Green economy a key focus

The battle against global warming is an opportunity to create a new, green economy, members of the state's Climate Advisory Team said Wednesday.

Tripling the number of jobs in the clean-energy economy by 2020 is one of the team's goals and a key measure in 2008 climate legislation introduced by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

"That means 25,000 more green jobs by 2020," Julie Wilkerson, director of the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, told The Olympian's editorial board Wednesday.

Studies by the state Energy Policy Office documented that the number of clean-energy jobs more than doubled from 1998 to 2004. Those jobs, in such fields as energy efficiency, renewable energy and smart-energy technology, totaled 8,400 by 2004 with an average salary of $60,000, studies say.

Wages earned in the green-energy field suggest that not everyone needs to go to college to earn a good living, said Bill Messenger of the Washington State Labor Council. But getting those jobs will take strong vocational education and apprenticeship programs, he added.

Gregoire has asked the Legislature to approve an initiative that would provide more than $7 million in the next five years for work-force training and education programs to increase green-collar jobs. Senate Bill 6516 and companion measure House Bill 2815 have been approved in committee.

One way to expand those jobs is to expand green building techniques required in larger state-funded buildings into businesses, homes and remodeling projects, state Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning said. It could be accomplished through regulations, tax incentives or both.

Making buildings more energy efficient reduces energy use, which reduces the burning of fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, he said.

The legislation contains a few other of about 47 recommendations the Climate Advisory Team will deliver to the governor Feb. 6, including:

• Ecology developing a program to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

• Creating a regional, market-based system to limit and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The legislation has the support of environmental advocates, who made a climate action bill one of their four priorities for the legislative session.

"This is not a jobs-versus-environment issue," said Ross Macfarlane, policy adviser for Climate Solutions, a global- warming watchdog group.