$150B Investment in Clean Energy Can Revive Economy

Researchers at the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts claim that a $150 billion investment in clean energy has the ability to revive the economy by creating 1.7 billion jobs including jobs for low income and less educated Americans. According to the report:

“These job gains would be enough — on their own — to reduce the unemployment rate in today’s economy by about one full percentage point, to 8.4 percent from current 9.4-percent levels — even after taking into full account the inevitable job losses in conventional fossil-fuel sectors of the U.S. economy as they contract. Our detailed analysis … calculates that roughly 2.5 million new jobs will be created overall by spending $150 billion on clean-energy investments, while close to 800,000 jobs would be lost if conventional fossil-fuel spending were to decline by an equivalent amount. It is not likely that all $150 billion in new clean-energy investment spending would come at the expense of reductions in the fossil-fuel industry. However, we present this scenario to establish a high-end estimate for reductions in conventional fossil-fuel spending, and the net gains in employment that will still result through spending $150 billion per year on clean-energy investments.”

(Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/more-studies-extoll-virtues-of-green-jobs/#more-13057)