The Final Report by the American Institute of Architects Sustainable Design Assessment Team Program for Downtown Hilo is now available online.

It can be accessed on the American Institute of Architects website at:
http://www.aia.org/about/initiatives/AIAS075426 (Click on Hilo Report).

or on the EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025 SildeShare website at:
http://www.slideshare.net/edh2025/downtown-hilo-sdat-final-report

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.  

We especially liked the section at the end of the report titled, “Indicators We Wish We Had.” An honest look at missing key indicators, GreenBiz.com underlines the need for acquiring and organizing Green Collar Worker Resource everywhere, not just Hawai`i.

from the 2008 State of Green Business Report at GreenBiz.com…

Green Job Creation. How many jobs are being created through all of the kinds of activities measured in this report? No one knows. There are estimates for jobs in clean technologies, but that’s only a small part of the picture. How about people working inside non-clean-tech companies on energy efficiency, or as recycling coordinators, as environmental procurement specialists, or any of dozens of other positions that have a green component? We need a means of understanding the impact of green business activities on job growth.

additionally the report states…

Green Business Growth. Similarly, there’s no good metric for the number of green businesses, their revenue, growth, or other metrics. There’s good reason for this: There’s no definition for “green business.” Does it refer to a company specifically in the business of environmentally preferable products or services? How about a dry cleaner or print shop that employs environmental practices? How about a division of a multinational company that is working on clean energy, bio-based materials, less-toxic cleaners, or any of hundreds of other environmentally improved products? We need a means of measuring the size and scope of environmental practices on the economy, and tracking over time.

At Green Collar Technologies we are in the process of obtaining the data necessary to answer the following questions:

• How many Green Collar Workers are currently on Hawai`i Island?
• How many Green Collar jobs are currently available?
• How many Businesses on Hawai`i Island claim to be “green”?
• How many workers claim to be green collar workers on Hawai`i Island?

We’re looking for sponsors and funding organizations to help us collect, qualify and quantify the effort. If you’re interested in volunteering or helping in any way, please send us a note.

Download the complete report from GreenBiz by following this link.