Green Jersey

Report: Clean energy means jobs

Today at noon, some of the state’s environmentalists and labor leaders will gather in Trenton to unveil a report that includes an estimated number of jobs that could be created in New Jersey and nationwide with investments in clean energy.

The report was prepared by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Update: The report said the country can create 2 million jobs, 57,000 of them Jersey-based. In context: Four times as many with equal investments in the oil industry, says the report.

Called “Green Recovery: A Program to Create Good Jobs and Start Building a Low-Carbon Economy,” the report was based on a two-year, $100 billion green investment program. If that number sounds familiar, it’s the same amount the Bush Administration gave out in April in its stimulus package. (The report also says this investment would out-job the household-spending strategy of the stimulus package by 20 percent.)

The report proposes: Mostly, tax credits for people to make their homes and businesses more energy-efficient and government funds for the retrofitting of buildings, new investments in renewable energy and improvements to mass transit and the grid.

More: In Support of a New (Green) Deal (NYT City Room blog)