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