Review – Green Jobs in U.S. Metro Areas Report
Mahalo to Daniel Morii from the Sustainable Living Institute for forwarding a new green jobs report created by Global Insight for the The United States Conference of Mayors and the Mayors Climate Protection Center. Two import pieces of research stand out.
First, Global Insight redefines green jobs:
“any activity that generates electricity using renewable or nuclear fuels, agriculture jobs supplying corn or soy for transportation fuel, manufacturing jobs producing goods used in renewable power generation, equipment dealers and wholesalers specializing in renewable energy or energy-efficiency products, construction and installation of energy and pollution management systems, government administration of environmental programs, and supporting jobs in the engineering, legal, research and consulting fields.”
We’ve added this to our Green Collar Jobs Definition, draft study. Second, we’ve got some new green jobs numbers: 
We’ll take this a step further when we conduct our own research. Key correlations between the job numbers, employers, workers and agencies will be taken into account. Much of the researchin the report is “scenario-based.”
A couple more quotes I find interesting in the report:
“In this report, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Global Insight have examined the economic benefits of the ‘Green Economy’ – that part of economic activity which is devoted to the reduction of fossil fuels, the increase of energy efficiency, and the curtailment of greenhouse gas emissions.”
The report also states in part,
“Green Jobs in 2006 were distributed across the country. Approximately 85% were located in metropolitan areas while the remaining 15% were in non-metropolitan counties.”
The footnote states,
“Green Jobs 2006 totals for Metropolitan areas include all categories except Renewable Power Generation.”
A couple paragraphs up the report states,
“We estimate that as of 2006 there were just more than 750,000 Green Jobs in the U.S. economy. More than half of existing jobs were in Engineering, Legal, Research and Consulting, revealing the importance of these indirect jobs to the Green Economy. The second largest category was Renewable Power Generation, with more than 127,000 jobs.”
Download the full report by Global Insight in PDF format from the U.S. Global Mayors Website.