In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years.
California Governor Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream observes Aaron Glantz. He adds, “A study released in July by the non-partisan Brooking Institution found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more—2.2 percent—in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from the 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.” (1)
Job training programs intended for the clean economy have also failed to generate big numbers. The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements—the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one. (1)
A recent analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that while adding more corn ethanol to gasoline would create some 27,000 jobs- each of those jobs could cost taxpayers as much as $446,000 a year. (2)
An Iowa plant President Obama visited has 91 employees. Another plant nearby, TPI Industries, which makes blades for wind turbines, employs another 300 workers, and its workforce may grow to 700 if demand increases as expected. Both of these plants are located in factory space that previously housed a Maytag factory which had employed 1,800 people. (3)
Michael Graetz notes, “Writing in the Washington Post about the shift to ‘smart meters’ from electric meters, Sunil Sharan questioned the job-creating potential of the more than $4 billion of 2009 stimulus funds for producing and installing nearly 20 million ‘smart meters’ by 2015. He pointed out that manufacturing of the meters will occur predominantly overseas and that domestic manufacturing jobs as well as supervisory domestic management, R&D, and information technology jobs are likely to number only in the hundreds or low thousands. Sharan estimated that it will take 1,600 new workers to install the 20 million smart meters over five years, but that eliminating the many meters that are now read manually each month will cost 28,000 meter readers their jobs over the same period.” (3)
Solar Leaves Many US Cities, Mostly For China
Suntech Power Holdings Company, which received a grant of $2.1 million to build a solar plant in Arizona is hiring 70 workers there to assemble components made by the company’s 11,000 Chinese employees. First Solar Inc., the world’s largest producer of thin-film solar power modules, received $16.3 million to add 200 jobs in Ohio, but the company also employs 4,500 workers worldwide, mostly in Malaysia, where it expects nearly three-quarters of its expected factory growth to occur. Many multi-national companies from Europe and the United States are building large factories in China to supply that nations’ rapid growth in generating electricity from wind and solar sources. (3)
In Massachusetts, the sun is setting on Evergreen Solar, whose green-energy business fizzled even though Governor Deval Patrick’s administration showered the company with $58 million in subsidies and tax breaks. Evergreen which made panels for solar-power generation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing $458.6 million in debts but only $424.5 million in assets. Evergreen cut about half of its 133 employees and sought bankruptcy protection after concluding that it couldn’t compete with low-cost Chinese manufacturers. The company had already shifted some work to China last year in a cost-cutting move, then closed its Devens factory in March and eliminated 800 jobs. (4)
The San Jose City Council has committed to increasing the number of ‘green jobs’ in the city to 25,000 by 2022. San Jose currently has 4,350 such jobs. But SolFocus, a solar power company with new headquarters in San Jose, assembles its solar panels in China, and the new San Jose headquarters employs just 90 people. (1)
Solar module manufacturer Solon Corp. will lay off 60 local workers as it shuts down its production facility in Tucson, the company reported earlier this month. (5)
Weatherization Delays
Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics has emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy—supposedly able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint. The announcement came with great fanfare. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting homes in poorer neighborhoods. But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers notes Vanessa Ho. (6)
Similar results have been noted in California. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs. (1)
References
- Aaron Glantz, “Number of green jobs fails to live up to promises,” The New York Times, August 18, 2011
- Steve Larkin, “Private sector ‘green jobs’ trump federally subsidized ones,” Canada Free Press, June 15, 2011
- Michael J. Graetz, The End of Energy, (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 168
- Jerry Kronenberg and Greg Turner, “Red ink sinks Evergreen Solar,” Boston Herald, August 16, 2011
- Dylan Smith, “Tuscon’s Solon to turn off solar manufacturing, lay off 60,” Tucson Sentinel, August 15, 2011
- Vanessa Ho, “Seattle’s ‘green jobs’ program a bust,” seattlepi.com, August 15, 2011
