Weekend reads: Green jobs and green buildings
Recession proof green jobs, $7 million in energy efficiency savings and more.
Fri, Feb 10 2012 at 3:00 PM EST
Photo: Be The Change, Inc./Flickr
A new study from Next 10 discovered that green jobs in California were more resilient than traditional jobs during the state’s most recent recession. The report examined job losses between January 2009 and 2010; the state saw a seven percent job loss rate overall but only a three percent loss in green jobs. So green jobs may not exactly be recession proof but they certainly fared better than average during California’s economic downturn.
Next time you see someone say that energy efficiency upgrades don’t pay off, show them this story about Autodesk’s $7 million annual savings. That’s right, $7 million in savings a year. Granted, this is on a much larger scale than home energy efficiency projects but you can’t argue against the company’s significant data center savings.
Lynelle Cameron, director of sustainability at Autodesk, comments on the data center savings for this GreenBiz.com article, “We had a goal to reduce our energy use by 50 percent and we're now at 60 percent. The good news behind that is not just that we've reduced our carbon footprint significantly from our data centers, but also we have $7 million of savings annually as a result of that project."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the Green Streets-Green Jobs-Green Towns initiative will double its grant program to $400,000 this year. The initiative is designed to “help cities and towns in the Chesapeake Bay watershed accelerate greening efforts that improve watershed protection, community livability, and economic vitality.”
I’ve written about the opportunity to provide meaningful job opportunities to ex-convicts while supporting the nation’s growing green economy several times over the past three years. An article that appeared on the Huffington Post earlier this week takes a deeper look at the issue.
In her article, Green Jobs for Ex-Cons: Fixing Broken Systems, Colleen Murphy-Dunning discusses the Urban Resources Initiative’s GreenSkills program. The program “works with small crews of ex-offenders every year, merging prison reentry with job training in urban forestry and environmental stewardship. We are part of a growing group of organizations across the country testing the premise that horticultural work can restore urban ecosystems, environmental value, and vulnerable populations.”
Recycling kitchen exhaust into electricity
The Olive 8 Hotel was the first LEED certified hotel in downtown Seattle and the engineering team is doing something quite remarkable, turning kitchen exhaust into useable electricity.
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Comments
bernard.ferret
03/24/2012 20:08 PM
California has a big problem with green jobs: education! the Centers of Excellence, in collaboration with the Solar Foundation and the Solar Energy Industries Association took a look at the solar energy industry in California, drawing some interesting conclusions on the future of green jobs across the state.
The study found that the problem was not with the number of available jobs, but was due to a mismatch between the type of training offered by the Community Colleges and what qualifications.... More
