What If Green Jobs Don't Pay?

What If Green Jobs Don't Pay?

Salaries at solar and wind companies are lower than you think.

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  • Brady Yauch is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
(Photograph of a worker installing solar panels by Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images)

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Submitted by CareerEco on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 3:48pm.

Energy Independence

I believe too many people are focusing on the political side of green and using that as a way to show that the administration will fail at bailing out the economy through "green." Whether "green jobs" can bail out the economy or not, the need to move the agenda of creating jobs that solve climate change is imperative. Energy independence which is tied to national security should also be the reason for green technologies to be subsidized and/or backed by the investment community. If we tie the economic recovery directly to the issues of green jobs and try to solve the entire problem with one agenda then I think we are missing the point. My point is: these are separate issues that should be addressed independent of one another as a pass or fail issue. If these issues converge positively where one can help solve the other then that is great, but if green is set up to save the economy and it can't do it fast enough then people may bail on the concept of green and we are already decades behind on what we could have been doing to foster alternative energy solutions since the Carter administration. No one said green would be easy and certainly the recovery won't be, both are just necessary and they cannot necessarily be contingent on one another. I hope that there will be many green opportunities in the future for all and I believe that will be the future of our economic growth but I don't know if it is our bail out solution but long-term thinking that should drive the concept of green careers. www.CareerEco.com

Submitted by hpickman on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 7:17pm.

Make the Clean Energy Revolution in America

This argument is great fodder for why we need a green domestic manufacturing plan. The $110 billion plus in stimulus money for clean technology and other policies under consideration by the Obama administration and Congress – including a renewable energy standard and a carbon pricing program - will create unprecedented new demand for clean energy systems, which means jobs. For example, requiring 25 percent of America’s energy to come from renewable sources could generate one million new manufacturing jobs and an additional 2.5 million jobs in related industries. The big question is where will those manufacturing jobs be? Only 50 percent of America’s existing wind turbines were manufactured domestically, and while the solar cell was invented in the U.S., four countries outpace American production of solar components. The country has a tremendous opportunity to rebuild U.S. manufacturing capacity to meet the clean energy needs of the future. Today, the Apollo Alliance is launching the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a comprehensive roadmap that lays out aggressive steps to ramp up domestic manufacturing of clean energy equipment and components while making factories more energy efficient. http://apolloalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/greenmap_proposal03... Our proposal would benefit tens of thousands of U.S. firms capable of making the equipment and components of the clean energy economy, the majority of which are located in the 20 states hardest hit by manufacturing job losses. We are also planning to air an ad in key states in order to build support for rebuilding our manufacturing sector and keeping jobs in the U.S. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3P-5ge65q0

Submitted by rselover on Fri, 04/17/2009 - 12:22pm.

Joe's wrong

Don't get me wrong, I am all for green jobs. I'm a geologist at a green energy firm. I've been working in the environmental field for 3 years now (following a 2-year masters program). I assure you, I definitely don't make anywhere NEAR $50 an hour, in fact, I make closer to the starting salary quoted by Joe. I agree that green collar jobs are the way of the future, but don't expect to be living large installing solar panels. I hope we've all learned by now there is no get-rich-quick scheme. At least not for the entire country.