Washington, D.C.: In Ontario the Samsung agreement, with its economic development adder, formalized the value that the province places on investment and job creation. Meanwhile, in the U.S. it appears that the economic development issues are becoming increasingly important drivers of energy policy.
The Apollo Alliance, a US lobby group, says that its Congress and the administration’s new focus is on “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and stresses that “green jobs have grown at more than twice the rate of overall jobs over the past decade,” citing a June 2009 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Alliance contends that “state-level studies show the same trend. For example, a December 2009 study by Collaborative Economics and Next 10 showed that California, that has some of the most forward-thinking climate policies in the country, has seen green job growth outpace overall job growth by a rate of almost 3-to-1 since 1995.”
Another study by Dan Kammen and others at UC Berkeley, finds that all non-fossil fuel technologies (including renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies) create more jobs per unit of energy than the fossil fuel sector does.
References to the three studies above can be found at:
• www.pewcenteronthestates.org > Topics > Clean Energy Economy, and scroll down for the pdf
• www.next10.org/ > Research, and scroll down to “California Green Innovation Index”
• http://rael.berkeley.edu > Publications, and scroll down to “Putting renewables and energy efficiency to work: How many jobs can the clean energy industry generate in the U. S.?”