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.

Tornadoes, floods, and the usual spring weather have not dampened the green job revival! Here’s the latest news:

• Fuel-efficient cars increase vehicle sales - and employment: A report by analysts at Citigroup distributed at the conference said that while the fuel-economy standards currently under consideration by the Obama administration would result in a 6 percent increase in industry sales in 2020, compared with their baseline scenario.
• RMT to Build Ten New Wind Projects and Eight New Solar Projects: RMT, which specializes in the design and construction of clean energy facilities, has recently been selected to design and build ten new wind power projects totaling approximately 1,100 MW and eight utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) projects totaling 55 MWdc during 2011. These projects bring RMT’s total renewable energy portfolio to over 4,900 MW.
• Mortenson Builds its 19th Wind Project in Home State of Minnesota: Mortenson Construction, one of the leading renewable contractors in North America, will soon break ground on the 44 megawatt Oak Glen Wind Farm, located on a 3,000 acre agricultural site located in Blooming Prairie, MN. The project’s owner is the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency and its 11-member utilities. Mortenson’s scope of work will include the erection of 24, 1.8-megawatt turbines and the construction of foundations, access roads, underground collection, and a 69kV substation.
• How Green Jobs are Helping Arizona: Eleven solar manufacturers have located to the Phoenix metropolitan area in the last year, partly driven by a renewable-energy tax break Arizona recently passed. But they’ve also been lured by Arizona’s aggressive courtship — the combined efforts of officials and businessmen to outbid other states starving for jobs.
• Report: Top 10 clean-energy states identified: The survey used more than 3,500 data points and 70 major indicators drawing from both municipal and private data sources to evaluate all 50 states in the U.S. for how well they did on policy, technology, and capital when it came to green tech. Factors for evaluating each state included: the amount of green-tech related patent activity; the amount of green-tech venture capital being invested; the number of alternative fuel, electric, and hybrid vehicles registered in the state; and the percentage of electricity produced from clean sources.

What’s happening in green jobs:

• Mascoma to build cellulistic ethanol plant in Michigan: the Mascoma Corporation of Lebanon, N.H., said it had reached an agreement with Valero, the nation’s largest independent oil refiner, under which Valero would take the entire output of a commercial plant that Mascoma was to break ground on this year in Kinross, Mich. It is the first such “offtake” agreement in the industry, Mascoma said. The plant is supposed to be running by 2013.
• A Silicon Valley photovoltaic cell maker plans a huge factory in South Carolina: By the end of 2014, AQT Solar’s thin-film solar factory will have an annual manufacturing capacity of 1,000 megawatts and employ up to 1,000 workers.
• Evergreen Solar shutters costly US plant: Evergreen Solar will close its Massachusetts factory, saying that the U.S. is at a disadvantage in the face of low-cost Chinese solar suppliers. The company yesterday said that its Devens, Mass., plant, a converted military facility, will be shut down by the end of the first quarter of this year. The move will result in 800 lost jobs, leaving about 100 in its Marlborough, Mass.-based headquarters.
• 
  

  Mortenson Construction and enXco Partner to Build 400 MW Wind Capacity in Minnesota: Mortenson Construction and San Diego-based developer, enXco have completed the 201-megawatt Nobles Wind Project in Reading, Minnesota. The Nobles Wind Project represents about half of the 400 megawatts the enXco-Mortenson partnership plans to install in Minnesota by the summer of 2011. Mortenson and enXco are building the 205.5-megawatt Lakefield Wind Project about 30 miles from the Nobles project site in the southwest corner of Minnesota which will be completed by September of 2011.

• Green Jobs Outpace Overall California Job Market Recovery: The second edition of the Many Shades of Green report, published by California-focused research group Next 10, looks at how green jobs changed throughout the state from January 2008 to the start of 2009. While overall jobs grew less than 1 percent, green jobs grew by 3 percent.

 

As the immediate effects of the BP oil spill begin to fade, the long term effects are still be determined. The cleanup will continue to generate new jobs in the Gulf Region for months (if not years) to come. However, the oil spill wasn’t the only news in the green economy - read on:

• New efforts on a renewable electricity standard: Some clean energy and climate advocates have shifted their sights to a scaled-back but still ambitious goal: passage of a national renewable electricity standard. Such a law would require utility companies to produce a set amount of electricity from renewable sources by a certain date, spurring the development of clean sources like wind and solar and probably lowering overall emissions nationally. Such a standard would drive additional employment in the wind and solar sectors.
• Wind farm ‘mega-project’ underway in Mojave Desert: the project is officially breaking ground in the Tehachapi Pass, a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy about 75 miles north of Los Angeles. When completed, Alta could produce three times as much energy as the country’s largest existing wind farm, analysts said. It’s slated to be done in the next decade and will create hundreds of construction and maintenance jobs.
• New Stirling engine solar heating and power system in Colorado: Cool Energy, of Boulder, Colorado, a developer of clean energy heat and power generating systems, today announced that Xcel Energy will be providing research and analytical support for the first planned pilot field installation of the SolarFlowÆ System in a commercial building located in Boulder, Colorado.
• Xtreme Power raises cash for renewable-energy storage: Xtreme Power, an Austin, Texas company which is commercializing battery technology originally developed for electric vehicles, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has raised nearly $30 million to expand into utility energy storage.

Here’s the latest in job-related news for the green economy:

• Made in the U.S.A.: Efficiency Materials- Equipment like caulking and insulation €” basic tools for retrofitting the country’s homes and businesses — is almost entirely made in the United States. This creates jobs in manufacturing AND energy efficiency!
• Clean water tech in Ontario: Ontario’s government has announced plans to position the province as North America’s â”clean water technology capital,” including incentives for new jobs.
• Big oil tackles solar in New Mexico: The Chevron Questa project will be the largest CPV installation in the US and one of the largest in the world.
• Jobs in energy efficiency: Proposed federal energy efficiency jobs provisions would create about 333,000 jobs in 2010 and then 184,000 jobs in 2011 as funding begins to ramp down, according to a new analysis released today by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).
• The greenest companies in Silicon Valley: We applied the criteria of the Tomorrows Value Rating to some of the most highly regarded companies — the 15 largest ICT companies (based on 2009 sales) headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A quick rundown of green jobs news for the week:

• Green jobs in the midwest: A new report from the Univ. of Michigan and the Climate Group could add up to 100,000 new jobs in the midwest from wind turbines, hybrid vehicles manufacturing, and other low carbon technologies.
• Climate change creates more jobs: Revenues from energy efficiency, renewables, and other climate-related sectors could top $2 trillion by 2020, according to a report by HSBC Global Research. Growth of this magnitude will fuel increased job opportunities.
• Wind power is going strong: The world’s wind power capacity grew by 31% in 2009, with new wind developments representing more than $2.2 billion in investments.
• Hawaiian solar: Hoku Scientific and Tianwei are investing $50 million in solar projects throughout Hawaii - creating jobs for both installation and operation of the projects.

We’ll be looking at green jobs by sector over the next several weeks. One of the areas that has gotten less attention than others is energy conservation and efficiency. Perhaps it’s because these jobs are less sexy or cutting edge - but the fact remains that the retrofitting of buildings over the next decade will continue to be a growth industry.

What types of jobs are part of this sector?

• Installers of insulation, weatherstripping, etc.: To do the hands-on work of improving building efficiency
• Building energy analysts, building inspectors, etc.: To analyze structures and determine retrofitting needs
• Mechanical engineers, industrial energy efficiency engineers, etc.: To create the schematics and technical plans necessary for implementing efficiencies
• Sales and marketing professionals: To sell energy conservation and efficiency solutions to residential, commercial, and industrial customers
• Technical writers: To translate technical materials and instructions into language end users can understand
• Instructors and educators, outreach professionals, etc.: To train prospective job seekers, customers, and others in energy conservation and efficiency
• Project managers: To manage building retrofitting projects

As you can see, energy conservation and efficiency jobs run the gamut, encompassing numerous disciplines. The important thing to remember from a job seeker’s point of view is that the Federal government has injected substantial funding for this type of work at both the national and state level. Part of that money has been earmarked for training. So if you’re in a different but related field now, you may be able to have all or a portion of your retraining costs covered.

Where to start? First, as always, spend some time assessing your skills and interests. Which energy conservation jobs appeal to you? Next, determine what additional training you need to land the job you want. Some companies may be willing to take you on as a trainee or intern; others rely on community colleges and vocational schools for their new employees.

Finally, approach your job search in a methodical, thorough manner - don’t expect an energy conservation job to fall in your lap! Identify companies and organizations in your area that employ people in your target job. Use job sites (such as Great Green Careers) to locate advertised jobs. And don’t give up - energy conservation employment will continue to grow for years to come!

The green economy is all over - but some places provide more fertile ground for green job seekers. In a recent report by Jim Motavalli on The Daily Green, 5 cities are singled out for their growth in green jobs.

Growth in the green sector has been strong - and as many as 1.9 million jobs are expected by 2020 from the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The stimulus bill is pumping $30 billion into the clean energy sector alone.

Without further ado, here are the top cities for green jobs:

1) New York City: The city has just launched PlaNYC, which includes 127 initiatives for greening the city - plus $1 billion retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency. Interestingly enough, EarthLab Foundation ranks NYC as the 2nd greenest city in the US in terms of carbon output.

2) San Francisco: � California leads the nation in clean energy jobs, and many of those are in the San Francisco area. Voters recently approved $100 million in revenue bonds to support renewable energy, and 20 big construction projects have applied for LEED certification.

3) Boston: The number three energy source in this city is wind power! The city is home to multiple universities, green companies, and R&D firms - all combining to create a steady flow of new green jobs.

4) Detroit: Despite Michigan’s 15.3% unemployment rate, Detroit has benefited from DOE funding for green tech initiatives that aim to employ skilled labor in the area. There are a cluster of companies tied to green transportation in the area, and abandoned industrial plants have been converted to new incubators for solar and wind companies.

5) Portland: The Oregon city has a lengthy environmental heritage and is ranked most friendly to bikes in the nation. The state has almost 20,000 green jobs, many of them located in Portland.

You should also take a look at Clean Edge’s list of the 15 best areas for clean tech jobs, which includes Houston, Phoenix, and Austin.

The first thing most job seekers interested in green jobs ask is “What exactly is a green job?” Honestly, this is a pretty tough question to answer - apart from obvious professions such as renewable energy and green building, many jobs fall into a gray (rather than green) area.

Perhaps a better question to ask is: “What are the top green jobs available?” Luckily, we’re not the first to ask this - so without further ado, here are a few useful lists to get you thinking about your green careers:

From Forbes: 6-figure green jobs:

1. Chief Sustainability Officer (Chief Environmental Officer/ Chief Green Officer)
2. Environmental Lawyer
3. Environmental Engineer
4. Climatologist/Environmental Meteorologist
5. Renewable Energy Manager
6. Environmental Specialist/Scientist
7. Senior Urban Planner
8. Commercial/Industrial Designer
9. Conservation Scientist
10. Senior Hydrologist

From CareerBuilder: Top 25 green gigs:

1. Hydrologist
2. Environmental Engineer
3. Pest Control Technician
4. Conservation Biologist
5. Science Teacher
6. Toxicologist
7. Pollution Control Technician
8. Fund-raising Director
9. Ecologist
10. Camp Counselor
11. Business Manager
12. Economist
13. Forester
14. Environmental Attorney
15. Community Affairs Manager
16. Environmental Health and Safety Technician
17. Landscape Architect
18. Waste Disposal Manager
19. Environmental Chemist
20. Corporate Waste Compliance Coordinator
21. Urban and Regional Planner
22. Agricultural Inspector
23. Wastewater Water Operator
24. Wildlife Biologist
25. Pollution Control Engineer

From Boston.com: Green-collar jobs:

1. Green Interior Designer
2. Eco-Friendly Furniture Builder
3. Green Landscape Architect
4. Green Fashion Designer
5. Environmental Scientist and Hydrologist
6. Protection Technician
7. Heating, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Mechanic and Installer
8. Construction Manager
9. Farm, Ranch, and Agricultural Manager Specializing in Organic Production
10. Financial Analyst/Adviser Specializing in Socially Responsible Investing
11. Solar Installer
12. Sustainable-Design Architect
13. Environmental Lawyer
14. Fuel-Cell Entrepreneur
15. Environmental Engineer

Start searching!