Dec 10 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Leslie Berkman The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.



An economic push toward cleaner forms of energy and conservation created more than 4,000 jobs in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in a 13-year period, according to a report released Wednesday.

That was a 50 percent increase in the region's green jobs as of January 2008, to 12,500. During the same period of time, total Inland employment grew by 43 percent.

The report released by Next 10, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization based in Palo Alto, said that in the period studied, 1995 to 2008, the number of green jobs throughout California increased 36 percent, growing at a faster clip than total employment, which over the same time expanded by 13 percent.

Even as the economy slowed between 2007 and 2008 and total employment shrunk by one percent, green jobs continued to grow 5 percent statewide.

F. Noel Perry, founder of Next 10, said although the total number of green jobs is not large--about 160,000 jobs statewide--the upward trend is important.

"I think green jobs will continue to grow faster because of new regulatory policies and incentives and venture capital investment and because people are demanding green products and services," Perry said.

Perry acknowledged that the report does not reflect how the events that occurred after January 2008, including a deepening recession, may have affected the growth of green jobs. He said next year his organization intends to update the numbers.

Doug Henton, chief executive of Collaborative Economics, an economics consulting group that was hired by Next 10 to work on the report, observed that the Inland counties have the advantage of an exceptionally large concentration of jobs in energy generation, particularly in the areas of solar and wind installation and support.

Between 1995 and 2008, jobs related to energy generation in the Inland region increased by 85 percent and energy efficiency jobs, which range from energy conservation consulting to the manufacture of energy efficient products such as lighting, increased by 81 percent.

Henton said he expects Southern California, to lead the state in the development and manufacture of electric and other nonpolluting cars and trucks to help the Port of Los Angeles and the related logistics industry meet carbon reduction standards.

Perry said he expects utility-sized solar and wind farms to expand in the Inland region once environmental demands for clean energy can be reconciled with other environmental concerns about protecting the desert and its wildlife.

"I think the Inland Empire is uniquely situated to benefit from a boom in green industry because we were in the game early with some of the first and largest solar farms and wind farms and we continue to be well situated for it because we have the land base," said Craig Keys, principal of Keys Consulting Group, a Los Angeles government relations and economic development firm, and a member of Inland Southern California's Green Valley Initiative workforce development committee.

A shortage of technically trained workers has been the region's greatest weakness in promoting green jobs, Keys said.

(c) 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services