Jobs are on the lips of every politician these days. Economists say there's a severe shortage of jobs, which continues to drag down the pace of recovery. With millions of under and un-employed Americans looking to re-enter the workforce, we need to generate smart economic growth -- building toward the industries of tomorrow, starting today.
To clean energy advocates such as myself, jobs have taken on an outsized importance as we tell the stories of successes in the clean energy economy, and push back on unfortunately politically-motivated (and dirty-fuel funded) narratives that deny the growth of the clean energy economy and claim clean energy jobs are fiction.
There’s a lot of misinformation being circulated about clean energy and jobs and we think it’s critical that Americans get the real story. So over the last six months, NRDC's affiliate, Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) has published a weekly summary highlighting individual announcements of new jobs from companies, cities and organizations, and many other entities. It tells the story of what’s really happening in the clean energy economy in community after community across the country.
And every quarter, E2 sums up and analyzes those announcements in a report to show the bigger picture. Among the highlights of this most recent report:
- More than 126 companies, cities and organizations announced the creation of new clean energy jobs.
- These announcements (137 in all) include manufacturing plants, power generation projects, energy efficiency retrofits and other projects in 42 states and 101 congressional districts.
- If all these announcements from the last three months come to fruition, as many as 46,000 jobs could be created.
But what’s most impressive is the level of entrepreneurship and innovation taking place among the companies, including E2 members and many, many more included in the report. Along with smart, efficient and transparent government support programs at the local, state and the federal level, America is regaining its edge in the global race to take a lead in the clean economy.
The bottom line – clean energy jobs are here, they’re real and they’re very much a growing part of the U.S. economy.