House Hearings: Green Jobs Offer Opportunity to Rebuild Middle Class
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President Obama’s economic recovery plan sets aside $50 billion in grants and tax incentives to promote efficient and renewable energy. But the nation also must focus on training workers and rebuilding our manufacturing industries to take advantage of the growth in green jobs, experts told a congressional panel today.
Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections that potential for a clean energy economy offers huge opportunities to revive American manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s economy. But “what’s not evident is whether we have the human capital or the political will to ensure the jobs are American.”
We don’t make most of the systems involved in producing clean energy. Fully half of America’s existing wind turbines were manufactured overseas. And we rank fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell was born in America.
