
  • energy independence by way of local clean energy.

At the press conference where the report was released, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed captured the importance of the smart grid when he said that many of the city’s Green Vision Goals for jobs, electric vehicles and renewable energy will only be reachable with a smart grid.

Another reason the Bay Area is creating smart grid jobs is that many of the companies at the heart of the region’s economy – information technology giants such as Oracle, Cisco, and Google, energy companies such as PG&E and Calpine, and technology leaders such as GE and Honeywell – are all at the smart grid frontier.

Consumers have rightly asked, ‘what can smart grid do for me?’ In addition to the many environmental benefits, smart grid means empowerment, both in the traditional electrical sense and now in terms of controlling one’s energy use and costs. Now we have another answer: your next job might be helping to build the smart grid.

Also posted in California, Grid Modernization / Read 3 Responses

Jobs For Today AND Tomorrow

By Jackie Roberts / Published: September 13, 2011

 The President’s response to the call for jobs now is necessarily focused on short-term triggers.  But, we must simultaneously seed the jobs for the next two to five years, or we will just keep putting ourselves back into the same hole.  These so-called “medium term jobs” must come from growth sectors in the global economy where the U.S. has skills and ideas to offer.  To me, the most promising of those sectors are health care and clean energy & resource management.

Source: Veterans News Now

It is in the latter area that the U.S. needs to, as David Brooks recently described, “set the table” with policies that create customers for the many small to large businesses that are striving to participate in this new sector.  In our survey of clean energy businesses, 73% are small businesses with less than 50 employees.  Of these, according to market research by Frost & Sullivan, one third believed that the failure to pass clean energy legislation last year had an effect on their business and 7 out of 10 thought their sales would increase if the U.S. passed new policies to reduce greenhouse gases.

When business of all sizes know that they are going to have customers – not just today from a short term stimulus or other plan, but customers derived from a long term commitment by our country to move to clean energy and less air pollution – they can  hire permanent employees.   In California, where the state has been slowly but steadily setting the table with rules for cleaner vehicles, a renewable portfolio standard, the Global Warming Solutions Act and energy efficient building codes, the clean energy sector is a growing source of jobs.  For example, according to Next 10 report from May 2011, jobs in manufacturing of clean energy and resource management activities grew 19% between 1995 and 2008 while total manufacturing employment in the state dropped 9%.

Without creating customers, “clean energy jobs” workforce training programs become a bridge to nowhere, the promise of clean energy jobs falters and businesses remain faced with lots of uncertainty and a natural reluctance to permanently hire new people.  The National Infrastructure Bank and rebuilding schools will hopefully create customers for some of these firms.  But what businesses really need to hire people is the prospect of customers over the medium-term.  We need Presidential leadership on federal clean energy policies to help deliver a steady-stream of customers and seed the jobs of tomorrow.

Also posted in Energy Efficiency, Grid Modernization, Renewable Energy, Washington, DC / Read 2 Responses

New Report: Commercial Building Energy Efficiency = Jobs

By EDF Blogs / Published: June 13, 2011

Source: Architecture 2030

Blog Post By: Jackie Roberts, EDF’s Director of Sustainable Technologies, National Climate Campaign

The President’s Better Buildings Initiative proposes to make American businesses more energy efficient through a series of new initiatives including newly designed tax incentives for building efficiency, better financing opportunities for commercial retrofits, a “Race to Green” for state and municipal governments that streamline regulations and attract private investment for retrofit projects, a “Better Buildings Challenge” to CEOs and University Presidents, and, finally, new training for commercial building technology workers.  An analysis released today, conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, showed that more than 114,000 new jobs, many of which would come from the hard-hit construction industry, would be created through the Better Buildings Initiative. 

Insights into which firms will benefit, and where those jobs may be located, can be found in Duke University’s value chain analyses of three energy efficiency strategies for buildings:  high efficiency windows and glass, smart grid, and LED lighting.  If HOME STAR legislation is also passed, the firms involved in residential re-insulation and electric heat pump hot water heaters will also benefit. 

Job creation is no mystery for the business world:  it begins and ends with new customers.  Every policy initiative that pushes more customers to U.S. firms identified in these value chain studies is critical.  Hopefully, the Better Building Initiative is followed by a commitment to broader policy that puts us on a path to a low carbon economy.  Broad policy creates customers for the many firms involved in the value chains for hundreds of climate solutions – whether renewables, energy efficiency, transportation, agricultural, industrial or other innovations.  And, at the end of the day, customers = jobs.

Also posted in Energy Efficiency, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response

Green Jobs in Texas: More Than Just Talk

By Kate Zerrenner / Published: January 29, 2010

When I started working on the Texas Green Jobs Guidebook last spring, talking to community college and workforce development folks around the state quickly made it clear that there was serious lack of information on what a green job is and what a person needs to find one. Read More »

Also posted in Energy Efficiency, Texas / Read 43 Responses

Bringing Green Jobs to Texas: Solar Style

By / Published: April 22, 2009

Yesterday, the Texas Senate began taking decisive action to bring green jobs and green energy to Texas. It started on the floor of the Senate, where members voted for Senator Troy Fraser’s SB 545, a solar incentive program that could bring 250 – 500 MW of solar generation to the state. This bill will bring some green jobs to Texas in the form of solar installers, but may not attract enough attention to bring jobs from the growing U.S. solar manufacturing industry to Texas. With so many other states trying to stake their claim to the solar industry, SB 545 cannot work alone in changing the face of solar in the Lone Star State.

Fortunately, late yesterday the Senate Business & Commerce Committee approved Senator Watson’s SB 541 – an expansion of Texas’ successful Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) – which will develop 3,000 megawatts of solar, biomass and geothermal in the state. The RPS uses a sort of economic judo to turn Texas’ great existing energy market into an advantage for renewable energy while reducing energy prices at the same time, according to the PUC. If we can duplicate the success of our original RPS, SB541 could bring more than 7,000 MW of solar to the state and continue saving Texans money in the face of ever-rising fossil fuel costs.

Together, these bills provide a one-two punch, showing that Texas seems ready: to fight its way back to renewable energy leadership; to bring those vital green jobs to the state; and to position our state as a national renewable energy leader.

Read More »

Also posted in Renewable Energy, Texas / Read 34 Responses

This just in: $1 Billion and 500 new solar jobs in Tennessee

By / Published: March 18, 2009

Green JobsNo matter how much their name makes me laugh, there’s nothing funny about Wacker Chemie AG settling on Tennessee as a good place to build its first solar manufacturing plant in the U.S., much less all the solar jobs going to Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

Just one look at the DOE’s solar radiation map tells me that Texas should be blowing Tennessee (and all the other states) away when it comes to attracting businesses that rely on solar radiation.

The truth is that solar companies WANT to come to Texas. Right now, there is an intense lobbying effort going on in the capitol to get Texas up to speed with other states that have already adopted solar-friendly rebates and policies like Renewable Portfolio Standards, which would bring more solar jobs to Texas. There’s a lot of excitement from legislators too. By my count, more than 70 bills have been filed to help make Texas more attractive to renewable energy manufacturers and generators.
Read More »

Also posted in Renewable Energy, Texas / Read 347 Responses