Building a Green Economy

Building a Green Economy:
Meeting the Needs and Sharing the Opportunities

by Fabian Núñez

California’s emerging green economy continues to grow with astounding momentum and potential. With millions of dollars being invested in that green economy, we need to identify and address its workforce needs.

In 2006, through an unusual partnership between Democratic legislators and a Republican governor, we passed AB 32, otherwise known as The California Global Warming Solutions Act. AB 32 establishes regulations that will phase in a 25 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from the state’s largest emitters by 2020.

The California Air Resources Board’s recently-released AB 32 draft scoping plan noted that not only will this effort reduce green house gasses, it will add a much-needed boost to the economy. That backs up information we received during the passage of AB 32, when the Climate Action Team – a group of state agencies coordinated by the California Environmental Protection Agency – found that meeting the 2020 limit on pollution will increase the income of Californians by $4 billion and create 83,000 jobs. Another study by UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy found that investments in green technologies produce jobs at a higher rate than investments in comparable conventional technologies.

Government is also investing in this green future. To achieve the state’s carbon reduction goals it is estimated we need to replace 20 percent of our gasoline consumption with lower-carbon fuels and increase the state's number of alternative-fuel or hybrid vehicles by more than 7 million. To help push this forward, I wrote AB 118 last year to fund incentives for more alternative fuels and to help make clean-car technologies affordable for more Californians. With these incentives, California drivers will have more opportunities to retire their old gas-burning, carbon dioxide-emitting cars, and companies will step up production of clean technologies and fuels.

With all this investment potential, what are we doing to train the workforce we will need? As the author of AB 32, I know first hand how important the promise of green technologies, investment in green industries and a new energy economy are. For me, elected from inner-city Los Angeles, environmental justice and economic opportunity are powerful motivators. I want the economy for our children to be a clean economy. I want the neighborhoods they live in to be clean neighborhoods. A green economy can be an effective path out of poverty.

I want Californians to have opportunities along the entire green spectrum — from high tech work in the lab, to installing one of our million solar roofs, to weatherizing homes and businesses. The dot-com boom of the mid-1990s almost completely circumvented employment of our most vulnerable and underserved populations. This time, I want to make sure that we have the necessary infrastructure in place to ensure no one is overlooked. The green tech and clean tech movement cannot be merely another bubble; it must be a solid and sustainable cornerstone of our economy.

To that end, two years after AB 32, I have also authored AB 3018. AB 3018 adds a green collar jobs special committee to the state’s Workforce Investment Board. The council will be tasked to develop a comprehensive set of strategies including training programs, partnership opportunities, statewide and regional data and funding sources to build the needed workforce.

Under AB 3018, if signed by the governor, The California Workforce Investment Board (WIB) has until April 2009, to establish a Green Jobs Council. The CWIB may utilize its existing members and also call on other state agencies, higher education representatives, industry representatives as well as philanthropic, nongovernmental, and environmental groups to serve as consultants in the development of this strategic initiative.

Among the concrete steps the Green Jobs Council will take are:

• assist in identifying and linking green collar job opportunities with workforce development training opportunities throughout the state, and encourage regional collaboration in local workforce investment areas (LWIAs) to meet regional economic demands;

• create and develop public, private, philanthropic, and nongovernmental partnerships to build and expand the state’s workforce development programs, network, and infrastructure;

• provide policy guidance for job training programs in the clean and green technology sectors to assist and prepare specific populations, such as at-risk youth, displaced workers, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, and others facing barriers to employment;

• develop, collect, interpret and distribute statewide and regional labor market data on California’s new and emerging green industries workforce needs, trends, and job growth;

• identify funding resources and make recommendations on how to expand and leverage these funds;foster regional collaboratives in the green economic sector.

I’m excited about the potential of the Green California Community College Summit. A recent news story referred to California’s community colleges as “the modest workhorses” of California’s higher education system. Now, modesty is a fine trait, but the community college system has nothing to be modest about in the role it plays in changing lives and expanding opportunities for thousands of California students.

I am thrilled that our community colleges will be playing a key role in helping provide a trained and educated workforce to meet the needs of our emerging green economy. The needs and the opportunities are so great it will take each of us doing all we can individually and together. And this time we get to start from a new beginning, where we can build social equity and economic opportunities across the board for workers, professionals and entrepreneurs.

I like to say gold built the California economy – but green will sustain it.

Fabian Núñez is California Assembly Speaker Emeritus

A Plan for Creating Two Million Green Jobs in Two Years

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. holds the potential to generate two million jobs in two years with a $100 billion investment in cleantech, according to new report.

"Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy" describes a green recovery program that could lay the foundation for sustainable economic growth while boosting the country's energy security. The program calls for $100 billion worth of tax credits, government spending and federal loan guarantees to cut unemployment and spur growth in six cleantech and efficiency areas.

"We can be certain that the green recovery program will serve as a strong counter-force against pressures that are currently pushing unemployment up as well as more broadly increasing economic disparities," the report said. "The green infrastructure investments proposed here will also generate significant long-term advances toward creating the clean energy economy we need."

The program targets building retrofits, expansion of mass transit and freight rail, wind and solar power, biofuels and constructing a smart electrical grid.

The package would break down into three investment streams: $50 billion in tax credits to give private businesses and property owners access to building retrofits and renewable energy systems; $46 billion in direct government spending on mass transit expansion, smart electrical grid and public building retrofits; and $4 billion in federal loan guarantees to help finance renewable energy and building retrofits.

Spending the money in these areas would create four times as many jobs as investing an equal amount in the oil industry, and triple the number of jobs paying more than $16 an hour, the report found. It also would lower the unemployment rate from 5.7 percent to 4.4 percent and offset the 800,000 jobs lost in the construction sector.

Some jobs would be found in specialized areas, such as installing solar panels, but most would include existing jobs already being performed throughout the U.S. For instance, investment in wind power generation could create jobs for environmental engineers, iron and steel workers, truck drivers and machinists. Growth in second-generation biofuels may drive demand for chemists, agricultural supervisors and blending machine operators.

The report suggests raising the money by auctioning carbon permits in a national greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program.

Researchers from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst prepared the report on behalf of the Center for American Progress.