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The Business Press
Green jobs may be key to recovery | September 18,2008 
When Fred Noble finds someone to fix his many windmills at the entrance to Palm Springs, it doesn't take long for companies from Norway or Texas to hire them away.

Windmill technicians, a $15- to $20-an-hour job, are in high demand worldwide, said Noble, the owner ofWintec Energy.

Experts point to a growing class of "green-collar" jobs that could help sustain both the economy and environment at a time when the nation's unemployment rate has hit a five¬year high and 8.9% of the Inland region's workers are out of work.

With a $100 billion investment in projects that encourage environmental living, the country could create 2 million jobs in two years, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. California's share, based on the gross domestic product, would be $12.7 million and 235,198 jobs, the study says.

The nonpartisan group commissioned the study conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to focus on six areas government funding could spur growth: solar energy, wind turbines, retrofitting buildings, improving electricity grids, developing biofuels and building mass transit options.

For Woodrow Clark II, a UC Riverside lecturer and advisor to the Inland environmental economic development group dubbed Green Valley Initiative, the idea isn't new but timing is ripe.

While the economy, especially in the Inland region, treads water as the housing market continues to sink and more home owners fall into foreclosure, local and federal governments are seeking green fixes for buildings, roads and energy sources.

As a finance advisor to Gov. Gray Davis, Clark wrote a paper titled "California's Next Economy" before the governor was recalled in 2003, looking at sustainable green development as the key to the state's viability.

"There's going to be a long future in it," Clark said of green jobs.
In Los Angeles, the school district will have $7.3 billion in bond funds to build green buildings, Clark said.
By KIMBEI~ Y PIERCEALL
kpierceall@pe.com 

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