Green jobs are real and growing, Energy Dept. insists

The US Department of Energy (DOE) appears to be trying to raise its voice over a chorus declaring green jobs as a bust and clean energy as a scam.

According to the department, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman on Thursday plans to publicly highlight the clean-energy jobs created under the Obama administration.

The DOE today also began promoting a new brief video profiling an employee at an A123 Systems manufacturing plant in Romulus, Michigan. In the video, production technician Annette Herrera describes having been out of work for nearly 2 1/2 years before finding the job with A123. The company, which manufactures advanced lithium-ion batteries for cars and grid-based energy storage, opened two manufacturing facilities in Michigan after receiving $249 million in federal stimulus funding, and recently hired its 1000th employee in the state.

Poneman today also publicized the fact that the stimulus-funded weatherization program has so far resulted in energy efficiency improvements to more than 500,000 low-income homes across the US. The program has directly put to work more than 14,000 people, he said, with “countless others” employed throughout the supply chain.

The underlying message of today’s PR pitch from the DOE: if the US doesn’t invest in clean energy, other countries will … and will reap the benefits.

“We are in a race to capitalize on the huge economic and job growth potential of the clean-energy economy,” Poneman said. “Other countries like China are already moving aggressively to develop and deploy these technologies, but with continued investments in innovation, this is a race we can win.”

Today’s DOE news also featured a nod to recent good news from the US solar market: the Solar Energy Industries Association this week announced that solar photovoltaics installations in the US grew by 69 percent in the second quarter of 2011, while the Solar Foundation reported that solar energy now employs more than 100,000 people in the US. Both announcements were welcomed in the cleantech sector in the wake of ongoing political fallout from the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar firm that had received a $535-million loan guarantee from the DOE.