Green or Gold

Reported from the Providence Journal

Experts say ‘green’ economy won’t save New England

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 15, 2009

By Alex Kuffner - akuffner@projo.com



Journal Staff Writer

BOSTON — Green technology may help drive an economic recovery in New England but the fledgling industry will not be a major engine of growth for the region in the foreseeable future, economists said at a recent conference.

The sobering assessment came during the New England Economic Partnership’s fall conference, which was held last week in Boston and focused on so-called “green-collar jobs” and whether their creation will help pull Rhode Island and its neighbors out of recession.

President Obama has pushed renewable power, energy efficiency and the like as potential growth industries for the country. His administration has steered billions of dollars in stimulus funds to the creation of jobs in green businesses. Likewise, in Rhode Island, Governor Carcieri has thrown support behind two offshore wind farms, touting their potential to bring high-paying jobs to the state in the manufacturing, assembly and installation of wind turbines.

Speakers at the conference last Tuesday, however, said that although the sector will generate jobs, it could take years before it has a large impact on the economy as a whole.

“I think the green economy is part and should be part of an economic recovery, but it can’t be counted on as the single source of growth,” said NEEP vice president Ross Gittell, the James R. Carter Professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics.

He and other economists said there is hope for green industries in New England, and the country as a whole. They pointed to a study issued in June by a Washington nonprofit that determined between 1998 and 2007 green-collar jobs in the United States grew at a faster rate than overall jobs. The difference — 9.1 percent compared to 3.7 percent — was significant, but the total number of green jobs is still tiny.

The same is true in New England, where the study by the Pew Charitable Trusts counted 51,000 green jobs — or 0.66 percent of total employment in the region. Even in Massachusetts, which has the most jobs in the sector of the six New England states, the number is only 0.69 percent of overall employment. In Rhode Island, which has 2,328 green jobs, the share is 0.42 percent.

In a presentation of an economic forecast for Rhode Island, Edinaldo Tebaldi, assistant professor of economics at Bryant University, questioned whether green industries will stimulate growth in the rest of the state’s economy. The offshore wind farms proposed by the New Jersey-based Deepwater Wind are projected to create 800 jobs at a staging facility in Quonset Point, but Tebaldi said that’s a relatively small number in and of itself.

The hope of Carcieri and other state leaders is that Deepwater’s projects will act as a catalyst to turn Rhode Island into a hub for the offshore wind manufacturing and construction. They believe that wind resources off the East Coast will lead to wind farms being built from Maine to the Carolinas. If that happens, thousands of more jobs in the offshore wind industry could flow into the Ocean State.

Gittell’s written report to the conference makes note of policy support for renewable energy in New England, including the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and participation in Renewable Portfolio Standards. He wrote that the New England states must play to regional strengths in developing the green economy. One possibility for job creation is in weatherization and improving energy efficiency in the region’s large stock of older buildings.

The only New England states with high rates of growth in green jobs are Maine (23 percent) and Vermont (15 percent). Maine has achieved its growth by developing land-based wind projects, including the 38-turbine Stetson Wind, the largest wind farm in New England.

Vermont is working to brand itself as a green industry leader, according to the state’s governor, James H. Douglas. In the keynote speech at the conference, Douglas called the green sector a small part of the economy, but an important one