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Green Economy Investments Bring 300 Percent More Jobs, Reports Find

Original Source: http://www.greenbiz.com
Author: Matthew Wheeland
Original Publication Date: June 2009

Two new reports on the impacts of moving to a low-carbon economy show putting money toward energy efficiency, building retrofits and renewable energy projects can create 1.7 million new jobs, significantly more than the same investment in fossil fuel industries.

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The reports were released today in tandem by four groups: Green for All, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) worked together on the “Green Prosperity” study, while PERI also worked with the Center for American Progress on the “Economic Benefits” report.

Together, the reports show the economic, environmental and social impacts of investing about $150 billion per year in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies; that number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress.
Green Prosperity cover

“[I]nvesting in clean energy for $1 million will generate 16.7 jobs; correspondingly, investing in fossil fuels generates about 5.3 jobs,” explained Robert Pollin, the co-director of PERI and the lead author of both studies, in a press conference this morning. “When you net the two things out, you’re going to get about 12 incremental jobs per million in spending by investing in clean energy.”

In addition to creating these new jobs — enough to cut the current unemployment levels in the U.S. by 1 percent, from the current 9.4 percent to 8.4 percent — and trimming the country’s carbon footprint, the investment proposed in the reports will also make well paid labor available on a large scale to working-class, blue-collar and less-educated workers.

Phaedra Ellis-Lampkin, the CEO of Green for All, explained that almost 900,000 of the estimated 1.7 million jobs created through these investments would be accessible to people with high school educations or less. The new clean economy jobs would offer a solid job ladder for workers to steadily improve their wages as they grow their skills.

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