Earth Equity News

The Economy Needs Green Jobs. By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet, September 26, 2008. "Green jobs could potentially strengthen the United States' ailing organized labor movement and bring together union laborers and environmentalists -- historically often at odds in debates about logging, mining, power plants, heavy industry and the like. This movement also provides an avenue for environmental justice tied with job creation in the nation's poorest and often most environmentally beleaguered communities. Green for All was co-founded in 2007 by Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx and celebrated Oakland activist and author Van Jones for just this purpose... The Renewable Energy Policy Project breaks down roughly how many jobs could be created per megawatt of different types of renewable energy. Solar could provide the most at 22 jobs per megawatt; manufacturing could provide 15; geothermal could provide 15 as well. Construction and installation of solar panels would be next at seven, followed by wind at six. A large wind turbine produces one to three megawatts, for example, so a large wind farm of such turbines could produce up to several hundred megawatts. Nationwide, the United States has about 4,000 megawatts of geothermal in development."