by Kevin Doyle, resident of Green Economy, a Boston-based training, consulting, and research firm with services for the institutions and individuals building a more sustainable world
Review of recent green job studies:
In January, Green Biz.com released State of Green Business 2008
What's the state of "green job creation" in 2008? It's mentioned under the heading "Indicators We Wish We Had" with the following rueful comment: "How many jobs are being created through all of the kinds of activities measured in this report? No one knows."
Links to some of the green jobs reports that are making the rounds can be found at the end of this post, but one thing is common to almost all of them. They agree that we need more detailed local and regional information from employers in six specific industries: green building, energy efficiency, solar energy, wind power, biofuels, and brownfields redevelopment.
The December issue of the Environmental Business Journal provides the 2006 revenue and projected annual growth (2007-2010) numbers for the following sectors:
- Wastewater Treatment -- $37.49 billion -- 4.6 percent
- Solid Waste Management -- $50.60 billion -- 4.2 percent
- Remediation/Industrial Service -- $11.55 billion -- 4.4 percent
- Consulting and Engineering -- $23.98 billion -- 5.2 percent
- Water Equipment/Chemicals -- $26.11 billion -- 5.6 percent
- Water Utilities -- $36.61 billion -- 4.4 percent
- Resource Recovery -- $24.13 billion -- 15.0 percent
- Hazardous Waste Management -- $ 8.99 billion -- 2.2 percent
The EBJ numbers are supported by last year's review of the top 200 environmental firms in Engineering News Record. ENR's analysis showed a 12.5 percent gain for the top 200 over the previous year, pushing total revenues for the big guys to $42.2 billion.
In a confirmation of our hopes for job creation in the clean energy and green building sector, EBJ reported that its definition of that industry grew a whopping 11.8 percent in 2006 to total revenues of $24.90 billion, with expected growth at 11.4 percent annually. Meanwhile, ENR has begun tracking the top "green contractors" in the nation.
Have read 5 of 6 reports on the resource list:#6: Massachusetts Clean Energy Industry Census (PDF) from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (2007).
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