New Jersey leaders forsee job growth in fields of 'green'
By DEREK HARPER
Statehouse Bureau, 609-292-4935
Published: Monday, December 01, 2008
TRENTON - In the midst of the current economic turmoil, one of the few things business leaders are optimistic about are jobs in alternative energy.The so-called "green-collar" jobs in solar, wind, biodiesel and other forms of energy scarcely mentioned a decade ago were a steady topic on the presidential campaign trail. And New Jersey has encouraged their development, most recently by calling for a 15-fold increase in alternative energy in the most recent energy master plan."We do feel that that's the next big thing for employment," Philip Kirschner, president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, said last week.He said business leaders had cast about for the next big industry since the dot-com bubble popped earlier this decade.Kirschner said many thought it could have been the life sciences or biotech industry, but "it seems that the push toward more conservation is here, it has staying power and the state and federal government will likely invest substantially in it."
While on the campaign trail, President-elect Barack Obama repeatedly said a top priority was the green economy, promising to spend $15 billion per year over 10 years to create 5 million jobs.More recently, he mentioned in his weekly address Nov. 22 creating 2.5 million jobs by January 2011, including with "wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that could free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead."It is among a wave of similar proposals across the nation, according to the Green Jobs Report, a blog and informal industry newsletter in which author David Anderson has documented plans by 20 solar and wind manufacturing companies to create 10,490 new green-collar jobs since Oct. 24.This includes a proposal announced this month to create as many as 200 jobs with a new solar panel manufacturing plant in Vineland.A September report titled "Green Recovery" by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress said that spending $100 billion in the green sector during the next two years could stabilize oil prices, fight global warming and create 2 million jobs nationally.The report said the cost was comparable to the April stimulus package that mailed checks to taxpayers. However, authors wrote, "spending $100 billion on green infrastructure investment would be an effective engine for job creation - and thus stronger economic growth - and would have the added benefit of preparing the way for the urgently needed long-term U.S. transition to a low-carbon economy."Survey authors suggested states could contribute to the package. Under the proposal, New Jersey would spend $3.2 billion, the eighth-highest amount nationally, to create 57,228 jobs, 10th most nationally.New Jersey has moved strongly in this direction, calling for renewable energy to account for 30 percent of the state's energy use by 2020 in its energy master plan released last month. Renewables currently account for about 2 percent.October also saw the state Board of Public Utilities, or BPU, award Garden State Offshore Energy a $4 million grant to build a 346-megawatt wind farm off Cape May County's shores, while officials hinted that other similar installations would be in the offing. Similarly, with 3,467 solar installations as of Oct. 31, according to the BPU, the state is second only to California in total installations. This is encouraged through a state grants program that has paid out more than $241.4 million to mostly residential consumers since 2001.Last week, Gov. Jon S. Corzine indicated the state would have a significant green-collar sector."I think we have already established the foremost position in the country with regard to solar energy," he said, adding that with additional conservation measures, "those are proposals that are embedded in the energy master plan and we're really quite aggressive and I think we're probably setting some patterns that we may see nationally."E-mail Derek Harper:DHarper@pressofac.com
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