More than 1.1 million people have jobs in Europe’s renewable energy sector, according to new figures released from EurObserv’ER, a renewable energy tracking project supported by the European Commission.

The numbers, which don’t even account for the massive boom in renewables development in 2011, show a 25% increase in employment between 2009 and 2010, bringing documented jobs in the renewable energy sector throughout Europe to 1,144,000.

The boost in activity in 2010 represented about €127 billion ($166 Billion) in economic value, a 15% increase over 2009.

Unlike some reports documenting green jobs in the United States, these figures only include renewable fuels, heat and electricity. They do not include jobs in mass transportation, recycling, and green building design.

They show a very healthy diversity in Europe’s renewable energy sector. According to the 2010 figures, the top three sectors for employment were biomass (273,000), solar PV (268,110), and wind (253,145). The next largest were biogas (52,810) and solar thermal (49,845). Behind those sectors were ground source heat pumps, waste-to-energy, small hydro, and geothermal.

The increase in jobs corresponded with an increase in consumption of renewable energy. In 2010, renewables accounted for 12.4% of final energy consumption in Europe — up from 11.5% in 2009 and 10.5% in 2008.

And last year saw even stronger growth, particularly in the renewable electricity sector, where 68% of new capacity in Europe came from wind and solar.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the wind industry faces an expiration of short-term tax credits that threatens up to 37,000 manufacturing, installation and maintenance jobs. Will American politicians work to create one million jobs in renewable energy for people like Nathan Crawford documented in the video below?

Or will we allow other regions create millions more while we look backward?

by Jorge Madrid

Another week, another misguided attack on green jobs.

This week, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is going after the Department of Labor’s green jobs training program. The program, which was signed into law by fellow Republican George W. Bush, was funded for the first time under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Issa says the program has produced “abysmal results” and failed to meet its goal of placing 52,762 American workers into green jobs. As of June 2011, the program had placed 8,035 workers into jobs, about 10 percent of the final goal. While this placement ratio is indeed disappointing, it reflects deeper issues within the larger economy, and is also based on some premature and misleading analysis.

His attacks have been nicely debunked by both the Center for American Progress and Green for All, but it is worth revisiting the top reasons why Issa’s attacks miss both the point, and the facts, about green jobs.

1. Green Policy + Green Investment = Green Jobs

Jobs are created when the economy demands goods and services; and investment from the private sector flows to the market when policy “TLC” (transparency, longevity, and certainty) is strong.  The United States has not met either of those requirements when it comes to green jobs, and we largely have our Republican representatives and their rich patrons in the fossil fuel industry to thank for that.

For one, the 111^th Congress failed to put a price on carbon pollution, which would have sent a clear market signal to invest in low-carbon goods and services like solar, wind, and energy efficiency. For another, Republicans and the fossil fuel lobby have vehemently opposed nearly every policy that would signal increased demand to green employers, including a national renewable energy standard, and strengthening clean air standards on coal-fired power plants.

Without some TLC and strong policies in place, clean energy businesses will continue to face major market uncertainty; workers will continue to find it difficult to get good jobs in the green economy; and our country will continue to fall behind in the global clean energy race.

Issa and his Republican colleagues slashed the tires of our automobile and are now complaining that the car is moving too slow.

2. Job Training Does Not Necessarily Mean Job Creation

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With the word “jobs” on the lips of every policymaker in the country, here are some of the best ideas for creating well-paying employment opportunities for a wide range of people throughout the U.S.

Forget a top-10 list, we’re jumping straight to a top-20 list for job creation in 2012 – and clean energy, environmental standards and efficiency dominate the list. This list was not compiled by Climate Progress. It was compiled by the editorial team at the Center for American Progress. Many of the ideas are extensions of CAP’s “Meeting the Jobs Challenge” initiative launched in 2009. — Stephen Lacey

20 Ways to Create Jobs

1. Upgrade our nation’s roads, bridges, and other basic infrastructure: 18,000 new jobs for every $1 billion invested.

2. Launch a rehab-to-rent program to turn tens of thousands of government-owned foreclosed homes into affordable rental housing, stabilize neighborhoods, and put construction workers back on the job: 20,000 new jobs a year.

3. Implement new EPA rules governing toxic emissions from power plants: 40,000 new direct jobs.

4. Protect health care reform, which will reduce health insurance premiums, expand coverage, and create jobs: 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year for the next decade.

5. Retrofit for energy efficiency just 40 percent of the nation’s residential and commercial building stock and unleash massive demand for domestic labor: more than 625,000 new jobs over a decade.

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Report on a ten-state initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions shows the program is a success after three years.

By Maria Gallucci, excerpted from InsideClimate News

The state of Massachusetts is quietly reaping the benefits of cap and trade, the much-maligned process for curbing greenhouse gas emissions that federal lawmakers and many state governments resoundingly rejected in recent years. According to a recent study, cap and trade has created 3,800 jobs and nearly $500 million in economic activity for Massachusetts since 2008.

Massachusetts belongs to theRegional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first and only mandatory carbon emissions trading scheme in America. A report analyzing data from the first three years of the effort found that of the 10 participating Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, Massachusetts benefited most economically, because it used the bulk of its money to help fund its aggressive energy efficiency agenda.

“Energy efficiency investments have a much bigger multiplier effect than any other category of spending,” said Paul Hibbard, vice president of the Analysis Group, the Boston-based consulting firm that prepared the report. When homeowners and businesses used RGGI dollars to retrofit and weatherize buildings, they not only ended up saving on energy costs and spending money elsewhere in the economy—they also put contractors and installers to work.

RGGI “is a very successful program … and we look forward to continue achieving those results,” Mark Sylvia, commissioner of Massachusetts’ Department of Energy Resources, told InsideClimate News.

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by Jessica Goad, cross-posted from TP Green

Today over 100 economists from top universities, economic firms, counties, and other groups sent a letter to President Obama urging him to protect more national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas. The signatories make the case that because the western United States is shifting from a resource extraction-based economy to one founded in tourism and the migration of Americans wanting to live close to wide open spaces, protected places are valuable economically.

As the letter stated, “protected public lands are significant contributors to economic growth.” Ray Rasker, the executive director of Headwaters Economics, who holds a Ph.D from Oregon State University, further explained that:

In the last 40 years, the fastest growth in the West has been in communities that are adjacent to protected public lands. It’s one of the West’s competitive advantages, it’s one of the strengths of the West, and investing in these sorts of public lands—the wilderness areas, the national monuments, the national parks—is a way to protect the competitive advantage of the west. This is what is creating jobs currently, and at a time when we have high unemployment, we need policies that create jobs.

Watch it:

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