Creating Good Jobs and New Markets Through Energy Efficiency
From the Center for American Progress:
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 Canvasser Job posting
Opportunity Maine Canvasser Job Description
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.
Federal program to make college more affordable
By Cliff Ginn and Rob Brown
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.
Maine’s Legislature should focus on jobs
By Cliff Ginn
Sun Journal, Mar 21, 2010
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.
http://www.sunjournal.com/node/815198
Energy economy needs skilled workers
By Rob Brown and Don Berry
Maine’s intertwined economic and energy challenges have deep roots. We have the nation’s oldest housing and work force, greatest reliance on heating oil, and highest percentage of young people neither working pursuing education. Electricity costs are high, and Maine has the lowest income and education levels in New England.
We must turn these challenges into opportunity. Public and private investment in energy efficiency and local renewable power generation can save Maine’s economy billions and create good-paying, non-exportable jobs in every community, if we give our work force the skills to refashion our energy economy.
Across the country, the most effective model for meeting challenges like Maine’s energy crisis has been the “sector partnership model,” which unites stakeholders in an economic sector to lead training efforts across multiple firms for current and potential workers within the targeted industry sector.
One of Maine’s most successful sector partnerships and best kept educational secrets is the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee in Lewiston.
The JATC is managed by a board comprised, in equal numbers, of business and labor representatives. Its curriculum, training and credentials conferred guarantees graduates possess the skills businesses need.
An impressive 85 percent of those who start the training complete it and more than 90 percent of graduates are placed in good jobs. The JATC’s high completion and placement rates result from its “earn while you learn” training strategy. Apprentices work real jobs and get an education in a coordinated, streamlined program. When it comes time to find a job, these graduates already have one foot in the clean energy work force.
Sector partnerships like the JATC target resources by supporting the long-term competitiveness of industries and education, and training opportunities that lead to good-paying, green-skilled jobs. They unite stakeholders in a given industry — in this case, clean energy — to identify all needs for building the sector as a whole, and meeting those needs in a manner that maximizes economic opportunity for local people, particularly those with low incomes and other disadvantages for which a four-year college degree is not practical or possible.
We are setting ourselves up for failure if we build a renewable energy market without developing a high-quality work force, and if we don’t parlay our clean energy and work force investments into opportunities to bring renewable energy component manufacturing to Maine. Currently, over half of all wind components, 90 percent of solar components and 100 percent of advanced battery technology is manufactured elsewhere.
It will mean little to American workers if the clean energy economy is built in China.
Meeting our energy needs and manufacturing the products to do it requires greater coordination and innovation than now exists. Workers must be trained for jobs that exist today and will exist in greater numbers as the clean energy economy expands. Both Maine and the federal government have taken promising steps in this direction, but require bolder action.
One of the most promising developments is the federal SECTORS Act (Strengthening Employment Clusters to Organize Regional Success). It would provide state grants to establish or expand sector partnerships, allowing businesses, work force development boards, labor unions and community colleges to collaborate to determine work force and community needs and link skilled workers with emerging industries. Sen. Olympia Snowe is a lead sponsor, and Rep. Mike Michaud has championed SECTORS in the House.
Additionally, the Senate must now pass the American Clean Energy & Security Act, which will implement substantial energy market reforms and work force investments in the clean energy sector. This legislation, with the new Efficiency Maine Trust, clean energy investments and reforms Opportunity Maine has proposed at the state level, and the work force investments contained in the SECTORS Act and epitomized by successful partnerships like the JATC, can turn an energy crisis into an opportunity for prosperity for this and future Maine generations.
Don Berry is the director of the JATC. Rob Brown is the executive director of Opportunity Maine. E-mail: dberry@ibew567.com or rob@opportunitymaine.org.
The smart choice on energy
By Rob Brown , Special to the Sun Journal
Energy costs are stifling Maine’s economy and making it increasingly difficult for ordinary people to pay their bills. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has greatly accelerated the economic insecurity of Maine’s families, making this bad situation even worse.
In this crisis lies an opportunity to meet our energy needs in a way that costs much less, creates more jobs, reduces our impact on the environment and improves our economy for this and future generations of Mainers. Meeting our energy needs by investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE&RE, as I’ll call it) rather than through traditional sources costs one-third as much and creates at least four times as many jobs.
Changing directions is now a necessity, not a choice. One cannot go without heat in Maine. We need to pay for the energy to power our homes and businesses. We need to think boldly and strategically about how to improve the economy and create jobs. The question is: How do we do all of this in the most coordinated, cost-effective and sustainable manner?
In the short term, to get the pieces in place for a high-wage, high-growth, new energy economy, Maine needs aggressive, coordinated deployment of federal stimulus funds. For the long term, Maine needs an explicit commitment to develop the workforce and business capacity of the EE&RE sector. As a Sun Journal editorial said on April 28, this investment, “”should not be left to chance. Whatever Maine lawmakers decide on energy should include proposals to develop a workforce to see it through.”
Most EE&RE sector jobs are considered “middle-skill” jobs, which require some amount of post high-school education, but not necessarily a four-year degree. Research by The Workforce Alliance has shown these types of jobs are both primed for the greatest growth and suffer from the greatest current shortage, in Maine and the nation. A comprehensive workforce development program will allow Maine to close that gap and create good jobs in the EE&RE sector.
The Sun Journal editorial urged lawmakers to not “lose sight of one question: what should we do to make these good ideas happen? How they answer should ensure many Mainers can find, or get back to, work.” Opportunity Maine recommends a three-prong strategy including pathways, partnerships and proportional investment to answer this question.
Pathways are an “earn while you learn” strategy of career ladders that provide meaningful opportunities to access education and training and encourage continuous skills-upgrading, allowing workers to move up into better and better jobs. Partnerships bring together education institutions and programs, businesses, workers, social service providers and others to develop a plan to build the workforce and business capacity of a given sector and region. Proportional investment means explicit, coordinated funding for sector-based education and training that is proportional to the size of any program.
An effective strategy must reach across federal, state and private sector funding and across educational institutions and workplaces, to create a comprehensive response to workforce needs in a given sector. It must provide the support to make education and training opportunities meaningful to a broad range of people, and be responsive to industry needs by training people for jobs that actually exist.
This coordinated strategy has been shown to work time and again. A recent study of broadband public investment and job creation in Virginia shows communities that included an explicit workforce development strategy saw robust, sustained job growth. Regions that invested equivalent amounts, but did not include explicit support for workforce investment, saw little sustained job creation.
It is just that simple.
Opportunity Maine’s new “Green Jobs, Green Savings” report provides examples of how, in state after state, effective EE&RE sector development that includes a comprehensive workforce development system resulted in the sustained creation of high-quality jobs. The report is available at www.opportunitymaine.org/greenjobs.htm.
This week the legislature is considering measures that would expand the EE&RE sector throughout the state.This is a welcome move, but an essential component of the legislature’s plan must be a comprehensive workforce development strategy to get the job done and build our economy for the long haul.
In short, efficiency measures can meet a large portion of energy needs at much lower cost while creating many more jobs, but this will not happen automatically. We know we must pay for our future energy. We know we need to create jobs. Why not meet these needs in a way that costs less, makes us less susceptible to oil price shocks, puts many more people to work and improves Maine’s economy?
Why not indeed?
Rob Brown is executive director of Opportunity Maine, an organization committed to expanding educational opportunities and workforce development in Maine. E-mail rob@opportunitymaine.org.
Workforce Investment in Maine’s New Energy Economy
Building a new energy economy based on increasing efficiency and developing new energy sources requires the development of a trained workforce. Robert Brown and Clifford Ginn point out that Maine could be in an excellent position to take advantage of “green economy” work.
http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu/files/pdf_mpr/brownGinn_V17N2.pdf
Workforce Investment in Maine's New Energy Economy
Robert E. Brown II and Clifford M. Ginn
Maine Policy Review, Issue 17 Number 2
Fall/Winter 2008
Maine has enormous potential to build a new energy economy that will sustainably produce, distribute, consume, and reduce demand for energy. This will lower costs for citizens, businesses, government, and civic institutions while reducing global warming. Following the successful approaches other states have taken would:
- Create demand for efficiency and renewable energy through high standards.
- Generate funding within the energy system to meet standards and to leverage private investment.
- Centralize programs and information in a single transparent and accountable entity.
- Invest in efficiency and renewable technology research and development.
- Develop and fund training initiatives and integrate them into industry partnerships, to develop the workforce needed to transform the energy economy.
Investing in Maine’s Workers
By Rob Brown & Auta Main
The days when a high school diploma assured a good job for life are long gone. Like most growing industries, even Maine’s manufacturing sector now frequently requires education well beyond high school just to get in the door, let alone advance up the career – and income – ladder.
To make better jobs available to more Maine people, we must better align educational programs that should be ladders from poverty to self-sufficiency. To that end, Maine’s Dept of Labor and Opportunity Maine are working together to promote a more comprehensive vision of workforce and economic development that will improve business growth, create good jobs, and raise incomes in Maine.
Maine has the lowest incomes and the lowest rates of degree attainment of all the New England states. Right now, looking at the available job market, we have a surplus of low-skill workers and a shortage of middle- to high-skill workers, leaving many businesses struggling to grow. For the sake of our economy, common sense dictates that we invest in those low-income workers’ ability to gain the skills needed to meet this shortage.
Recent business surveys bear this out. For the National Association of Manufacturers, 90% of respondents indicated a moderate to severe shortage of skilled employees. For the Maine Development Foundation, 42% of respondents ranked “educated workforce” as their #1 need, far ahead of other concerns such as taxes, transportation or utility costs.
Furthermore, Phillip Trostel, a research economist at UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Center and School of Economics, has demonstrated that the states with the highest percentage of degree earners also have jobs that pay the highest salaries. High-wage employers in need of high-skill workers are not going to locate in a state with a workforce like ours.
To improve the composition of our economy, we need to change the composition of our workforce. We must invest in educational opportunity. Any economic strategy for Maine that does not have coordinated investments in the skills and capacities of our workforce at its core is not sustainable and will doubtfully succeed.
Recognizing this fact, Maine recently passed two innovative laws aimed at increasing access to higher education and developing the state’s workforce.
The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program simultaneously cuts worker compensation taxes for Maine businesses and invests in low-income workers ability to get through a degree, certification, apprenticeship, or on-the-job training program, and is directly tied to the workforce needs of high-wage employers in every region of the State. These are folks for whom tuition is but one barrier and the CSSP provides needed support with childcare, books, transportation, and remedial math, reading, writing, and computer skills.
The Opportunity Maine Program invests in those same workers’ ability to enter Maine’s workforce in a good job without immediately sinking under the burden of education debt. It will allow those who earn an associate or bachelor’s degree at a Maine school to be reimbursed for education loan payments through a state income tax credit for any years in which they continue to live, work and pay taxes here after graduation. Alternatively, businesses that pay employees’ education loans as an employee benefit will be able to claim the tax credit, providing a strategic tax cut and a strong incentive to expand or locate businesses in Maine.
These two programs combined represent the most innovative, ambitious investment in affordable education and economic development in the nation. They are two sides of the same coin, helping Maine workers prepare for careers in high-wage, high-demand occupations, and rewarding hard work and a commitment to Maine with educational and economic opportunity.
The Competitive Skills Scholarship Program and the Opportunity Maine Program are two elements of an ambitious, visionary, workforce and economic development strategy that will result in a more prosperous future for Maine’s workers, families, businesses and communities. Combined, they hold the transformative potential to sustainably address Maine’s demographic imbalance, build our skilled workforce, raise incomes, and improve our business growth.
Rob Brown: Developing Maine’s workforce
Monday, March 24, 2008 – Bangor Daily News
The Opportunity Maine program is a bold, simple and universal promise to reward hard work and a commitment to Maine with educational and economic opportunity. It is a powerful new tool to help our citizens afford a college degree and to build the skilled work force our businesses need.
The program will allow those who earn an associate or bachelor’s degree at a Maine school, and continue to live, work and pay taxes here, to be reimbursed for student loan payments through a state income tax credit. Alternatively, businesses that pay employees’ student loans as an employee benefit will be able to claim the tax credit, providing a substantial, strategic tax cut and a strong incentive to expand or locate businesses in Maine.
This will raise aspirations and, in turn, increase degree enrollment and completion, economic development, and average incomes. By virtually eliminating the burden of educational debt for Maine’s workers, we will strengthen our economy for the long haul.
In a sense, the Opportunity Maine program argues that if we build the work force, the jobs will come. And there is plenty of evidence to bear this out.
After World War II, the GI Bill made a historic investment in educational opportunity. Businesses responded immediately, generating the greatest period of economic expansion and broadly shared prosperity we have ever seen.
Silicon Valley became a center of high-skill, high-wage jobs because there was already a high concentration of skilled workers, world-class research facilities and an enviable quality of life.
Ireland went from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest and is a magnet for high-wage, high-skill businesses, largely because of sustained investments in college affordability as an economic development strategy.
Business surveys all show education level of the work force is a top consideration in deciding where to locate or expand. In a recent survey by the Maine Development Foundation, 42 percent of Maine businesses ranked “educated work force” as their No. 1 need, far ahead of other concerns such as taxes, transportation or utility costs.
According to Community College System President John Fitzsimmons, at least 4,200 good jobs requiring a minimum of an associate degree went unfilled or were filled with out-of-state recruits last year because we do not have the skilled work force those businesses need.
The education level of Maine’s work force is hurting our economy and demographics will make this trend worse. Research shows the No. 1 predictor of high average incomes is the percentage of degree holders in the work force. Not surprising, Maine is last on both counts, with incomes and degree completion roughly 25 percent behind the New England average.
Recently, the bipartisan Committee on Future Maine Prosperity came to a unanimous agreement, stating, “Maine must demand an unwavering commitment to prosperity from its leaders in government and the private sector.” To honor that commitment, the No. 1 step for education and work force development in their report is the Opportunity Maine program.
Also just out is the Maine Economic Growth Council’s report on Maine’s economy. One of the few bright spots they highlight is the Opportunity Maine program — if legislators are true to their promise to expand educational opportunity and upgrade the skills of our work force.
The Drum Major Institute, a national, nonpartisan think tank, ranked the Opportunity Maine program one of the 10 best policy initiatives in the country last year, giving us an A+ and the designation “Best of 2007.”
Our organization, Opportunity Maine, brought this idea from citizens’ initiative into law, with the support of chambers of commerce, labor unions, parents, educators, and town councils from Aroostook to York County. The biggest endorsement of all, however, came from more than 500 citizens who collected the signatures for the Opportunity Maine initiative, and more than 72,000 registered voters who stopped to talk with them and to sign the petition. Public support was so overwhelming that, for only the sixth time in Maine history, the Legislature passed an initiative into law — unanimously in the House of Representatives.
Now, we face the challenge of translating the Opportunity Maine program’s promise into results and we are traveling the state meeting with various stakeholders to aggressively promote this.
It will take a sustained effort, and individuals and businesses — including Time Warner Cable, Maine Medical Center, University Credit Union, Diversified Communications, Bangor Savings Bank, Wright Express, Northern Utilities, Bancroft & Co. and Gorham Savings Bank — have joined with us to make educational and economic opportunity a reality here in Maine and build our economy for generations to come. We hope you’ll join us, too.
Rob Brown is executive director of Opportunity Maine.
