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New Philly green-jobs center could stoke 2010 energy debate

PHILADELPHIA—This week the local Fox affiliate reported on the opening of Kensington’s new John S. and James L. Knight Green Jobs Training Facility. The new green jobs training facility could serve as a catalyst for debate in the 2010 elections, with joblessness threatening many American families and politicians struggling to find ways to attract new businesses to Pennsylvania. The new green jobs training facility is part of a much larger effort in Philadelphia and the rest of Pennsylvania to stimulate the growth of business and bring jobs into the state.

Two months ago, a conference at the University of Pennsylvania drew a variety of private and public organizations, who argued that Philadelphia would be the future green jobs hub of the United States. As Washington doles out stimulus money, these organizations hope to take advantage of the boost in revenue in order to train new green consultants and analysts, as well as to develop more service oriented jobs geared towards the maintenance and installation of green technologies. The hope is that, by stimulating investment in the development of clean energy sources, Pennsylvania will also stimulate growth in related job markets such as engineering, carpentry, electrical work, and other sectors.

The opening of the center marks the first real step taken to help grow the green job sector here. The movement is starting small (Mayor Michael Nutter welcomed only 20 students to the new center). But the hope is that the idea will resonate in Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania, prompting more industry to come to the Keystone State, while also hepling reduce the state’s energy consumption and carbon footprint. The center was built with a $1.1 million grant from the Knight foundation.

But this small development is part of a much bigger problem. There is some sentiment in Philadelphia that we are better off than many parts of the country and that we have not been hit as hard by the economic recession. Indeed, the large health care and education sectors here typically make it so both the booms and the busts are more modest. So how will the rest of the state cope with the high unemployment rate and will the creation of green jobs be a well-worn line in the upcoming elections? Is the creation of green jobs even a valid answer to Pennsylvania’s unemployment problems or is it just shifting one group of workers to similar lines of employment that are not entirely different from what they are doing now?

This cultural emphasis on green jobs could put Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham in a good position in the coming gubernatorial race, as he has promoted his environmental credentials heavily. Cunningham was responsible for preventing the development of the Trexler Nature Preserves into an amusement park and has advocated for that space to be “a place for generations to come and enjoy nature, to see and experience land in an unspoiled state.” This all sounds very good, but it is Don Cunninghams’s other projects that reflect the trend towards green collar jobs.

In the a presentation of the county’s fiscal outlook last summer, Cunningham highlighted a series of projects that will renovate facilities and add new technologies to buildings to reduce energy usage and promote more efficient energy consumption. Cunningham has also developed a plan to complete the first $5-million phase of energy savings projects in Lehigh County nursing homes and has done a great deal for farmland preservation in Lehigh County, which has spent more money on farmland preservation in the past three years than in the entire history of the preservation program’s existence.

The creation of the center is one example of how politicians are dealing with the high unemployment rates caused by the economic crisis and is sure to be an issue that will come up in the months ahead.

“The key to economic recovery is the development of the clean energy economy,” Liz Robinson, director of the Energy Coordinating Agency, which helped to build the new training center in Philadelphia, said in a statement. “At this moment in tine, we desperately need many more highly skilled energy efficiency technicians, men and women who really know how to save energy.”

April 22, 2009 at 9:15 am

--Kenneth Elder

Tags: Don Cunningham, Michael Nutter, Philadelphia

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