Here’s the latest from the world of green jobs:

• EPA Chief Lisa Jackson Travels to San Francisco to Highlight Green Jobs, Tour Electric Vehicle Company that will announce its Plans to Double Bay Area Green Jobs: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson will visit San Francisco today, on the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union Address, to discuss the future of “green” jobs in the Bay Area at a company that will announce plans to double their San Francisco workforce. Jackson will discuss the local impact of issues laid out in the President’s speech during a tour of Mission Motors, a local SF green business that provides powertrain components for hybrid and electric vehicles. Mission is at the center of American ingenuity and clean technologies President Obama discussed in his State of the Union Address.
• Obama puts green jobs front and center: The president, during his annual speech, made references to action items like the Navy purchasing enough clean energy capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year and calling for the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes. We felt at the time these seemed like less ambitious goals than last year in regards to cleantech, but with what’s been spelled out now by the White House, we think Obama may well be on the right track for an election year.
• Illinois Recovers Florida’s Fumbled Light-Rail Dough: More than 100 million people live within 500 miles of each other in the Midwest-Great Lakes economic region and at rush hour, it can seem like they are all on the road at the same time. To help alleviate that congestion, trim the massive amount of energy used to move all those people in single-driver cars, generate jobs and clean the environment, the federal government is investing in light-rail in a big way. The U.S. Department of Transportation(DOT) has already invested more than $1.4 billion dollars to create an extensive light-rail network in the region and now, thanks to a baffling move by the state of Florida, Illinois is to supplement one of the network’s main corridors, a high-speed line reaching from Chicago to St. Louis.
• Montana’s Renewable Energy Storage Plans: Utility company NorthWestern Energy has signed a lease agreement with Beacon Power Corporation for a one-megawatt Beacon Smart Energy Matrix flywheel system to be installed at NorthWestern’s Dave Gates Generating Station at Mill Creek. The 150 MW natural gas fired facility, near the town of Anaconda, was designed to function as a regulating resource capable of precise load following. 
• First Wind Receives Approval from Maine DEP for 150 MW Oakfield Wind Project: First Wind has received unanimous approval from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for its proposed 150 MW Oakfield Wind project in Aroostook County, Maine. First Wind submitted an amendment in June 2011 to increase the size of the original proposal for a 51 MW Oakfield project, which had received full approval from the Maine DEP in January 2010.
• Federal Government Opens More Ocean to Wind Projects: Ken Salazar, the secretary of the interior, and Tommy P. Beaudreau, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the government had completed an environmental review and found that selling leases for wind energy would not create environmental problems in the designated “wind energy areas” off the coasts of Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Delaware.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at 11:22 am and is filed under Wind energy, Conservation & efficiency, Green job opportunities, Finding green jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.