25 Jun Chamber Releases ‘Green Jobs’ Report

Austin Business Journal
Metropolitan Austin needs a broad public relations strategy and a permanent steering committee coordinating training efforts in order to realize its potential as a center for so-called green jobs.
Those are the two primary recommendations in an initiative report on green job creation that the Austin Chamber of Commerce released Wednesday.
The report is the first from the Chamber’s Green Job Task Force, which launched in January 2009 to coordinate a community-wide approach to green job education and training. The task force’s goal is to help facilitate the training and retraining of up to 25,000 workers in Central Texas for green jobs, namely those in the energy efficiency or renewable energy arenas.
If those 25,000 jobs do materialize, they alone would likely account for an annual payroll of $1.5 billion, according to projections.
The report defines and gives perspective to job opportunities in those sectors. Some of the specific occupations likely to see growth include electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians and installers, weatherization technicians, energy analysts, electric grid technicians PV solar installers and technicians, building inspectors and others.
Funding for the initiative is also discussed. One of the primary sources cited in the report is the $36 billion for energy efficiency and $8 billion for renewable energy coming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Congress passed in February.
The report emphasizes the unique role green jobs can play in revitalizing the local economy. Higher wages, straightforward training, and longterm security are a few of the advantages of the sector, the report argues. With local unemployment nearly doubling in the last year, and many of the job losses happening in semiconductor manufacturing, it’s an incredibly important time for the region to refocus its efforts on a growth sector like green.

BRADFORD P. HARWICK
Vice President, Marketing

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