{"id":2049,"date":"2011-08-21T23:14:50","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T03:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2011-08-21T23:32:40","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T03:32:40","slug":"green-jobs-scarce-despite-subsidies-and-great-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=2049","title":{"rendered":"Green Jobs: Scarce Despite Subsidies and Great Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Aaron Glantz, THE BAY CITIZEN, August 18, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"solar<\/a> Flanked by a cadre of local political leaders, Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose used a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a solar power<\/a> company last week to talk up the promise of the green economy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Reed called the opening of the new headquarters of SolFocus, which produces large, free-standing solar panels, an \u201cenormously important\u201d development for the city\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cClean technology is the next wave of innovation that Silicon Valley needs to capture,\u201d the mayor said, noting that the San Jose City Council had committed to increasing the number of \u201cgreen jobs\u201d in the city to 25,000 by 2022. San Jose currently has 4,350 such jobs, according to city officials.<\/p>\n

But SolFocus assembles its solar panels in China, and the new San Jose headquarters employs just 90 people.<\/p>\n

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. Gov. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t say I\u2019m not frustrated,\u201d said Van Jones, an Oakland activist who served briefly as Mr. Obama\u2019s green-jobs czar before resigning under fire after conservative critics said he had signed a petition accusing the Bush administration of deliberately allowing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a claim Mr. Jones denies.<\/p>\n

A study released in July by the non-partisan Brookings Institution<\/a> found clean-technology jobs accounted for just 2 percent of employment nationwide and only slightly more \u2014 2.2 percent \u2014 in Silicon Valley. Rather than adding jobs, the study found, the sector actually lost 492 positions from 2003 to 2010 in the South Bay, where the unemployment rate in June was 10.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. 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 in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.<\/p>\n

The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on as homeowners balked at the upfront costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies and public policy officials really overestimated how much consumers care about energy efficiency,\u201d said Sheeraz Haji, chief executive of the Cleantech Group, a market research firm. \u201cPeople care about their wallet and the comfort of their home, but it\u2019s not a sexy thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one. [Read rest of article]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The market for green jobs in the U.S. continues to fail expectations despite subsidies, in part because of lack of demand and bureaucratic delay. But the real kicker is the fact that labor-intensive manufacturing continues to be done everywhere but here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1326,1325,283,1116,1324,1328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2049"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2054,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2049\/revisions\/2054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}