Green jobs? Heck yes, workers say

Those on the unemployment line aren't the only ones hoping for a break.

Many who are out of work or have had to take anything the job market has had to offer these past two years are hunting and/or daydreaming about a better position and future. And all this tepid economic news about a slow recovery -- coupled with almost daily reports of growing fallout by shadow foreclosure inventory and about 25 percent of U.S. homeowners under water on their mortgages -- doesn't help.

The recession-plagued economy has elevated interest in so-called green jobs, especially when a number of reports tout the up-and-coming sector's influence. Yet when these forecast jobs materialize and what they will look like remain as hazy as the view from Fresno to the Sierra Mountains. (For those who haven't gotten the opportunity to see what I'm referring to, let's just say it's very hazy and sometimes muddy.)

San Francisco-based research and advisory firm Clean Edge Inc. offers some clarity and digestible information with its report "Clean Tech Job Trends 2010." Company co-founder Ron Pernick, senior editor Clint Wilder and research associate Trevor Winnie summarize and gather data from other reports and bring their own findings to plot out a fairly optimistic view of the future of clean tech in the realms of wind, solar, water, materials and transportation.

"There are many challenges facing the sector, but clean energy and more broadly, clean tech, offer some of the largest growth opportunities on the global economic horizon," they write.

Clean Edge carves the market into four parts: energy, transportation, water and materials. Energy includes everything from wind, biomass and the smart grid. Transporation includes battery technology, trains, hybrids and hydrogen. Water includes recovery and capture, drip irrigation and energy efficient desalination. Materials includes bio-based materials, green chemistry and building materials and reuse and recycling.

The list is diverse and the job requirements even more so. But promise radiates from every sector.

Clean Edge says its research shows that "the solar photovoltaic industry alone now represents approximately 300,000 direct and indirect jobs globally, while the wind-power sector includes more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs worldwide."

Not bad. It also cites reports that say Ireland, Denmark and Great Britain are on track to receive about 40 percent their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, following the lead of Portugal which reportedly is to reach 45 percent this year.

Of course, all this comes with a downside. Renewables -- at least on their face and not including all the damage done by greenhouse gas emissions -- cost more than fossil fuels. Without government assistance, they can fall flat. For instance, Spain -- a leader in solar -- is reportedly pulling subsidies, or feed-in tariffs, for renewables, threatening the future of many new projects and others countries are doing the same to a lesser degree.

And in the blogosphere, the issue has generated controversy. A comment on a greentechmedia.com story about incandescent bulb plants disappearing got this from a responder calling him or herself John Galt: "A set of technologies and products created at great cost to solve a problem that had already been solved (generating electricity), at costs considerably higher than the costs of the technologies they seek to supplant? My 12 year old daughter knows that’s a losing business proposition."

Environmental strategist and author Andrew Wilson says the debate over green jobs is far more nuanced than simply focusing on solar panel installers. He writes in HuffingtonPost.com that the international job market is facing a choice of decline or prosperity, with fossil fuels comprising the former.

"Oil is basically at peak production globally, and coal plants are nearly impossible to build in the U.S. anymore," Wilson writes. "Even as the world demands more energy, and even as fossil fuel production continues, these companies will continue to get more efficient with labor. So don't count on the fossil guys to create new wealth and jobs."

Wilson and Clean Tech point to a future of green-related jobs over a wide array of industries, linked only by concept. The mainstays, solar and wind, will provide positions but the multiplier effect comes from the spin-offs, the related support and supply jobs.

"There are more subtle shifts in labor going on as companies that did one thing in the old economy are finding their skills useful in the new one," Winston writes. He cites the case of an oil-patch cable company laying undersea electrical transmission lines for offshore wind turbines.

Pernick and Wilder at Clean Edge acknowledge clean tech needs assistance from government. They called for five national policies and initiatives they believe could play a critical role in ensuring clean-tech growth and job creation.

The first is requiring that a certain percentage of power generation come from renewables. The others were supporting green infrastructure development, enforcing emissions rules, establishing green banks, bonds and funds and implementing carbon taxes.

So what's it mean? Clean Tech's report listed the top metro areas with clean tech job activity. At Nos. 1 and 2 were San Francisco and Los Angeles. Boston came in at No. 3, with New York, Denver and Washington, D.C. filling out the top six. And the salaries aren't bad.

"A new green economy is just that -- a whole new economy, with job openings at all skill levels, from truck drivers to inventors of new battery chemistry," Winston says.

And someday soon something might just pop up on Monster.com for you.

Renewables win 2, lose 1

Renewable energy in California took some punches to the gut and scored some victories some this week and last.

On the upside, the California Public Utilities Commission appears poised to launch an incentive program meant to boost renewable energy projects and San Luis Obispo County moved the 250 megawatt California Valley Solar Ranch a big step forward by issuing a draft environmental impact report.

On the downside, the California Legislature failed to pass a renewable energy bill and the industry still faces the potential passage of Prop. 23, which would roll back 2006 climate change laws.

The proposed CPUC decision issued this week would require California utilities to purchase power from solar and other renewables that produce from one megawatt to 20 megawatts. A megawatt is about the amount consumed by 1,000 homes.

The measure would establish what is known in the industry as a feed-in tariff, which essentially gives renewable energy generators about what it costs to produce power.

Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, hailed the CPUC decision. He said in a statement that the proposed measure would assist mid-sized solar projects, helping them secure support similar to the state's "robust policies for developing large, utility-scale solar power plants and for putting smaller systems on homes and businesses."

Browning said his organization looks forward to working with the CPUC to finalize details of the measure.

The "CPUC proposal is designed to unlock that missing piece, providing an additional opportunity for solar market and job growth and for quickly bringing massive new amounts of clean energy to the state,” he said.

The San Luis solar project is bound for 1,900 acres in the Carrizo Plains, an environmentally sensitive region known for endangered wildlife. Eric Wesoff of greentechmedia.com wrote that the environmental impact report, or EIR, involved 60 biologists and 30 biological surveys.

The EIR goes through a public comment period before heading back to county government for possible passage. Wesoff said trucks commissioned by developer San Jose-based SunPower could begin rolling by next summer.

The renewable energy bill ran out of time in the senate by the midnight deadline Tuesday. SB 722 would have turned an executive order signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger last year requiring that 33 percent of California's energy come from renewable sources by 2020 into law.

The failure disappointed supporters. Lauren Sommer of kqed.org quoted Laura Wisland, a clean energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying, "We think not establishing a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard this year is a huge loss to California's environment and economy."

Solar foam and recycled plastic blocks battle for Earth Awards

Here's some foam that would be way out of place atop a cold beer.

A photosynthetic artificial foam that harnesses solar energy has been designed by University of Cincinnati Professor David Wendell and Dean Carlo Montemagno. The substance is one of a half dozen innovations up for an Earth Award, which could land the winner $50,000 and team the designer with investors.

The Earth Awards are billed as "a global design award backed by world-leading entrepreneurs" that identify innovations that have the potential to improve the quality of life.

Finalists like Wendell and Montemagno will pitch their projects to leading CEOs at the Investors to Innovators Summit in London on Sept. 16, according to officials staging the event. One of the judges is Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council.

"Nothing is impossible," said Ira Magaziner, a selection committee member and chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation, established by the former U.S. president to identify and take action on global problems. "And nothing beats the power of partnership in realising dreams. That is the fundamental principle of The Earth Awards: to unite the world's greatest innovators with the business people and investors who can make their designs a reality."

Also up for the award are:

• Sustainable Shells, which developer Professor Michael Ramage at the University of Cambridge Sidney Sussex College in England describes as "highly engineered thin-shell structural masonry built with locally-sourced pressed soil-cement tiles with very low embodied energy and high performance natural-synthetic wood-polymer composites."
• Polli-Bricks by Arthur Huang, MINIWIZ Sustainable Energy Development Co. in Taiwan. The translucent bricks are made from recycled PET bottles and designed to interlock. "Each Polli-Brick can, structurally, interlock with others. So it can be used to build houses," Liu Zi-Wei, co-designer of Polli-Brick, told channelnewsasia.com. "We keep thinking of how we can reuse these bottles. We want to present them in a form that everybody can see, and see it immediately."
• Kayu Sunglasses by Jamie Lim from San Francisco. Sfgate.com ran a story on the bamboo glasses that said, "For each pair sold, the San Francisco company donates the cost of one eye surgery needed to correct preventable blindness through the nonprofit Unite for Site."
• AskNature by The Biomimicry Institute, represented by Megan Schuknecht. The institute describes the collaborative-building venture this way: "AskNature is a free, open source project, built by the community and for the community. Our goal is to connect innovative minds with life's best ideas, and in the process, inspire technologies that create conditions conducive to life."
• The Butterfly Houses by Andreas Grontvedt Gjertsen, TYIN Tengestue, Norway were "created in response to the need to provide more housing for child refugees in Noh Bo, a small village along the Thai-Burmese border. Completed in February this year, the six cabins now offer hospitality to 24 orphans," said the blog Design Ideas.

Wendy Beckman at the University of Cinncinati said Wendell and Montemagno "are finding ways to take energy from the sun and carbon from the air to create new forms of biofuels, thanks to a semi-tropical frog species." She quoted Montemagno as saying the innovation "presents a new pathway of harvesting solar energy to produce either oil or food."