Cultivating green jobs : rockymountainnews.com

Forget blue collar or white collar. Today, the nation is under the spell of the green collar.

Presidential candidates, on their stumps from Ohio to Texas, from Colorado to the Carolinas, promise daily to create thousands of green-collar jobs in the solar, wind energy, hydrogen and biofuels sectors.

It's nothing particularly novel in Colorado, where these types of jobs have been commonplace since the 1970s. But with the growth of the green industry in the state, it is taking on an elevated role.

Candidates agree on the homegrown virtues of these jobs, pointing out that they cannot be outsourced, as have blue-collar jobs in the manufacturing industry. After all, solar panels on a rooftop in Denver cannot be installed by a worker in China, and utility employees at a wind-energy farm in India cannot supply electricity to suburbs like Aurora.

It helps that green-collar jobs bolster America's energy security by lowering its dependence on foreign oil, often imported from unstable countries.

And the nation benefits because these jobs promote the alternative-energy sector, reducing the emission of heat-trapping pollutants in the air that's often blamed for global warming and climate change.

But communities don't know what these jobs will be in the future or what skills will be required to fill the positions.

Economic development officials in Colorado and across the nation are scrambling to figure out curricula for schools and colleges to train young people for green-collar jobs.

More troubling, many of these jobs could peter out much like the new-collar jobs - spawned by the Internet boom - did after that industry went bust in the early 2000s.

To Tom Clark, green-collar job is just shorthand for work related to the environmental field, but the term has yet to connote its full implications.

"Green collar does not encompass the magnitude of what will happen to this world in the next 15 to 20 years," said Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. "It will touch every part of our lives, whether it be thermostats in our homes or mini-windmills to run our hot-water tanks.

"It will be omnipresent in our lives, and we all will become involved in green collar, one way or another."

It is not a new term.

And many of those jobs don't require new skills.

Patrick Heffernan referred to the "green-collar revolution" in 1976, and more recently Geoff Mulgan in The British Spring: A Manifesto for the Election after Next wrote about it in 1997. Green-collar jobs, such as process technicians in biodiesel or ethanol companies and their skills using a computer to move liquids through pipes, are the same as in a beer brewery or a crude oil company, Clark said.

Today, green-collar jobs are growing by leaps and bounds, not only in the Denver area but also across the state and nation.

On Wednesday, Danish company Vestas Wind Systems opened a wind-turbine factory in Windsor that will employ 650 workers. Colorado State University spinoff AVA Solar is looking to employ 500 as it ramps up production of panels.

Meanwhile, solar companies Abengoa and Ascent Solar Technologies plan to hire scores of workers in the coming years.

Direct employment in the renewable-energy sector in the metro area more than doubled to 13,940 in 2007 from 5,760 in 2004, according to metro Denver EDC.

There were about 104 renewable-energy companies in the seven-county metro area in 2004. Last year, that number jumped to 1,010, although the geographical area increased to include Weld and Larimer counties.

Colorado ranked 10th among the 50 states in renewable-energy employment with 15,400 workers in 2007 - up 2.6 percent from the previous year, surpassing the nationwide growth of 2.1 percent.

Gov. Bill Ritter said he recently spoke with members of a delegation from Spain to promote Colorado as a cost-competitive manufacturing base for wind and solar equipment.

"We don't have a target for new green-collar jobs," Ritter said. "We are just being as aggressive as we can to market Colorado as a production and manufacturing destination for renewable-energy companies."

Nationwide, there were 8.5 million green-collar jobs last year, and that's expected to grow to 40 million by 2030, according to a report commissioned by the American Solar Energy Society in November.

But state officials worry about the availability of workers to keep up the momentum.

Executives at Vestas have met with state officials to discuss the issue, and the company spent its own resources to train workers, said Tom Plant, director of the Governor's Energy Office.

Plant said his office has commissioned a study to figure out what skills renewable-energy companies would need in the work force and what's the best way to address those needs in collaboration with research institutes, state and community colleges.

Many skills could be specific to a region with a given renewable resource. For instance, Logan County is looking into a training center for wind-energy related jobs, and Adams State College could pursue a curriculum in solar energy.

"It is a real challenge everywhere with any new emerging industry," Plant said.

"The work force is still developing with the industry, so whatever we can do to get ahead of the curve and deliver a well-trained work force will make us more competitive with other states and even for businesses already located here."

Mark Mathis

Age: 44

Green-collar job: The owner of Confluence Energy is building up a wood-pellet plant using beetle-infested trees.

Mark Mathis is in the business of creating green-collar jobs - starting with about two dozen at his wood-pellet plant.

The plant, situated on a 20-acre plot in Kremmling, has yet to open its doors, but it is creating excitement around its choice of feedstock.

It will use lodgepole pines rotting from beetle infestation, an epidemic spread over a million acres on Colorado's Western Slope.

Once up and running early next month, Mathis said, the plant will pay on average $34,000 a year per worker - about 25 percent higher than the average salary in Grand County.

It will spawn 75 indirect jobs, creating job opportunities to log the dying trees and truck the wood to the plant. The plant also will generate as much as $10 million of commerce for the local community.

He said the idea for the project dawned on him about 18 months ago, when he mulled the danger of the rotting beetle-kill as fodder for forest fires. At that time, there was a local shortage of wood-stove pellets.

He researched the idea, trying to find out whether mixing the two issues would work as a viable business model.

The back-end of the operation seemed simple enough: cull the dead trees, transport them to the factory, chop the wood into dime-sized pieces, dry out and pulverize the pieces into sawdust, and compress the powder into pellets.

The front end, however, was a challenge: Which retailers would stock the pellets and sell them to customers?

Mathis, who owns Confluence Energy, which includes about a half-dozen investors, worked to make the idea reality. The plant broke ground last year and is in the final stages of completion. Home improvement store Lowe's will stock the beetle-kill pellets, as will King Soopers.

Mathis, who grew up in St. Paul, Minn., has been living in Colorado for the past 25 years. He has held various jobs, including event promotions and financial investment, and has started other companies.

"But the pellet plant is larger," he said. "It's about fighting the good fight. It's about trying to go out there to make a difference."

John Rizzo

Age: 59

Green-collar job: ProLogis' managing director of global construction aims to save energy and reduce waste.

John Rizzo's job is to splash green onto stories of red bricks, brown pipes and gray concrete and steel.

Green, to him, is more than a politically correct color.

It is harvesting rainwater off building roofs, irrigating front lawns with water from kitchen and bathroom sinks, building huge windows to stream in sunlight and using locally made materials for offices and warehouses.

Be it Tokyo or Toronto, Beijing or Barcelona, Dallas or Denver.

"Last year, we built more than 50 million square feet worldwide," said the 59-year-old managing director of global construction at ProLogis, sitting in his neat office at the company headquarters off Airport Way in east Denver.

"During the planning process of new construction, we address sustainability issues in the design parameters."

Rizzo is verbose in the description of his responsibilities. That's understandable, since he deals with LEED, BREEAM and CASBEE.

Those acronyms used in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan stand for green building standards. An office or a warehouse with one of those certifications means it is energy-efficient and has a smaller carbon footprint than comparable buildings.

Rizzo is a native Bostonian with a civil engineering degree from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. He knows how to handle the growing demand for environmental sustainability in different nations. He's equally comfortable with the increasing demand for greener buildings from customers such as Pepsi, Kraft, Adidas and Nike.

ProLogis is the world's biggest industrial real estate investment trust based in Denver, with a total of 510.2 million square feet and a market cap of $13.5 billion.

Its footprints are spread over North America, Europe and Asia in 2,773 properties. To Rizzo, that means he's in the airplane half the time, visiting one country after another.

Last week, he left for China - a country ProLogis entered in 2003. Today, ProLogis owns and manages properties in 19 cities, including Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

"I think in the future, the standard will be to build carbon-neutral facilities," Rizzo summed up.

Mike Fryrear

Age: 42

Green-collar job: The wind technician at FPL Energy takes care of 267 turbines at a wind farm near Peetz.

For seven years, Mike Fryrear worked as a court investigator, making sure police reports were in order and that people involved had responded to law officials.

Today, as a wind technician, he makes sure that the 267 turbines at a wind farm near Peetz are in working order and that the rotating blades respond to gusts.

He climbs one or more of the 262-foot towers each day, checks on the massive, rotating blades that generate electricity and fixes loose wires or tripped switches. Along the way, he enjoys the aerial view of the wide expanses of northeast Colorado, the spectacular bluffs and wildlife, the stunning sunsets and azure skies.

"The view from up there is fabulous," Fryrear said this week, emphasizing why he isn't bored in the isolated location far from any town.

Fryrear doesn't have an engineering degree that one would assume is typical for such jobs. But what he has is loads of confidence and a can-do attitude that impressed his boss during a job interview five months ago. He has an associate degree in business administration from Waubonsee Community College in Illinois and in political science from Northeastern Junior College in Sterling.

He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago but each summer visited his maternal grandparents - homesteaders in northeast Colorado - and helped them with the wheat harvest. Those trips fostered a love for the environment and open spaces, which he acted on 12 years ago by relocating to the area.

He worked at the family farm and later as an investigator for the 13th Judicial District, which spans seven counties in northeast Colorado.

Last year, it dawned on him he'd hit a ceiling in his profession. Fortunately, FPL Energy was looking to hire a wind technician for its 400-megawatt wind farm near Peetz.

The FPL plant is Colorado's biggest wind project, employing 21 workers. Since joining the company, Fryrear has undergone rigorous training within FPL and outside at a three-week stint at General Electric's wind energy training quarters in Schenectady, N.Y.

"If my grandfather was alive, he'd be amazed at how we harvest energy from the wind without any detriment to this place - a place he loved," Fryrear said.

Jesse Courtemanche

Age: 33 Green-collar job: Lead solar-panel installer at SolSource

Jesse Courtemanche's wife says he has a cool job. Friends often prod him about his work - a sign, he thinks, that they're envious.

Not many people blend beliefs and brawn as he does.

As a solar-panel installer at SolSource, a Denver company, Courtemanche gets to haul 40-pound modules onto rooftops, fix them in neat rows so as to best reflect sunlight and make sure those panels produce the desired amount of green electricity to run household lights and appliances.

"This is a rewarding job," Courtemanche said, on his way to a Broomfield home to install solar panels. "I feel great about myself when I do my job. It's about fresh air and sunshine, and I believe it's helping reduce our carbon footprint."

Courtemanche, born and raised in Lowell, Mass., first developed a curiosity about clean-energy technologies nine years ago during a brief stay in Europe.

"It's a great way to work, to spend time doing greater good," he said.

He came to Colorado five years ago after accepting an offer to visit his brother-in-law in Vail and never left. In the past four years, he has held a variety of jobs, including renovating homes and producing catalogs for green products.

A year ago, a friend working at SolSource clued him in to his current job, explaining the bright prospects of the solar industry and the in-house training that would hone his skills for future opportunities.

Today, he is adept at solar- panel installations and is working on a business degree at Front Range Community College.

Courtemanche believes the world will embrace all sorts of energy from renewable resources. He even has a cool name for his company, if and when he owns one: Factotum Solar.

The noun factotum, in Latin, stands for a servant or person having many different responsibilities.

"I am that kind of a person," Courtemanche said.