With The Clean Economy Sized, Now It's Time For Action

Just after the House passed the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act of 2012 which slashed a whooping near $6 Billion or 16% from President Obama's requested budget for energy and water in efforts to 'curb national spending to offset the federal deficit,' the Brookings Institute released a new report, Sizing The Clean Economy: A National And Regional Green Jobs Assessment. Hopefully this new report can act as a starting point to resolve the fallacious rumors about investing in clean energy technologies, and spur federal incentives to finally move towards a cleaner, greener and bluer economy and environment.

Some of the highlighted findings reported in Sizing the Clean Economy include:

• The clean economy employs approximately 2.7 million workers - more than the fossil fuel industry

• Clean energy industries including wind energy, solar photovoltaic, and smart grid added jobs at a "torrid pace" - outperforming the nation throughout the recession.

• The clean economy offers better opportunities and pay for low to middle skilled or "green collar" workers than the rest of the National economy.

The report further recommends the following government action:

• Scale up the market by taking steps to catalyze vibrant domestic demand for low-carbon and environmentally-oriented goods and services.

(These next two are big ones - and unfortunately not what is happening under H.R. 2354)

• Ensure adequate finance by moving to address the serious shortage of affordable, risk-tolerant, and larger-scale capital that now impedes the scale-up of numerous clean economy industry segments.

• Drive innovation by investing both more and differently in the clean economy innovation system.

Honest-to-the-bone and incontestable research such as this report that seriously need to be used in the grassroots, local and national efforts to drive the necessary change in (clean) energy policy that will protect our nations national resources. Without such evidence as this, folks will still run around spouting about how environmentalists are out to kill jobs and run up the national debt - because we aren't.

Download the executive summary of the report here.

Download the full report here.