CNN Fortune: Wind jobs outstrip coal mining
CNN Fortune's Green Wombat blog reports that the U.S. wind industry now employs more people than coal mining.
Writing for CNN Fortune's Green Wombat blog, Todd Woody reports that the U.S. wind industry now employs more people than coal mining. That's 85,000 jobs in the wind industry and 81,000 in the coal industry.
According to Woody, "Another sign that wind power is no longer a niche green energy play: Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S. Power, literally, is shifting from the east to west, to the wind belt of the Midwest, west Texas and the West Coast."
In a positive development for an industry dominated by foreign companies, the American Wind Energy Association reports that the percentage of domestically manufactured wind turbine components increased from 30% to 50% between 2005 and 2008.
With a three-year extension of a renewable energy production tax credit in the stimulus bill, and interest in enacting feed-in tariff legislation, there may be hope that a new green energy industry truly will take the place of the nonrenewable fossil fuel industry.
Also see The Oregonian's article on "Wind power jobs are abundant, but training is scarce" where Anna Richter Taylor, spokesperson for Gov. Kulongoski asserts, "We all know that the state is facing an economic crisis...Our message is that renewable energy is a way for us to get out of this crisis."
