Published: November 16, 2009 01:25 pm      

A green economy can resurrect Main Street

Once, when asked why he was so good, hockey icon Wayne Gretzky replied: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

The world is skating toward multiple clean sources of energy in a carbon-free future.

The question is whether the U.S. has the political will to become a leader in the largest industry of this century, or whether it is willing to accept the economic and climatic consequences of failing to act.

America can create a green, re-industrialized economy that manufactures commodities of international value.

Our factories can provide good jobs and family-supporting wages. But to do this, we will have to focus our attention and our treasure on Main Street, not Wall Street, through a more enlightened social compact that revives the polluted and betrayed American dream.

The U.S. can compete on a basis of highest quality through innovation, where cost, while always important, becomes secondary to quality – almost like it is now in the global wind industry, where higher turbine-capacity factors drive higher returns on investments. We will never be able to compete purely on a basis of lowest cost, nor should we want to because lowest cost usually means substandard safety, healthcare, environmental and compensation conditions for our workers.

If we don’t invest in our homegrown green industries, others will. For example, a Chinese wind-turbine company with massive financial help from Beijing recently struck a deal in Texas to be the exclusive supplier to one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S., a sign of how Chinese firms are aggressively capitalizing on America’s clean-energy push.

The 36,000-acre development in west Texas would receive $1.5 billion through China’s Export-Import Bank.

Shenyang Power Group, a five-month-old alliance, would supply the project with 240 of its 2.5-megawatt wind turbines. Most of the thousands of jobs for this project will be in China, benefiting that country’s export machine rather than our own.

America needs green investments – without being recolonialized in the process.

We must do better. Rather than watching as the global recession cripples the U.S. wind industry and clean energy manufacturing jobs go abroad, we can ask our legislators to pass strong climate and clean energy policies such as a competitive, long-term, national Renewable Energy Standard.

Even absent strong federal clean-energy policies, the number of clean-energy jobs in the U.S. has grown nearly two and a half times faster than the rate of overall jobs during the past decade, according to a recent analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Imagine what we could do if we got the equation right.

A study released in late October, conducted by the University of California in collaboration with the University of Illinois and Yale University, found that strong climate and clean-energy policies could create up to 1.9 million jobs nationally, including 78,000 jobs in Pennsylvania.

This report underlines that comprehensive national energy policies would increase consumer income and boost the U.S. gross domestic product.

A recent Harvard Business Review article, “Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation,” states there is no zero-sum choice between the social benefits of sustainable products and the financial costs involved. Sustainability is the “mother lode of organizational and technological innovations that yield both bottom-line and top-line returns.” We can bake our cake and eat it too if we put workers first and reinvest in the people who make things.  

 The United Steelworkers union is optimistic about the potential for renewable energy industries to spur job growth in the metal and steel industries that were once the heart and soul of towns and cities across Pennsylvania.

Metal components make up nearly 90 percent of the weight and more than one-third of the value of a modern wind turbine. More than 250 tons of steel are needed for every locally manufactured wind turbine. Turbines also contain 20 tons of fiberglass composites and resins in the blades; three tons of copper in the generator and power cables; 5.5 miles of rebar; and 250 cubic yards of concrete for the base pads.

Clearly, a clean-energy economy would create good jobs in some of our state’s most essential industries.

America is at a tipping point: We can either become a first-tier clean-energy producer in the global green economy, or we can be a consumer of other countries’ manufactured goods. We can lead or follow, produce or just assemble, innovate or be left behind. It’s our choice.



Leo Gerard is international president of the United Steelworkers (www.usw.org). 

Michael Peck is director of external relations for Gamesa USA (gamesacorp.com), a wind energy company represented by the United Steelworkers union.