Green Jobs

President Obama's insistence, and for that matter persistence, to stick to his plan of reigniting the job market and stimulating the economy can certainly be admired by those finally back at work. Increased governmental intervention in unemployment, has perhaps, prevented an even more deflated job market than the 9.7% recently reported.

Although stabilizing, the unemployment percentage is still daunting and one question remains to be seen: Is President Obama's next step in his unemployment and stimulus plan finally going to turn the tides on the recession and unemployment?

As President Obama openly admits, the 9.7% unemployment is unacceptable. In Virginia on Friday he said, "Far too many Americans remain out of work, far too many families are still struggling in these difficult economic times."

The UK is already the world leader in offshore wind power with 600 megawatts of wind capacity and an industry that employs five thousand people. A new partnership with Mitsubishi will add to their clout and has the potential to create thousands of green jobs.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe (MPSE) announced plans this week to invest £100m  in a new research and development facility for offshore wind power in Britain. The government made it clear to MPSE that they were dead serious about promoting corporate investment in green energy by kicking in a £30m grant to help them get started. The money comes from a fund dedicated to industrial innovation, job creation, and growth.

Fly ash is a nasty substance created during coal combustion. It used to be released into the atmosphere until someone realized putting things like chromium, boron, lead and mercury into the air isn’t necessarily such a good idea.

Instead, we collect it by the ton, either in landfills or at power plant sites. In the U.S., around 131 million tons of the stuff is produced annually each year.

But now companies are finding new uses for fly ash. In fact, around 43 percent of it was reused in 2008 because of companies like CalStar. Reinventing the way bricks are made, CalStar uses steam baths instead of traditional clay bricks, which actually take coal or natural gas energy to power kilns.

Other uses of fly ash include embankment construction, soil stabilization, and concrete. These innovations equate to progress until alternative energies are affordable and adaptable enough to break into the market without a huge amount of government subsidies.

Everyone has heard about the success of the cash for clunkers program that took tons of inefficient cars off the road. The folks behind the “Reheat Britain” campaign wondered if a similar program would work for boilers and got major attention from the government.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, revealed the government’s plan last week to offer an economic plus to get rid of the not so green machines. Fifty million pounds will be set aside to help families get rid of their G-rated boilers in favor of the far more efficient A-rated type. Each household with a functioning G-rated boiler would receive a £400 grant from the government towards the purchase of a new boiler.

The more time goes by, the more many begin to doubt the legitimacy of the funds and policies that were supposed to create jobs and that were supposed to resurrect the working class and that were supposed to heal the economy of a darkened recession. It is no surprise that people are getting anxious, and perhaps downright pessimistic about the current labor situation with the amount of inactivity happening in the job market.

When the stimulus plan was first signed and put into play, many thought it would make an immediate splash in the labor market, especially the green job market. Instead, all that has been seen is a minuscule ripple effect that is slowly making its way into certain sectors and states.

Sure, government incentives are pushing more spending and improvements in homes and businesses, but for the most part, unemployed laborers fear the outlook of the current economic situation, and for good reason.

With the popularity of green job searches surging, CareerBuilder is finally making a move to offer a resource to hook up employers with prospective employees. The site, which was released yesterday, hopes to alleviate the pain of using advanced searches and artful keywords to find the perfect green job. But why so late? 

Obama, since taking his seat as president, has placed a huge emphasis on creating jobs that help solve the energy crisis and better the environment. In fact, according to the CareerBuilder press release, $98 billion of the economic stimulus plan has already gone or will go towards "energy and environmental projects."

The movement towards green jobs, however, has been developing momentum for quite some time. Over the last decade, the growth of green jobs has soared to an impressive 9.1 percent, compared to the 3.7 percent of the overall job market.

The popularity of the search for jobs in this developing market can even be seen on Google.

Manufacturing and industrial jobs  in the United States are rapidly becoming a thing of the past as a down economy is stretching dollars further oversees. Plants and factories are being shut down nationwide, leaving workers unemployed. Prayers of desperation for a new wave of work are all many can hold on to with the limited education and/or work experience they possess. 

Obama's stimulus plan hoped to change all that, but many have not seen the ripple effects of that money. Recently, however, blue-collar green jobs or clean energy jobs are finally gaining the momentum needed to become a legitimate job market and job opportunity.  The problem is that as results of green jobs trickle in, pressure for immediate results and a hurting job market mount and make many, including Congress, uncomfortable.

The more Obama's administration pours into renewable energy, the stronger the debate gets in Congress.

Ultimately, those that oppose the current plan either feel as though there is not a strong enough "comprehensive energy strategy" or that the green jobs have the potential to take away from the manufacturing sector.

While the clean energy sector is still a relative sapling, a new study shows it will become an important player in the U.S. economy.

From 1998-2007, the clean energy economy grew 2.5 times faster than overall jobs, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. And with the wheels of government slowly churning out greener policies, the future of clean energy looks bright.

California leads the way with 125,390 clean jobs and 10,209 of America’s 68,203 clean businesses, according to the report. These companies include everything from hydrogen fuel cell makers to solar wind power transmitters to the designers of traffic monitoring software.

It doesn’t take a wiz to understand why buying an full-length gown and funny hat to wear once for graduation isn’t exactly friendly to the environment.

Thousands of gowns, caps and tassels are sold each year to all the graduating high school and college students in America. Unless schools are smart enough to reuse them each year, those gowns end up in the closet or trash.

As graduation season comes to an end, this is a good time to highlight the third ‘R’ of the big three: reduce. It sometimes seems the other two - recycle and reuse - too often control the limelight.

One way to reduce consumption is to eliminate customs that create a lot of waste, such as specially purchased graduation attire.

Michigan has a long history of building cars, but now the state is finding itself in a situation that demands more diversity, the inverse effect of a struggling automotive industry. Given those trends and its existing manufacturing infrastructure it makes sense that Michigan is pushing aggressively toward the creation of green jobs. But how successful is that initiative?

Right now green jobs employ about 109,000 people in Michigan, and that’s with 7.7% growth from 2005 to 2008. Considering the state’s population hovers somewhere around 10 million people, that’s a drop in the bucket.