From New York to Georgia, clean energy has seen strides in economic development. The growth was a key piece in keeping U.S unemployment low amid high inflation post pandemic. Political organization Climate Power is focusing attention on the growth of green jobs. Senior Advisor Jesse Lee is seeing a boom.
“It's been a huge revolution. It's been the biggest spike in manufacturing investments in building new factories in the history of the country,” Lee said.
Since the Inflation Reduction Act’s passing in August of 2022, more than 400,000 jobs have been created in the sector, according to a Climate Power survey. Lee adds that private companies have invested more than $400 billion, thanks to tax breaks and grants for clean energy development.
“It's just the incentive people need to kind of say, Okay, actually, this does make business sense. Now, let's go ahead and invest here. Let's do it for the long term,” Lee said. “Part of the thing that's been the chicken and egg for this is it does take a major investment to set up these manufacturing facilities.”
Lee describes the process of clean energy as uniquely interdependent. For example jobs are needed to build wind turbines; other jobs are needed to install and maintain them. Turbines collect the energy of wind and to store that energy batteries must be produced. One job leads to another in a way that promotes development, unlike many other fields.
(Here more about Green Jobs on our Deeper Shade of Green podcast here)
The Trump administration is vocal about gutting the clean energy tax credits introduced in the IRA. In a survey from Politico though, nearly two dozen republicans in Congress are against eliminating the tax credits- which can bring new projects and jobs to their districts. Lee remains hopeful green job growth will continue.
“I am optimistic, and I think republicans have already shown a lot of signs of tiptoeing around this, being scared to get into it.”
A singular district in Georgia has eight new electric vehicle battery and solar equipment plants. The 10,000 jobs created point out why congress members would want to support the industry. But it’s not clear which politicians might step forward.
In an annual review by the League of Conservationist Voters, the House representatives from Georgia scored a 35% scorecard in voting for environmental protection, while its senators received a 100%.
“I think the conventional wisdom is that the House is the most likely check on this. I actually kind of disagree with that,” Lee said. “I think the leadership of the House under Republicans tends to steamroll their members a lot more willingly than senators do.”
Senators are, Lee adds, ‘on the hook’ for what they do. For example, when President Trump advocates for eliminating windmills, states with a higher dependence on the wind sector are more likely to vote against the rest of their party. Lee believes they’re seen as more responsible for what happens when energy costs rise for their constituents.
Climate Power recently noted more than 50,000 clean energy jobs have been lost, delayed or threatened since Trump was elected. The surveys can be found at Climate-Power-dot-US.
Climate Power's Jesse Lee spoke to us on our Deeper Shade of Green podcast.
