Transition Report: A Glimpse of Our Green Future

Saturday, November 22, 2008
Posted in Sustainability | Tagged Sustainability

Climate solutions = jobs. That is the headline from a new report released this week by Duke University’s Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness.

Manufacturing Climate Solutions builds upon an expanding body of evidence that demonstrates how a transition to green energy could create a massive wave of new jobs.

Joining Environmental Defense Fund in sponsoring this report were The Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO), Industrial Union Council (AFL-CIO), International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters.

Go to the Green Room to hear from Jackie Roberts, EDF Director of Sustainable Technologies, as she describes the report.

While some seek to pit the environment against economic growth, this report shows real-world economic opportunity and job growth that can come from building the technologies that will be needed in a carbon constrained world.

Consider the Wind Turbine

One wind turbine has 8,000 parts-parts that need to be manufactured, assembled, shipped and maintained.

The report also looks at a range of products that will help power a clean energy economy, from solar panels to LED lights, and finds in each case a complex “value chain” that translates into millions of 21st Century jobs for the American workforce.

Many of these new jobs will spring up just where they are most needed: in America’s ailing industrial belt:

“These new technologies and products may be funded by Silicon Valley and Wall Street, but the bricks and mortar jobs will be in the manufacturing heartland of America, where hundreds of companies are already benefitting from demand for renewable energy and energy efficiency.”

The American energy transformation could create as many as 5 million new jobs, at firms like:

Cree, Inc. of Durham, NC — Cree makes LED lighting and has enjoyed spectacular growth in recent years, from fewer than 900 employees in 2002 to more than 3,200 today;
Thermo-King of Bloomington, MN — Thermo-King makes energy-efficient auxiliary power units for trucks. Thermo-King’s 3,900 employees helped generate more $3 billion in sales last year; and
Alpen Energy Group, LLC of Boulder, CO — Alpen is a market leader in high-performance, high efficiency glass windows. The company grew 50% in 2007 and was acquired by Serious Materials in June 2008, which plans to mainstream these highestperforming windows and will market them across the United States and internationally.

At the end of the day, the green transformation will take place community by community, and job by job.

The report offers ample evidence that if we can get the policy right, we will leave our children both a healthier planet and a more prosperous nation.

Thank you for your support,
Sam Parry
Director, Online Membership and Activism

P.S. Watch Jackie Roberts describe the report and then sound off about it in the Green Room.