Green Jobs Go to Capitol Hill

The Green Jobs National Conference that starts today in Washington, DC, includes a Greens Job Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill.  Advocacy days like these are a time when labor, environmentalists, community activists, businesses and academics descend upon our elected officials. These disparate groups come from all over the country.  They will likely break into groups by state, perhaps congressional districts and get to know each other.  They will go to their elected officials to talk about an agreed upon set of issues. In other words everyone will be on message when they get face time with the representative or key staff people.

Today, people representing our interests—but who do not necessarily have paid lobbyists like big oil and the auto manufacturers—get to lobby in Washington, to make a difference.  And, ecopreneurs stand to be huge recipients of green jobs policies and legislation.  Many of the issues lobbied for today would mean more incentives, funding and support for you.

What are they going to talk about? According to the Advocacy Day Leave-Behind Document (that contains much more information about the specific recommendations), they are going to ask Congress and the administration to include policies that will create green jobs in the economic recovery package:

Energy efficiency and Infrastructure upgrades.

• Expand tax incentives for energy-efficient homes, commercial buildings and products;
• Increase funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program;
• Support a Clean Energy Corps;
• Fund the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant with a specific emphasis on large-scale, block-by-block retrofit projects;
• Invest in capital funding to repair and upgrade water, waste-water, and storm-water systems to ensure that we have safe, adequate water supplies for people and wildlife. (The American Public Works Association (APWA) estimates that every $1 billion invested in infrastructure generates about 35,000 jobs for engineers, construction workers, plumbers, architects, maintenance workers and many others.)

Extend clean energy Tax Incentives for at least five years. In 2008, Congress extended a variety of critical tax incentives, but many are set to expire.  Congress should:

• Extend incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency especially The Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind, biomass and other renewable energy projects;
• Provide Davis-Bacon prevailing wage protections for construction workers employed on renewable energy projects.
• Make technologies covered by the clean energy tax incentives temporarily eligible for Department of Energy grants.

Invest in domestic Manufacturing. Manufacturing is at the heart of the clean energy economy, making up nearly 80% of all jobs in the solar and wind industries. Congress should:

• Provide loan guarantees for retooling and retraining so that firms can transition to producing parts for the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors.
• Invest additional funds in the Manufacturing Extension Partnership network, that provides critical technical assistance and support to manufacturing firms struggling to retool, retrain workers and take advantage of clean energy opportunities.
• Create U.S. manufacturing jobs by providing rebates for the purchase of energy-saving products produced in the U.S. (i.e high-efficiency boilers, energy-efficient windows, anti-idling equipment for trucks.)

Invest in Transportation Infrastructure and Public Transit. Congress should reinvest in our country’s existing transportation infrastructure by:

• Adopting a fix-it-first strategy that promotes repair projects leading to more efficient land use, emissions reduction, and traffic-flow improvement.
• Expand public transit infrastructure by investing in ready-to-go public transit projects, as well as conversion of existing city buses and rail cars to clean-energy vehicles.
• Update our mass transit systems and create a sustainable freight transportation system.

Green Jobs Act Funding

• Pass The Green Jobs Act, a mechanism for funding national, state and pathways-out-of-poverty job training programs, including apprenticeships, so workers can realize career opportunities in the emerging green economy.

Pass responsible cap-and-trade legislation. They suggest using auction revenue to
fund “our country’s transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Establish a comprehensive national recycling, composting and waste-reduction program. They estimate that this kind of program would reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking more than half of our nation’s cars off the road.

What can we do to help the cause?  Write to your senators and congress person.  Tell them that, although you were not able to visit them today, that you too support the promotion of green jobs in the ways outlined above.  If you don’t finds all the points compelling, choose the ones that you do and talk about those.  Having a clear position of what you would like your representative to do (extend tax credits for five years, provide loan guarantees, etc…) will go a long way to helping him or her know what is important to you, to constituents.  And, what’s important to constituents (aka. voters) is important to them.  That’s the American way.  Ain’t it grand?

Photo: GreenForAll from Flickr.com