More than 500,000 people are employed in “green jobs” in California and that number is expected to ramp up in the coming years, according to a report released last week.The Environment California Research & Policy Center report, “Building a Clean Energy Workforce: Preparing Californians for New Opportunities in the State’s Green Economy,” additionally documents nearly 300 green job training programs at more than 130 institutions throughout the state.
Those programs have as many as 15,000 students enrolled annually, the report said. Bernadette Del Chiaro, the center’s director of clean energy programs, said green jobs are giving the economy a boost.
“Thousands of Californians are seeking refuge from the recession via the growing green energy economy,” she said. “Job training programs are a critical engine for developing the work force needed to achieve the state’s environmental goals.”
That may be true. But some, including economist Christopher Thornberg, figure there’s some wiggle room in defining exactly what a “green” job is.
What is a green job?
“Who the hell knows what they classify as a green job?” Thornberg said. “That’s what it boils down to. There are very few jobs you could say are truly green – maybe a solar panel installer … but who else?”
The report says that the skills required of a worker in a green job often overlap with those needed for more traditional occupations.
Many workers can transfer their existing skills to a new green job, the study said, if they receive specialized training to fully take advantage of opportunities.
Electricians, for example, must perform many of the same steps when working in an efficient building as in a conventional one. But they must also be aware of the building’s overall energy usage and avoid compromising its insulation or allowing air to leak in.
Likewise, a mechanic servicing an electric vehicle may require additional training to deal with more sophisticated electronics and braking. But other systems within the electric car may be identical to a conventional, gasoline-powered car.
There may be some debate as to how green those jobs really are. But Verengo Solar is purely green. The Orange-based company specializes in residential solar systems and has done installations throughout California and New Jersey.
“We do about 175 solar installations a month,” said Ken Button, Verengo’s president and co-founder. “We have a staff of 400 people and more than 100 of them were added just over the last year. I see our pace of growth accelerating.”
Univoip in El Segundo installs green telephone systems that are linked directly into a company’s computer network.
The technology has several advantages, including a big cost savings, according to Wilson Guzman, a Univoip marketing representative.
“If a company with 100 employees moves from one location to another, that could cost them $160,000 to buy and install a new phone system,” he said. “But our system cost would be about $3,000.”
And growth? Guzman says he’s seeing it first-hand.
“We’re growing faster and faster, bringing people in all the time,” he said.
Emphasis misplaced?
No one would deny that California needs more jobs – green or non-green. But are we placing too much emphasis on green jobs?
Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association in Sacramento, has some thoughts on that.
“By any estimate, green jobs are a small percentage of California’s overall work force,” he said. “The Brookings Institution was counting green jobs throughout the country and they said California had about 332,000 green jobs – and they’re including public mass-transit operators.”
DiCaro agreed with Thornberg that there has been broad latitude in defining what constitutes a “green” job.
“My point is they had a loose definition of it, and they only got to 332,000 jobs,” he said. “That would still be only about 2 percent of our overall work force. If this other report says there are 500,000 green jobs what would that be – what, about 2.5 percent?”
Regardless of the percentage, few would argue that a growing number of jobs in the building and transportation industries are embracing green policies and standards.
Jobs needed in all sectors
The Environment California Research & Policy Center report notes, for instance, that California’s Clean Cars Program and the low carbon fuel standard will result in sweeping changes in vehicle and fuel technology.
If the latest updates to the Clean Cars Program are adopted, up to 14 percent of new vehicles sold in California in 2025 could be electric vehicles and up to 68 percent could be hybrids.
The study also highlights the rebates that are offered by utilities to consumers on energy-efficient appliances, such as washers, dryers and refrigerators.
There’s no doubt that these kinds of incentives have created and will continue to create green jobs. But DiCaro says the nation’s economic malaise calls for aggressive job-creation across the board.
“We need large-scale job creation in every sector,” he said. “California’s manufacturing job base has lost a third of its employment over the past decade – just over 630,000 jobs. We can’t pick one winning sector and leave behind other losing ones.”
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