California, the state that the Hollywood film industry calls home, can boast 43,700 paying jobs in the solar industry in 2012, versus only 32,300 paid actors. Texas clocked in with 3,200 solar jobs, in comparison to the state’s 270 to 2,410 ranchers. And across the entire nation, 119,000 Americans were employed by the solar industry in 2012, versus only 87,500 by the coal mining industry.

All that’s according to the Solar Foundation (TSF), which compiled its 2012 survey of solar jobs in the United States several months ago, and just released the numbers via a new interactive map. That map also provides info on each state including solar jobs per capita, number of solar companies, number of solar-powered homes, and the legal status of third-party ownership.

The Solar Foundation’s announcement contains further details:

“In comparing our estimates with data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we find that California now has more solar workers than actors and that there are more solar jobs in Texas than there are ranchers. Economies of scale are also making our industry more labor efficient, requiring only one-third the number of workers to install a megawatt of solar today as it did in 2010,” [said Andrea Luecke, Solar Foundation Executive Director.]

The top ten states for solar jobs in 2012 were: California, Arizona, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, Texas, Michigan, and Ohio. In comparing solar employment estimates from today’s release with previous state figures that examined solar jobs in only a few states, six states – California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado, and New York – are in the top ten for the third year in a row. Many of the highest-ranked solar jobs states are also those with the greatest cumulative installed capacity in the nation.

TSF’s work also determined that several of the top ten states — New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, and Ohio — actually rank in the bottom 30 percent of states in terms of available sunlight. The strong industry presence despite a seemingly unfavorable climate is thanks to “high electricity prices and favorable tax and regulatory policies” as CNN Money put it. Skeptics might consider that evidence of an artificial market created through government intervention, but then our national failure to properly price carbon emissions and natural capital is massively subsidizing non-renewable power in the opposite direction.

Other facts the Solar Foundation dug up included a 13.2 percent job growth rate in the solar industry from 2011 to 2012 — which added almost 14,000 jobs — versus a mere 2.3 percent growth rate in the overall economy. 86 percent of those were 14,000 were entirely new jobs, as opposed to previously existing positions that simply added on solar components. And finally, another 17.2 percent job growth rate is expected in the industry for this year, meaning another 20,000 jobs.

(h/t: CNNMoney)

By Mari Hernandez and Rebecca Lefton

In March, the Bureau of Labor Services released its green jobs report, which reported a total of 3.4 million jobs associated with the production of green goods and services in 2011 – up from 3.1 million green jobs in 2010. Growing at a rate four times faster than all other jobs, the green sector offers new opportunities for good-paying jobs across the U.S. and raises the question: Are women benefitting from the transition to a green economy as much as men?

A new study suggests not, finding that women hold just three out of ten green jobs in the U.S. and are making less than men in the green sector. In the report “Quality Employment for Women in the Green Economy,” the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) provides estimates of the number of green jobs held by women within each state, industry and occupation using data gathered from surveys (BLS Green Goods and Services Survey and U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2008-2010), state reports and a 2011 report on green jobs (Brookings study). Several of the key findings from the report include:

• Women are underrepresented in the green economy, holding just 29.5 percent of green jobs compared to 48 percent of the total U.S. workforce
• Women’s estimated median earnings are higher in the green economy than in the overall economy ($38,486 compared to $35,574)
• The gender wage gap is lower in the green economy than in the overall economy (18 percent compared to 22 percent, for 2008-2010)
• The distribution of jobs in the green economy is more concentrated in industries that typically employ more men than women, including manufacturing, construction, transportation, warehousing and utilities
• Women’s share of green jobs is expected to stay low since the occupations that are projected to see the most growth are traditionally held by men (heating and air conditioning technicians, carpenters and electricians)

With this first-of-its-kind analysis of the gender distribution of green jobs, the IWPR has uncovered both good and bad news. The good news: the green economy offers higher-paying jobs for women and a lower wage gap. The bad news is that this report also exposed the glaring underrepresentation of women in the green economy and a bleak outlook for women in the sector going forward.

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A new report by Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), flagged this past week by the San Antonio Business Journal, found that over 110,000 new clean energy jobs were announced in 2012. The group tracked over 300 project announcements across multiple sectors and in every region of the country.

A few of the noteworthy 2012 trends in E2′s report include:

• Public transportation drove clean job growth nationwide, clocking in at over 43,000 jobs over the course of the year. Power generation, most of which came from solar, wind, and geothermal, came in second with more than 30,000 jobs.
• Solar power was a strong and steady job creator throughout the year, and especially in the fourth quarter, providing over 19,000 jobs between the manufacturing and power generation sectors.
• Investment in energy efficiency hit a record high of $5.6 billion in 2012, according to E2′s analysis of government data, thanks to the announcement of as many as 9,000 new jobs.
• Uncertainty over the production tax credit hit wind energy, leading to a decline in job creation announcements in the fourth quarter, even as capacity installation ramped up at the end of the year to get in under the anticipated expiration. But now that the “fiscal cliff” deal has extended the credit for another year, 2013 expectations show wind energy regaining some of its momentum.

State-wise, California dominated 2012 with 26,354 jobs announced, and North Carolina came in second with 10,867 jobs. The latter state lead the way at years’s end, however, announcing 7,610 of its total jobs in the fourth quarter — over 6,000 more than any other state. Florida, Illinois, Connecticut, Arizona, New York, Michigan, Texas, and Oregon rounded out the rest of the top ten states for clean energy job creation, in that order.

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) made an appearance on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning less than 12 hours after delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Obama’s State of the Union address. The Republican Party’s newest champion took the time to shoot down the realities of climate change and the kinds of regulations that he himself once supported as the speaker of the house in Florida.

During his speech on Tuesday, President Obama called for a market-based approach towards solving the climate crisis, stressing the economic as well as environmental benefits that derive from investments in clean energy. In response, Rubio attacked cap and trade legislation as an economic menace that would cripple the recovery, and he repeated the claim again this morning:

RUBIO: The government can’t change the weather. I said that in the speech. We can pass a bunch of laws that will destroy our economy, but it isn’t going to change the weather. Because, for example, there are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point, China, India, all these countries that are still growing. They’re not going to stop doing what they’re doing. America is a country, it’s not a planet. So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy.

Watch it:

In fact, Rubio is wrong that “there are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point.” There is only one — China — and it is still a long way away from reaching America’s level of cumulative carbon pollution, and it is the total pollution emitted to date that drives climate change. That’s why it is so important America lead the way on climate action.

Rubio’s anti-science rhetoric is no surprise since he has also expressed skepticism towards the nearly universal consensus among scientists that humans have played a detrimental role in climate change.

While Rubio is right that America is not a planet, he is wrong to suggest that cap and trade — which has in the past enjoyed bipartisan support — would hinder economic growth. In fact, just last week a consortium of 9 northeastern states and the privately owned energy companies that power them announced they would be expanding a regional cap and trade system that has been in place since 2008, citing the positive economic and environmental benefits reaped over the last five years.

Rubio himself sought to turn Florida into “the Silicon Valley” of the green energy industry, lauding the state’s push for a version of cap and trade legislation as a potential moneymaker for Floridian businesses during a 2008 floor speech. There is also ample evidence to suggest that investments in renewable energy would help create millions of jobs and quicken the economic recovery, not hamper it as Rubio claims.

As President Obama noted in his address, other countries — China included — have raced ahead of the United States in the development of clean, alternative energy. And in Europe, countries like Germany have taken far greater strides than the U.S in solar energy, producing as much as 80 times more electricity relative to energy consumption through photovoltaic panels as compared to the United States.

At his confirmation hearing for Secretary of State, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took a strong position on the urgent need for climate action.

Kerry’s likely confirmation is good news for confronting climate change. He has a long career as a climate hawk, taking to the Senate floor to call for action on our “biggest long-term threat” to national security. With the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline in the next Secretary of State’s hands, his remarks may mean some hope for the administration’s decision on the tar sands project. He urged senators to consider the cost of climate inaction, saying “I will spend a lot of time trying to persuade you and other colleagues of this.”

Kerry responded forcefully to Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) concerns over environmental protections hampering the economy:

I would respectfully say to you that climate change is not something to be feared in response to — the steps to respond to — it’s to be feared if we don’t. 3,500 communities in our nation last year broke records for heat … and we had a derailment because of it. We had record fires. We had record levels of damage from sandy, $70 billion. If we can’t see the downside of spending that money and risking lives for all the changes that are taking place, to agriculture, to our communities, the ocean and so forth, we are ignoring what science is telling us. I will be a passionate advocate on this not based on ideology but based on facts and science, and I hope to sit with all of you and convince you that this $6 trillion market is worth millions of American jobs and we better go after it.

Watch it:

Kerry also noted the extraordinary success story renewables play in his home state’s economy. “I can tell you, Massachusetts, fastest growing sector of our economy is clean energy and energy efficiency companies. And they’re growing faster than any other sector,” he said.

If the recent election taught us anything, it’s that we need to re-frame the politics of clean energy.

Sure, advocates celebrated a victory last November by keeping President Obama and many others who understand the importance of the clean energy economy in office. After more than a year of spurious political attacks against Solyndra, green jobs, and the clean energy stimulus, that was a considerable achievement.

But those victories have come at a considerable cost.

In Washington, some of the political hostility has died down after the election. However, as negotiations around raising the debt ceiling unfold, there are already renewed calls to cut federal funding for key programs supporting renewable energy, efficiency, and other cleantech industries. That’s because many Republicans see cleantech as just another special interest feeding off government — not as a core driver of environmentally-minded business in the 21st century.

A lot has changed since since the mid-2000′s when the sector had overwhelming bipartisan support in national politics. Two things happened: The cleantech sector got a considerable boost through the stimulus, making it a punching bag for conservatives targeting government spending; and the commercialization of fracking technologies caused a resurgence in the U.S. oil & gas sector, directly challenging clean energy.

As the editors of MIT’s Technology Review pointed out recently, making cleantech a part of the stimulus package was necessary and important for helping lay the foundation for a clean energy transition. But simply selling it as a short-term jobs creator did some damage to the political credibility of the sector.

“We cautioned against conflating economic stimulus with a sustainable and effective energy policy. Leading economists noted that job creation needed to happen quickly, while transforming our energy infrastructure would take decades,” wrote the editors.

Of course, there were a lot of real and undeniable successes spurred by the stimulus package that deserve to be mentioned. (Time Magazine’s Michael Grunwald does a great job reporting on the many success stories in clean energy and other sectors in his recent book on the stimulus).

Consider this: In 2006, wind turbine manufacturers were only able source 35 percent of components from American companies. Today, in large part due to the stimulus, there are now 500 manufacturing facilities in operation around the U.S. that supply nearly 70 percent of components for American wind farms. That’s a doubling of domestic sourcing in five years.

Since 2008, America’s production of renewable electricity has nearly doubled; we have increased home weatherization by 1,000 percent; the industry was saved from a complete financial collapse by a Treasury grant program that supported 75,000 jobs; the solar and wind industries now support nearly 200,000 American jobs combined; and economy-wide, there are roughly 2.7 million green jobs spread across a range of sectors.

We should embrace these successes. But when taking them in a broader economic context, we must also state the obvious: The green jobs revolution that was touted before the stimulus package passed did not fully emerge.

That’s because the economic revolution spurred by clean energy isn’t really a revolution — it’s a multi-decade evolution. While this sector will certainly continue to create good American jobs, they don’t just appear in a four-year political time frame. Combine these less-than-expected green jobs numbers with a few high-profile bankruptcies of flashy government-backed cleantech companies, and you get a toxic political result.

“The outcome, which we foresaw in our 2009 article, was an entirely unnecessary black eye for the clean-energy effort,” wrote the MIT Technology Review editors in their assessment of the stimulus.

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by Walter Frick, via BostInno

Remember how your Little League jersey sported the name of a local business? Well, the Framingham Jr. Flyers football team has an unconventional sponsor: energy efficiency.

Through a partnership with Boston-based Next Step Living, for every energy assessment completed using the Flyers’ referral link, the team earns $10. The alliance may seem unorthodox – and it is – but it’s consistent with Next Step’s unique vision for spreading the energy revolution. The key to selling energy efficiency in the residential market, according to Next Step CEO Geoff Chapin, isn’t fancy technology, sleek web apps, or colorful fliers. It’s building trust within the community.

While high profile cleantech startups continue to go bankrupt, Next Step has done work in 20,000 homes and grown to over 400 employees, hiring for a wide range of skill and education levels. Though the luster of green jobs may have vanished at the national level, it’s alive and well at Next Step. It’s a success story built around strong execution rather than exclusive IP, and potentially a model for venture capitalists looking to reset their approach in the energy space.

How To Pick Up One Dollar Bills

There’s a famous joke, if you could call it that, among economists that goes like this: two economists are walking down the street, and one of them spots a dollar bill on the street. “Look, a dollar bill!” one says. “Impossible,” replies the other. “If that were true, someone would have picked it up by now.”

Energy efficiency is sort of like the dollar bill. Free market types are puzzled as to why homeowners haven’t already invested in improvements, if doing so would save them money, as is often the case (especially once state incentives are taken into account).

But anyone in business knows it doesn’t work that simply. You might have a great idea for a product or service, but getting people to take time out of their busy days to even learn about it, much less buy it, can be a daunting task. It’s hard enough to get users to download a free mobile app; imagine convincing them to replace all their windows.

That’s where community groups and local sports teams come in. Back when Next Step was founded four years ago, it was selling energy audits and efficiency improvements to environmental types, the true believers who wanted to do the right thing. But that only gets you so far. And a lot of potential customers motivated purely by ROI frankly won’t believe you if you just show up and promise them huge savings, Chapin told me. They’ll only listen “if they’re approached by groups they trust,” he said.

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by Casey J. Bell

The impact of investments in energy efficiency extends well beyond reducing energy costs or addressing the environmental impacts of energy extraction and use. These investments provide jobs for American workers and help them to support their families and communities.

ACEEE has just released a series of six profiles of real world experiences in energy efficiency job creation. These profiles describe programs, policies, investments, partnerships, and business models that have catalyzed regional increases in employment. While previous ACEEE work has provided an analytic framework for how jobs are created through efficiency, this paper focuses on the jobs themselves.

Energy efficiency catalyzes employment opportunities that draw upon the broad range of Americans’ skills. Moreover, as companies’ investments in energy efficiency improve their bottom lines, they experience increased competitiveness, which is a potential contributing factor in bringing jobs back to American soil. Each profile serves as an independent portrait of the various driving forces behind energy efficiency job creation, illustrates the diversity of energy efficiency jobs, and demonstrates the extent to which they draw upon Americans’ existing skills and competencies.

Highlights in the paper distilled from conversations with program representatives and literature review include:

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