News
Promoting Energy Efficiency Could Create 333,000 Jobs In 2010
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
On March 9 the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) released a report that found approximately 333,000 new jobs could be created in 2010, and another 184,000 in 2011. According to Steve Nadal, the group’s Executive Director, federal provisions for efficiency improvement programs are “labor intensive and net job creators. These programs would produce more construction and service-sector jobs than those energy sector jobs lost from reduced energy consumption.”
The group has submitted three proposals to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. These proposals call for provisions to stimulate projects that ACEEE is ready to act on immediately. Nadal said, “These provisions would represent good investments in three important sectors of the U.S. economy: improving productivity, creating jobs, and leveraging government, consumer, and business funds in the best way possible.”
Most of the jobs created would be in labor and construction, retrofitting commercial and residential buildings with energy-efficient technology. More demand would be created for the products used in these retrofits, creating more manufacturing jobs as well. “In addition,” Nadal said, “these programs would continue creating small numbers of jobs even after the stimulus period is over, because energy bill savings enable consumers and businesses to spend that money elsewhere in the economy.”
