How Many Green Jobs are There, Anyway?

But what that “total” is remains unclear.

eSolar’s 5-megawatt Sierra SunTower solar plant in California created 300 local jobs during the plant’s construction, adding to a growing, but mysterious tally of new “green” jobs in the burgeoning renewable energy industry. Just how many green jobs currently exist? And what does that mean for the industry?

The importance of tracking such a tally is essential in the face of ongoing assaults by skeptics and naysayers who claim that the green sector is a farce. They say that green jobs are actually net-zero jobs, in that for every job created in, say, the solar industry, a job will be lost in the more conventional energy industry. That would create a trade-off of sorts, but not the additional employment that Obama and renewable energy proponents promised.

Van Jones, Special Adviser on green jobs to the Council on Environmental Quality, worked to debunk that myth in an interview with the Washington Post. At the same time, he admitted that there is no cumulative tally of how many green jobs have been created by way of the stimulus package or any other government incentive since Obama took office. He did note that the Department of Labor is “crunching those numbers,” but that no real list is available yet.

The Sierra SunTower is a significant solar project for many reasons, including that it’s the first operational power tower plant in the United States. Yet job creation may be its most important achievement in the here-and-now. Unfortunately, these singular totals of temporary jobs are the only way green job numbers are coming in as of yet (i.e. 300 jobs from this solar plant, 400 jobs from that wind farm, etc.).

We also have little information regarding green jobs in the remodeling and retrofit weatherization sector. Many existing jobs may have switched from new construction to retrofitting, but could be tough to gauge for “greenness.”

There are certainly a lot of numbers to crunch. The new green economy is vast and overlaps several industries and sectors within those industries. We’re talking about a reinvention of our very livelihood as a nation. And for a nation as massive in land and population as the United States, crunching those numbers will take some time.

Meanwhile, all we have are projections, which can easily fall prey to projective opposing arguments, as well as unforeseen, real time variables such as growing automation of the solar industry.

As much as we can and should rejoice projects like the Sierra SunTower for their creation of green jobs, we could sure use a more comprehensive tally of our success, if only to dispel the myth that a successful green-collar economy itself is impossible. Fortunately, those of us who follow the renewable energy industry know that the jobs are there, being daily peppered just as we are with stories of jobs created by green projects.

We know that the green movement has begun – we’re just waiting to reach our first milepost and truly see how far we’ve come.

Posted on September 2nd in Solar News by Dan.