Clean Energy Jobs Are Our Future
The fastest-growing sector of our economy is building a more sustainable world for us all.
Fifteen years ago, Nicole Lederer and Bob Epstein cofounded the NRDC partner organization Environmental Entrepreneurs to give a voice to business leaders working to create a cleaner, more sustainable future for us all.
Today the group has more than 850 members who have founded or funded more than 1,700 companies employing more than 570,000 people in nearly every state in the country. The growth of Environmental Entrepreneurs, or E2, has mirrored an explosion in green jobs nationwide.
Every day across this country, more than 3.4 million Americans go to work helping us to build the next generation of energy-efficient cars, homes, and workplaces; enabling us to get more power from the wind and sun; improving our public transit systems; making our cities more accessible for bikers and walkers; and performing myriad other tasks that contribute to a brighter and more hopeful future.
Many of these jobs didn’t exist when E2 was founded. Now they’re an economic lifeline in uncertain times for millions of American families that depend on these good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced and are adding valuable dynamism to the U.S. economy.
Sustainability and prosperity, it turns out, go hand in hand. These jobs, in fact, are among the fastest-growing of any in our economy. Last year alone, the clean energy and sustainable transportation sectors announced nearly 47,000 new jobs, E2 reports, with tens of thousands more created to improve energy efficiency and otherwise help us build a more environmentally sound future for our children.
What’s driving this growth, by and large, are hard-nosed business decisions by forward-looking executives, investors, and small-business owners.
Get this. Last year, 47 percent (pg. 4) of all the new electricity-generating capacity installed in the United States was powered by the wind and sun. Coal provided just 0.7 percent — seven tenths of 1 percent.
Over the past three years — 2012, 2013, and 2014 — we’ve gotten 42 percent of all our new electricity-generating capacity from wind turbines and solar panels.
During the first four months of this year, those two sources provided 81 percent (pg. 4) of our new capacity to generate electricity. And during April, for the first time ever, all our new electricity-generating capacity came from wind and solar power.
This is actual generating capacity, as monitored by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency charged with overseeing U.S. electricity generation and reliability.
Solar and wind power provided 5 percent of our electricity last year. By 2030, we can get 34 percent of our electricity from the wind and sun, the U.S. Department of Energy tells us, replacing dirty fossil fuels that are choking our atmosphere with the dangerous carbon pollution that is driving climate change.
Wind and solar power are leading the way to a clean energy revolution in America and helping to position U.S. workers and companies for success in the fast-growing global market for renewable power, a sector that attracted $270 billion in global investment last year alone.
These are the clean energy sources that are powering our economy into the 21st century — and creating jobs for our people.
Right now, a quarter of a million Americans are working each day to expand solar- and wind-power production. That’s three times the number of coal miners we employ nationwide.
All these jobs are important. The clean energy jobs are our future. What we need to do now is to connect the opportunities of the future to the skills of those workers who are transitioning from the era of dirty fossil fuels to the promise of the clean energy solutions of tomorrow.
To help do just that, President Obama has asked Congress for $55 million in the budget he’s proposed for 2016. Congress needs to approve this assistance.
Meanwhile, how can we embrace both the opportunities and the challenges this future presents? Obama’s Clean Power Plan is one way to help.
The plan calls for cutting the dangerous carbon pollution from our power plants 30 percent by 2030. It tailors those cuts to each state’s individual energy mix. And it lets states work with local power companies to determine the most cost-effective way to hit the targets.
One way is to invest in efficiency, so we can do more with less waste. That can help save our households and businesses some $37.4 billion in electric bills in 2020, while creating more than 274,000 efficiency-related jobs across the country.
Another way is get more power from the wind and sun, creating scores of thousands of jobs in those sectors, tune up aging generating equipment, or some combination of all of the above.
The growth in clean energy and sustainable jobs is one of the brightest spots on our economic horizon. It’s a source of great optimism for those who believe we can create a more sustainable future. And it’s a reminder of the kind of difference people like E2's members across the country can make when we work together to build on our success.
