A Sunnier Forecast for Solar Energy (Washington Post)

[jpak]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111900688.html

The top of a large steel vat gently swings open, and a slab of silicon, cut into pieces the size of large bricks, is lifted onto a conveyor belt. On a mezzanine above the warehouse-style floor of the factory in Frederick, Bill Good is monitoring the six-foot furnaces that melt the silicon that goes into bricks, which are later sliced into wafers and turned into solar panels in a building next door.

Good, 53, used to work in a landscaping business, but like many people around the country he has found work in the alternative-energy industry. After two years, he said, "I could retire here."

<snip>

Expansions like BP's add another reason -- along with environmental concerns and national security -- for the boosters of solar, wind power and biofuels to use in pleading for more government support in the form of purchases, targets, import limits, subsidies and tax breaks for alternative energy. The Apollo Alliance -- a group of environmentalists, alternate energy companies and unions -- said in a 2004 report that a $30 billion federal program could create 3.3 million jobs over 10 years.

That sort of spending isn't likely, so the report's optimistic forecast won't be tested. But many governors and mayors are realizing that fostering renewable energy can be good for their states and cities. Under Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D), Pennsylvania has become a major purchaser of "green energy." The jobs created, while modest in number, have symbolic importance and make a difference in individual communities. In March, after receiving financing from the state and assurances from Rendell, Spanish wind power company Gamesa Energy said it would invest $34 million to manufacture towers and blades for wind turbines in Fairless Hills, Pa., which was hit hard by the closing of the last U.S. Steel Corp. facilities there in 2001. Gamesa said it expected to create 530 jobs.

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edit: the United States of America can't come up with $30 billion over 10 years to create 3.3 million good paying jobs?????

Something is very wrong here....

[Old and In the Way]

1. Can you imagine the progress we would have made with Gore as

President in 2000? I guarantee, that $1TT we've drained in Iraq, breaking our army and destroying our international reputation would have gone into an energy strategy focused on breaking our dependence on ME oil....think of how that could have primed our domestic job pump and enhanced our national security.

[jpak]

2. I'm writing letters to my Sens and Reps this weekend

Somethings got to change.

Renewable energy policies are also the key for Dems to take back rural Americia (and the Red Rust Belt) from the GOP...

[Porcupine]

3. These jobs would be distributed widely in rural and urban areas

wouldn't they? There would be jobs installing solar panels in cities and jobs installing and mainting larger energy plants in rural communities. Wouldn't these jobs bring life to declining communitees in the Midwest. These are jobs that couldn't be shipped overseas or given to unskilled import labor.

I think that the JOBS that wind and solar power would bring should be a major party plank.

[Ready4Change]

4. Big thumbs up for that article.

It says many of the things I've been saying, but mostly that the rising costs of fossil fuels is creating an enormous opportunity for new businesses in alternative energy. Those can be tremendous boons for the communities with the vision to move on them NOW.