Wind energy is becoming a powerful force in today's job market. Several forms of expanding alternative energy business are either currently underway, or are getting ready to blossom here in Colorado, and Wind will play a very significant role in this important part of our country's economic recovery.
In 2008, the United States became the world leader in total installed wind power generation, with something over 25,000 megawatts added to the grid. Along the way this growth created 35,000 new jobs, bringing total employment in this sector to 85,000 people, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Manufacturing Climate Solutions report.
Even with all this good news, the industry, including all the jobs to be created, is just getting a good start. As just one example, despite the slowdown in sales due to the economy, Danish company Vestas Wind Systems is currently building new facilities in the Denver and Pueblo, Colorado areas. Some time in 2010 these facilities will employ over 650 manufacturing workers at one location, 700 workers building nacelles (housings for wind turbines) at another, and a Research and Development facility employing yet another 100 people.
Wind energy is a thriving, mature industry, growing on its own because it is provably cost effective, profitable, and ever more important as hydrocarbon based energy reaches its peak and begins its inevitable slow decline. Stimulus funding will just fan the fires of this growth over the next few years, creating a lot of jobs along the way, directly and indirectly.
According to Robert Pollin, professor of economics and founding co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, the economic stimulus money for green jobs has yet to really affect wind and other alternate energy job markets significantly. That's the bad news. The good news is that only about 2% of the federal money earmarked for the clean tech sector has been released in 2009, and the rest of these funds will be spread out over the next five years. What's very encouraging, according to Pollin, is this infusion of money will not just stimulate, “it will be transformative, so that after the stimulus runs out, we will have a new system that can last for years.”
Green and clean is the way to go, and smart investors are taking notice. Clean tech investment is the No. 1 venture investment sector, with investments in North America, following a slump earlier in the year, totaling $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2009.
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