In this paper, the Center for American Progress and Energy Resource Management look at state regulations and incentives for energy efficiency that are working today in leading states to accelerate demand for energy efficiency services, businesses, and ultimately jobs. As this market rapidly grows in coming years, states that have put in place strong policies for energy efficiency will be best positioned to capture these new employment opportunities for construction workers in clean energy. Despite the growing state leadership documented here, however, more must be done to capture the full potential of energy efficiency to serve as a national engine of reinvestment and job creation.

Read more here.

Opportunity Maine promotes innovative investments in Maine’s people, communities and economy. To further our mission, Opportunity Maine is launching a public education drive, in the greater Bangor Region, to talk with people about the economic benefits of home weatherization.

Opportunity Maine is hiring canvassers for this project in the greater Bangor Region. This is 6-8 week, part- or full-time, temporary position. Hours include early evenings and some weekends. Pay ranges from $9-$10.25/hr.

Qualifications:

• Excellent communication skills
• Dedication to economic opportunity
• Canvassing experience, sales experience and/or building trades experience preferred but not required

Interested candidates should send a cover letter, resume and references to Nicole Brown:

• nicole@opportunitymaine.org
• (207) 659-6199.

Opportunity Maine is an equal opportunity employer.

When heating oil spiked in 2008, roughly 500 Mainers took a state housing authority course to become weatherization technicians. Another 200 became certified energy auditors.

Then two unexpected things happened: Oil prices collapsed and the country plunged into a deep recession.

The result was that fewer people had the incentive or money to insulate their homes. Today, the majority of those trainees are doing other jobs or are out of work.

“It should be a cautionary tale,” said Curry Caputo, president of the Maine Association of Building Efficiency Professionals.

Maine won’t need hundreds of new insulation techs or auditors in the near future, Caputo said, despite the sense that a flood of federal stimulus money and the state’s goal of weatherizing all homes will create a wave of new, green jobs.

“The estimates are inflated,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Green jobs. Maine is trying to position itself as a leader in a clean-energy economy. Advocates envision thousands of green jobs, buttoning up drafty homes, developing wind farms and installing solar panels.

But a new report by the Maine Department of Labor says the reality is more complicated. It’s not possible now for the state to develop a detailed plan for green work force development, the department has concluded. Researchers can’t even confirm the number of green jobs in Maine today.

“It’s a moving target,” said John Dorrer, director of the state’s Center for Workforce Research and Information.

As weatherization training shows, green jobs are highly dependent on volatile energy prices, government policies and the overall economy. After consulting with state agencies and industry reps like Caputo, labor department researchers concluded the state will only need another 55 full-time energy auditors and 118 more weatherization techs between now and 2015.

“The last thing we should be doing is training more people,” Dorrer said.

To gain a more accurate picture, Maine has begun working with a consortium of seven Northeastern states that are using software to track Internet job postings that call for green job skills. This approach reflects a move away from simply counting green jobs to understanding what skills and educational requirements are needed to power a clean-energy economy.

The stakes are high for Maine. The state lost 30,000 jobs since the economy peaked in late 2007. Most were in manufacturing, retail and construction.

The energy sector holds promise for helping replace them. Some are near-term activities, such as land-based wind projects and new transmission lines. Others are long-term prospects, including offshore wind farms and biofuels development.

The labor department report, compiled this month for the Maine Legislature, represents a continuing attempt to tally clean-energy employment and plan for future training and education. From the start, researchers have run into a basic hurdle –how to define a green job.

The department tried to do this by identifying firms that say they’re involved with renewable energy or efficiency products or services. By that rough measure, Maine had 523 green employers and 16,782 green jobs in 2008.

But this approach has problems, Dorrer said.

If a bulldozer operator is opening a road at a wind farm, that’s a green job. But the job is no longer green, Dorrer said, when the operator finishes and moves to a highway bridge project. It’s the same with a heating contractor trained to install wood pellet boilers, or an electrician certified to wire solar panels.

So the focus shouldn’t be on green jobs specifically, Dorrer said, but the greening of jobs in general.

Dorrer said he’s reminded of late-20th century hype over high-tech jobs. Call centers were considered high-tech workplaces – not customer service employers — when they first began springing up in Maine. Today, working in front of a computer screen is the norm.

“I think a lot of that will happen with green jobs,” he said.

But the desire to count green jobs remains powerful because the numbers are a tool to shape public policy. And headcounts may invite hyperbole, when headlines fail to convey important details.

For instance: Efficiency Maine Trust is the new, independent agency preparing to coordinate the state’s conservation efforts. It recently unveiled a three-year plan that it says could create 12,000 new jobs.

But only 1,500 of those positions actually would be green jobs. The rest would be created through a multiplier effect, in which economists calculate how a job creates and supports additional employment.

Green job projections also tend to depend on the availability of public funding over time.

An example is the report released last April on Earth Day by Opportunity Maine, a Portland-based education and work force advocacy group. Maine could cut its energy bills by $10 billion and create 10,000 jobs over a decade with a comprehensive economic and energy plan, the group estimated.

The plan, however, needed $180 million a year that the group hoped to raise by convincing lawmakers to expand taxes on energy purchases, such as heating oil. That effort failed.

But the plan made a point, according to Rob Brown, the group’s co-director. To create and maintain green jobs, funding must remain predictable and the cost of energy has to be high enough.

“What drives demand is public and private investment, and energy prices,” he said.

Lacking a clear picture, educators are taking advantage of public investment, and perceived demand, to design green courses.

Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield is a leader in work force energy training. It received a $2.8 million federal grant last year to train community college instructors in the region who then will teach students how to install photovoltaic and solar hot water systems.

Students taking existing solar hot water courses tend to be plumbers who want to diversify, according to Dana Doran, the school’s director of energy programs. That approach is in line with the idea of expanding green skills, he said.

Doran said he’s aware, though, that fewer students are signing up these days for solar courses. It may be because there are enough installers now to meet consumer demand, he said.

But that reality hasn’t slowed weatherization and energy auditor training.

The school is planning to offer new courses this summer. Some students may be upgrading their skills to meet new certification requirements, but Doran said he doesn’t follow up to know how many recent graduates are working.

“There is demand,” he said. “We are filling the training programs.”

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/despite-predictions-state_s-green-economy-not-blooming_2010-04-17.html

With so much attention on health care, few have noticed that Congress just passed crucial legislation to expand educational opportunity.

Increasing access to higher education and training is the best way to prepare Americans with the knowledge and skills that the 21st century economy demands. Raising the proportion of degree holders in our work force is the best way to grow our economy. For individuals, every new level of educational attainment — from occupational certificate to associate degree to bachelor’s degree and beyond — translates into higher wages and lower likelihood of unemployment.

Unfortunately, the cost of higher education and training prevents many people from pursuing further education and training after high school. This is especially true in low-income, rural states such as Maine. Making college more affordable can help more people get over that financial hump, and will give our economy and businesses the skilled work force they need to thrive.

Over this last week, both houses of Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill that will make college much more affordable for Mainers and for the rest of the nation. It will increase the amount of Pell grants, which reduce the cost of college, and then effectively lower interest rates on the student loans that people use to cover the remaining costs. The bill will also reduce loan payments for people who have low incomes — a crucial protection at a time when student debt is at all-time highs and unemployment is widespread.

The bill accomplishes these things by eliminating the wasteful subsidized loan program, and replacing those loans with an expansion of the federal direct lending program. Under the subsidized loan program, the federal government provides billions of dollars in subsidies to private lenders to originate student loans, and then guarantees repayment of up to 97 percent. In the 1990s, the federal government established a direct lending program, which was able to make loans available much less expensively. Every $100 of loan costs the government $13.81 under the subsidized loan program, but only $3.85 under the direct lending program.

Moving from a mix of subsidized and direct lending to exclusively direct lending frees up $61 billion per year. $36 billion of that would go into increasing Pell grants in a way that keeps up with inflation. Without this infusion, Pell grants would have to be cut substantially, and 500,000 students would lose their grants, because so many people have chosen to go back to school during the recession; $1.5 billion would go to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income. At a time when Mainers’ average student debt loads have risen to $25,000, this provides much-needed economic security for people taking on the risk of student debt to pursue higher education and training.

Tens of thousands of Mainers rely on Pell grants and student loans, and these sweeping federal changes will magnify Maine’s impressive efforts in making college affordable. The Opportunity Maine Program, a state income tax credit that effectively wipes out student debt for Maine college graduates, is the nation’s boldest universal higher education guarantee. The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program invests in helping low-income workers to finish a degree, certification, apprenticeship or on-the-job training program in high-wage, high-demand fields. The Parents as Scholars program helps public assistance recipients pursue higher education.

With the federal government stepping up to make college more financially accessible, now is the time for Maine to redouble its efforts to catch up with the rest of New England in educational attainment. Studies have shown that we have the lowest incomes in New England because we have the lowest proportion of degree holders in our work force. Our state agencies, high schools and colleges need to tell students — over and over and over again — that no matter what their life circumstances, they can build better lives through higher education. The Opportunity Maine, Competitive Skills Scholarship and Parents as Scholars programs will work only if Maine residents know about them.

If we drive this message home with our young people and help our many displaced workers pursue higher education and training, we can emerge from this recession more prosperous than we entered it.

Cliff Ginn and Rob Brown are co-directors of Opportunity Maine.

Recently, Gov. John Baldacci and Democratic legislative leaders unveiled two bond packages to promote job creation. These proposals move in the right direction, but should go further.

In a recession, consumer spending and business investment plummet, leading to massive job losses. In the short term, those jobs can be replaced if public investment increases, through borrowing or through raising revenue in ways that do not further depress private spending and investment. If the public investments have high rates of return, they also make the economy more productive once it recovers.

The two bond proposals rightly emphasize high-return investments in energy efficiency, transportation and public infrastructure. A closer look at the benefits of energy investment shows how bonding can strengthen an economy over the long term.

Energy efficiency represents one of Maine’s best economic development opportunities. Most buildings, from homes to industrial facilities, could reduce energy consumption by more than 30 percent. Efficiency costs less than one-third as much as generated energy, and if Maine made every building 30 percent more efficient over the next decade, there would be savings of $8 billion to $10 billion during two decades and 10,000 jobs created.

Unfortunately, numerous market barriers prevent residents and businesses from investing in efficiency. That’s why public grants, loans and technical assistance are essential to build the new energy economy.

The bond proposals take modest steps toward realizing the possibilities in Maine’s energy future. The legislative proposal emphasizes efficiency in schools, colleges and universities, reducing governmental and educational costs while creating good-paying jobs.

The governor focuses on industrial efficiency grants, creating jobs while keeping our manufacturers competitive. The governor also rightly prioritizes further research and development investment to make Maine a center for wind turbine component manufacturing. The benefits of harvesting Maine’s wind resources will be comparatively modest if Maine cannot leverage those resources to create good-paying manufacturing jobs.

Unfortunately, neither bond helps Maine’s residents invest in efficiency.

Opportunity Maine is a partner in a federal stimulus-funded project in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties to replace old mobile homes with small, efficient homes. This project will provide safer homes for some of Maine’s poorest residents and help them make ends meet, save money and spend more in the local economy, while creating good-paying building trades jobs and on-the-job training opportunities.

A bond issue could bring this economic, work force and community development model to other job-starved areas in rural Maine.

The proposals should embrace other policies to spur efficiency investment and job creation.

Raising efficiency standards for existing public and higher education buildings would prompt public colleges and local and county governments to hire energy service companies (ESCOs) to make efficiency improvements. These companies can provide financing, and a performance-based contract can ensure that the ESCO only gets paid if energy savings occur.

Public entities could receive technical assistance from the Efficiency Maine Trust to ensure that taxpayers get a good deal. The end result would be significant taxpayer savings, injection of more private capital into the economy and thousands of jobs created.

The governor and the Legislature should also ensure that public funds create jobs for Maine people, not out-of-staters. There should be a much stronger contracting preference for in-state workers, and in counties with high unemployment, the state should require best efforts to hire within the county where work is being done. Contractors should be required to coordinate with on-the-job training programs and make best efforts to hire from disadvantaged populations, including the long-time unemployed.

The state should also invest directly in our workforce, ideally by putting a one-time injection into Maine’s Competitive Skills Scholarship Fund. The fund helps low-income Mainers get education and skills training in high-wage, high-growth jobs. A recession is a perfect time to help laid-off workers earn certificates and degrees that will help them achieve self-sufficiency. Increasing our work force’s education and skill levels is the best way to strengthen our economy.

Ultimately, the 2,000 jobs that either bond package would create will make a difference, but Maine has lost more than 25,000 jobs since the recession began, and would have lost thousands more without the federal stimulus. Maine bonds less than almost any other state, and that positions us well to use bonding more aggressively now to create jobs and to pull Maine out of the recession with a stronger economy.

Unfortunately, Maine has done the opposite of what it should since the recession began, focusing on cutting public investment at a time when plummeting private investment was destroying thousands of jobs.

It’s time to get Maine’s economy back on track.

Clifford Ginn is co-director of Opportunity Maine in Portland, a nonprofit organization that promotes economic security and sustainable development through innovative investments in the education and skills of Maine’s work force.