Good news came out of the economy last week.  Yes, you read that correctly – GOOD news.  According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, clean energy jobs grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs in the U.S. between 1998 and 2007.  The jobs weren’t in one or two states – they spanned all 50 states, with the majority in California and Texas, and the total number is 770,000.  That is good news, but those numbers are from before we took a dive into this recession…

Here comes the so what…

The same report states that they believe the nation is poised to significantly continue expansion of those same clean energy jobs.  The report states, “looking forward, the clean energy economy has tremendous potential for growth, as investments continue to flow from both the government and private sector and federal and state policy makers increasingly push for reforms that will both spur economic renewal and sustain the environment.”  They don’t point to hard numbers, but they say it is expected.  I know, that may not seem like news given all of the incentives and bills being passed by the current administration, but it is news.  It is a third party validating the claims we read about every day.

There are many next steps to help this growth even more, but I tend to agree with Marc Gunther, one great next step is to pass a Cap and Trade program.  Cap and Trade would set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel and offer financial incentives for doing so.  Many renewable energy companies would be able to sell more product because they would reduce emissions for the end user – and thus, some experts predict would create more jobs.  Time will tell.

Written by Catriona Harris

Last 3 posts by CatrionaMHarris

• Our Blog Has Moved - June 29th, 2010
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Tags: Green Building, Green PR

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Cleantech, Green Building, Green PR, Technology, Vantage Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.