Yesterday’s release of the report detailing the expected decline of Central Appalachia’s coal production has generated continued discussion here on Coal Tattoo about the subject of a regional economic transition that would involve more “green jobs.”
Well, today we got at least a little bit of an answer from the Obama administration, in the form of a $6 million grant to the state’s Workforce West Virginia program to help about 1,600 West Virginians find employment in environmentally-friendly jobs.
My buddy, Gazette business editor Eric Eyre, has the story here. According to Eric:
The grants will directly benefit veterans and workers recently laid off in West Virginia, Solis said.
As part of the grant, about 70 people will receive certification for jobs at water and sewer plants, and 60 people will receive wind energy technology certificates across the state.
The money also will train current and future workers in the construction and bio-mass/bio-power industries. Training will be offered in retrofitting and installation, and “green” entrepreneurship.
Two new community college programs focusing on clean energy jobs will be created.
This grant to West Virginia is part of $190 million in “green jobs” grants announced by the Department of Labor today. Project summaries are available here. In a press release announcing the grants, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis (above) said:
These grants will help workers gain access to good jobs, while supporting the sort of statewide energy efficiency strategies that play a crucial role in building the green economy of the 21st century.
But here’s one thing I noticed … About a month ago, Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced federal funding to help American Electric Power with its big carbon capture demonstration project over in Mason County. Chu held a conference call with local media to discuss the project, and coalfield politicians — including Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — were falling all over themselves to join in that conference call and get quoted about “clean coal.”
Today, Eric listened in to the labor department’s “green jobs” announcement conference call. He tells me that no West Virginia political leaders took part … Are they in favor of green jobs, or just supporters of “clean coal”?
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[...] Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette – » Obama DOL: Helping W.Va. workers find ‘green jobs’ blogs.wvgazette.com – view page – cached Yesterday’s release of the report detailing the expected decline of Central Appalachia’s coal production has generated continued discussion here on Coal Tattoo about the subject of a regional economic transition that would involve more “green jobs.” [...]
That’s great to hear WVa got this grant. We missed out on the first round of retraining grant funds, so it is a relief to hear we made the cut in the second.
Meanwhile, we also missed out on another huge job growth opportunity earlier this month when $2,300,000,000 (that’s 2.3 billion dollars) in clean energy manufacturing company tax credits were announced. The five states that neighbor WVa had an average of 4 projects each receive funding–West Virginia, zero.
For more details (including a national map showing the 43 states where funds went): http://www.wvablue.com/diary/5468/on-momentum
I’d love to know if any West Virginia politicians were championing West Virginia companies for those grants, or if they were MIA for those green job opportunities, too.
Sounds like good news. My question (based on the number of people employed by windmills in Tucker County) is where are we going to put the 500 windmills that would be needed to employ 60 people with certificates? (At least here it’s an average of one person for every eight or nine turbines.)
A fair follow-up question?
(And you’re right, WV should have been on the call. But I can’t imagine it was our pols saying no to any grant announcement – think maybe none was invited?)
Did any WV companies apply for the manufacturing tax credits? Did we in fact have companies that were eligible? While government, state and local, has some influence and responsibility in growing the economy, their role is to provide or facilitate the human and physical infrastructure and to tax and regulate where market forces are not going to include full costs (like the costs of infrastructure, resource depletion, and environmental damage.) It is not government’s responsibility or area of expertise to run businesses.
WV businesses do not seem to be taking advantage of the available markets, tax credits to themselves and consumers, training, etc. I don’t see how we can blame government for that.
[...] Local Green: A $6 million federal grant will help train 1,600 West Virginia workers for green jobs. [...]
The way I read the project summaries, this grant does not provide any person with a job. Let’s clarify that. What it does do is provide education and training to about 1800 veterans, criminals, and unemployed citizens. Getting a green job, and whether it is in West Virginia or elsewhere, is a whole other issue.
Jim — That’s why the clean energy manufacturing company tax credits are so important–those tax credits go to actual on-going concerns and create jobs. Unless West Virginia starts getting its act together really quickly, once these workers are trained they’ll be heading out of state for work. It’ll be yet another missed opportunity.
On the balance, having job training programs is better than not having them and, this training grant does create at least a few jobs that wouldn’t exist otherwise… someone has to do the job training. (Yes, that’s a very small number of jobs compared to the number of people trained.)
I think the administration & Congress have been far too timid about creating job formation programs–we need a modern version of something like the CCC designed to put as many people as possible to work as quickly as possible. I predict Congress will act in a much more focused manner on job creation in the next 30-90 days as the relentless bad news continues on the employment and housing fronts. When Congresspeople head home for Easter break they’ll start getting very nervous about Nov. elections.