By Junayd Mahmood
Green jobs are real, and if the news out of Michigan is any indicator, they’re capable of reviving entire economies. Smart policies and investments on both the state and federal level are paying huge returns in Michigan by putting thousands back to work.
Michigan’s economy is recovering from a decade of devastating job losses – nearly a million jobs lost in the last decade – by luring clean energy manufacturing into the state. Economists expect Michigan to add 64,600 jobs in 2011 and 61,500 in 2012. A recent Gallup survey of state job markets ranks Michigan first in the nation for job creation.
Former Governor Granholm and her advisors had the foresight to plant the seeds of a clean energy economy well before the Great Recession. Granholm’s team created a $2 billion 21st Century Jobs Fund in 2005 to attract investment in the Michigan cleantech sector. In 2008, Michigan passed a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) requiring utilities to generate ten percent of their electricity from renewable sources and efficiency savings by 2015.
The recent job growth is the latest indicator of a dramatic shift in Michigan’s economy. Michigan businesses have $14 billion worth of projects in the pipeline, reflecting long-term industry investment in Michigan and the cleantech sector. According to Granholm, seventeen battery companies and fifty solar, wind, and biofuels companies moved to Michigan between August 2009 and December 2010 due to state tax incentives and federal stimulus grants.
Not only has Michigan aggressively moved into the cleantech sector, it is fast becoming the industry’s foremost innovator. Michigan holds 23 percent of the nation’s clean energy patents and continues to invest heavily in research and development. Last year, the University of Michigan alone spent $1.4 billion on R&D.
Michigan has a new Governor in Rick Snyder who campaigned as a “good, green Republican.” It is essential that he maintain Michigan’s clean energy momentum by preserving and building on the policies responsible for its emergence.
With every Michigander that goes back to work, Michigan proves economic prosperity doesn’t require defiling our precious natural resources. Clean energy produces good jobs that pay decent wages, protect the environment, and build a stronger middle class. Michigan is only the latest example, but as its economic woes begin to be replaced with clean energy prosperity, the rest of the nation can follow its example.
– By Junayd Mahmood
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It all sounds rosy until you realize that one out of five jobs in the private sector has disappeared in Michigan since the year 2000. A number that comes in at around 800,000 workers. So, if we can manage to keep up the current rate of gain in employment at around 62,000, it will take just over 12 years to get back to where we were at the turn of the century. This doesn’t include the extra jobs required for new workers entering the workforce.
While I’m a big proponent of clean energy jobs, we are also going to need to broaden our net here in Michigan to give those potential workers with non-specific skill sets an opportunity to find work.
I lived in Michigan most of my 36 years. Among my college friends from UM and MSU, I don’t think more than a quarter are still in Michigan.
And calling Snyder a “good green Republican” is a pure joke. He played sorta-moderate during the campaign, but has jumped straight to the right since he has taken office.
Snyder has been playing coy (mostly) about his energy plans so far, but his tea party cohort have been pretty clear.
Their agenda, kill clean energy, kill wind, kill solar, kill batteries, kill jobs, prop up big oil and big coal, return to the 19th century.
Note that Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Sixth District since the late 1980s, is now head of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. He wrote the bill to defund the EPA and specifically prevent it from classifying greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Among his closest colleagues is Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a total Big Oil guy. Upton received $10,000 from the Koch brothers during the last couple of years. Upton apparently thinks climate-change science is hippy paranoia and, in any case, anti-jobs and anti-American.
Will growth and jobs in the green economy alter Upton’s allegiances? Reason has been tried, so have facts and logic. Maybe if the industry could outspend Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Electricity in Upton contributions.
Some companies in the past have received federal or state funds or tax break to locate in the U.S./state and have left after the stipulated time is up. Hope that doesn’t happen to the green energy jobs in Michigan.