Tom Vilsack is the first 2008 candidate to make energy independence his central theme. So far he has my vote. As I said before, I'll vote for the best candidate among those who make oil independence their first priority.
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Can alternative energy spur job growth?
Updated 12/23/2006 12:39 PM ET
usatoday.com
WASHINGTON — Expect Democrats who take control of Congress in January to talk about alternative energy as a way to create new jobs, from factory workers who assemble windmills to construction workers who build new ethanol plants.
And when they speak, companies like Tower Tech Systems on the western shore of Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, Wis., and Suzlon Rotor Corp. in the southwest Minnesota community of Pipestone will exemplify what they mean.
Tower Tech was a start-up firm two years ago formed by four local investors. The company employs 94 people who fabricate and weld steel towers for windmills. Most are shipped to Canada under contract with a Danish company that is assembling them, but in 2007 more shipments will go to sites around the United States.
CONGRESS: Democrats keep energy goals modest for '07
Tower Tech is planning to open a welding school to train more workers who manipulate a joy stick and watch their welding on a video screen as it ramps up production from two towers a week to four-a-week in 2007 and eight-a-week in 2008, said Dan Wergin, a vice president.
"If we could produce 1,000 of these towers, we could sell them," said Wergin, one of the founders. The company is providing workers will a full package of benefits that includes health, vision, dental, disability and life insurance, while paying then $17 to $25 an hour.
On top of that, Tower Tech already is one of the larger consumers of domestically produced steel in Wisconsin, according to Wergin.
Other jobs are being "in-sourced," which means foreign companies are creating manufacturing jobs by investing in the United States.
Suzlon Rotor Corp., the American subsidiary of India-based Suzlon Energy, began producing windmill blades and nose cones in late November. It employs 235 and expects add 40 jobs by late summer of 2007, said spokeswoman Michelle Montague.
Congressional Democrats are committing themselves to a policy agenda that includes energy independence by 2016.
And Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democratic candidate for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, is making energy security a central campaign theme. The new jobs that could be created would help address "the middle-class squeeze," according to Vilsack. That's Democrat-speak for stagnating incomes, higher energy and college costs, and the erosion of manufacturing jobs
The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental advocates, is advocating a $300 billion, 10-year public-private program to create "clean energy" industries. They project the program would create 3.3 million new jobs and free the United States from the need for imported oil.
Is that a realistic goal?
Economist John Urbanchuck of the consulting firm LECG LLC describes it as a "laudable" objective that would require some new technological breakthroughs and may not be politically achievable.
Urbanchuck, whose specialties are agriculture and renewable fuels, estimates the ethanol industry currently employs only about 5,000 and is directly responsible for about another 100,000 jobs in associated fields such as transportation.
Bio-diesel employs even fewer people. He estimates 1,500 are directly employed in manufacturing and another 25,000 in associated jobs.
Wind and solar energy, meanwhile, are produced passively and require very few maintenance employees. Jobs in those fields involve mostly manufacturing windmills and solar panels.
The legislative vehicle for accomplishing much of this would be The New Apollo Energy Project, a bill introduced in 2005 by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.
Inslee's bill, which did not have any chance of becoming law in a Republican-controlled Congress, is not likely to become law even with a Democratic majority because President Bush still occupies the White House and could veto it, according to Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., a co-sponsor of Inslee's bill.
"I do not see the prospect of a 180-degree pivot on energy policy," said Baldwin, who hopes nonetheless that the new Congress can at least remove regulatory obstacles.
For example, Baldwin points to how she and other lawmakers persuaded the Federal Aviation Administration to consider new applications for wind farms on a case-by-case basis after the agency had earlier issued a directive stopping the construction of all new windmill farms because they could interfere with radar.
The United States has about 20,000 windmills that produce electricity, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Although windmills are low-maintenance energy producers that don't require many workers to monitor, there is a demand for factory workers to manufacture their parts, for transportation workers to haul them and for construction workers to pour foundations and erect the towers.
Contact Brian Tumulty at btumulty@gns.gannett.com |
