There is strong evidence that when federal and state governments invest in renewable energy, green jobs follow. The Clean Energy Finance Authority established under the Recovery Act has started to pump billions of dollars into renewable energy projects. Some of these funds helped to stave off closure of some renewable energy companies that found themselves in economic trouble during the recession. This saved jobs. The Recovery Act provided the energy sector with $43 billion, which funds only a small portion of the needs.

Federal Recovery Act funds have also invested in start-ups with new clean energy technologies. Solar Roadways of Sagle, Idaho, for example, recently received a $100,000 award to produce a test road made of solar panels. The road way will produce energy to heat homes and businesses, be heated to reduce the need for plowing and ice build up in the winter, and have LED lighting so that warning signs and road markings can be illuminated and can change with varying conditions. The roadway will replace traditional asphalt and so will save on oil based road products.

This is what SolarRoadways CEO, Scott Brusaw, estimates are the job impact of changing over America’s highways and parking lots to solar panels:

“Each Solar Road Panel™ measures 12 feet (about 4 meters) by 12 feet. Each panel contains solar collectors, energy storage devices, circuit boards, electronics parts, etc. All of these have to be assembled. Let’s say it take a minimum of 10 hours to completely assemble one Solar Road Panel™. I come from a manufacturing background and ten hours is probably a conservative estimate, but it’s a nice round number.
Five billion panels requiring 10 hours to assemble means 50 billion assembly hours. Let’s give ourselves ten years to accomplish this monumental task, leaving us 5 billion assembly hours per year. A typical U.S. worker spends 40 hours per week at work. Let’s give our worker two weeks vacation and say he never misses a day of work otherwise. That’s 50 weeks at 40 hours per week comes to 2000 work hours per year. Divide that into five billion assembly hours and you’d put 2,500,000 people to work full-time for ten years. This is just the final assembly!
We haven’t taken into account the increased jobs at the suppliers end. For instance, the glass maker has to create five billion sheets of special textured glass for the top layer. Someone has to create all of the circuit boards and what about all of increased jobs at the parts manufacturers? Each Solar Road Panel™ contains 6192 LEDs alone. Who will make all of these parts?
Then we must take into account installation, maintenance, system monitoring, panel refurbishing, distribution, etc. Every aspect of our economy will flourish.” (From its website at http://www.solarroadways.com/Economy.htm.)

Many states have jumped into clean energy funding authorities of their own to fund loans for homeowners to install renewable sources of energy and to assist utilities in gearing up for higher usage of renewable forms of energy.

In 2008 Oregon’s ODOT opened the first segment of solar highway. The project was constructed using funds from a public-private partnership and was built using the ingenuity of Oregon small businesses.

There has been energy funding efforts in a number of other states. The EPA indicates that by October 2008 23 states and the District of Columbia had public benefit funds for renewable energy. Since 2001 the EPA has also been partnering with state, local governments and private businesses to create cogeneration projects where heat and power (CHP projects) are combined in one power source such as geothermal. Some of the strategic partnership industries include wastewater and water treatment plants, utility companies, dry mill ethanol plants, and certain hotels and casinos.

In many cases job growth will not just be from direct implementation of renewable energy projects, but also indirectly. Savings from use of renewable energy sources can be reinvested in business growth, which, at least in non-recessionary times, usually leads to job growth.

For a further discussion of green jobs check out our comprehensive downloadable book, Green Jobs Guide.