By Andrea Buffa

When the Apollo Alliance was founded in 2003, the concept of green-collar jobs was still in its infancy. Although many people were beginning to understand the causal relationship between America’s oil dependence, war in the Middle East, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the devastation of climate change, Apollo was the first organization to put forward a vision of a clean energy future that could wean America off foreign oil while putting millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs.

Six years later, the idea that transitioning to clean energy can create millions of green-collar jobs has caught on in all corners of the globe. On the opening day of the international climate change meeting in Copenhagen, climate action activists held up signs reading, “Fair Deal [on Climate Change] for Millions of Green Jobs.”

But just because the idea of green-collar jobs has gained popular support doesn’t mean that the proper policies are in place yet to propel their proliferation throughout the economy.

However, consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products is already motivating companies to offer more green products and services. And state and local laws requiring higher energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances, lower greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and greater amounts of renewable energy purchases by utility companies have already caused green job growth to outpace overall job growth by a factor of two to one over the past decade, according to a recent study by Pew Charitable Trusts.

Unfortunately, the United States still lacks comprehensive federal policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and grow the clean energy economy—policies that would increase green-collar job growth exponentially. That’s where the Apollo Alliance comes in.

Apollo’s coalition of unlikely and diverse interests—including labor unions, businesses, environmental groups and community leaders—is pressing federal policymakers to enact sweeping national clean energy and climate policies. In 2008, we released the New Apollo Program, a comprehensive plan to create jobs, dramatically reduce consumer energy bills and rebuild America’s economy. The New Apollo Program calls for a “cap and invest” program to reduce carbon emissions; investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy and mass transit; a plan to revitalize America’s declining manufacturing sector; and specific strategies to expand green-collar job opportunities in the clean energy economy.

Some of our New Apollo Program proposals—-like our recommendations for investing in home weatherization, transmission grid upgrades and public transit projects—were included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But to achieve the kind of green-collar job growth needed to lift the U.S. out of the current recession—and put us on a path to a clean energy future –  we need a federal clean energy and climate bill that puts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and establishes a strong federal renewable energy standard.

In addition, the Apollo Alliance’s emphasis on clean energy manufacturing is helping policymakers understand how clean energy and climate measures can generate green economic growth in the manufacturing sector. American manufacturing—traditionally the ticket to the middle class for workers without college degrees—has been devastated in the last decade as manufacturers have shut down factories in the U.S. and moved them abroad. But what if clean energy manufacturing jobs—jobs producing the components and systems that go into solar panels and windmills—could revive U.S. manufacturing and help rebuild the middle class?

In the fall of 2008, the Apollo Alliance convened a task force of academic experts, labor and business leaders, policymakers, environmental groups and others to develop strategies for revitalizing domestic manufacturing to meet the demands of the growing clean energy economy. The task force released a report called Make It In America: The Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), which laid out aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient.

Shortly after the GreenMAP report was released in April 2009, U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked the Apollo Alliance to help them draft model clean energy manufacturing policies based on the report’s recommendations. This is how Sen. Brown’s Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act was born. The IMPACT Act would expand domestic clean energy manufacturing by establishing a $30 billion revolving loan fund  to help small and mid-sized manufacturers retool their factories to produce clean technologies and become more energy efficient. The bill would also increase support for Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP's) that link smaller manufacturers to clean energy supply chains and markets.

Provisions nearly identical to those in the IMPACT Act were included in the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, which the House of Representatives passed in June 2009. These provisions, with their promise of green-collar manufacturing jobs, helped secured support for ACES from swing legislators in manufacturing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Sen. Brown, with support from Apollo, is now working to get the IMPACT Act included in the Senate’s version of the clean energy and climate bill.

Even in the absence of federal clean energy and climate legislation, green-collar manufacturing jobs are already being developed from coast to coast. In Ohio, a company called Algaeventures is creating new manufacturing jobs by producing harvesters that can transform algae into fuels and plastics. Michigan-based Eagle Manufacturing, which had previously manufactured precision automated robotic machinery and tooling, recently announced an agreement to make parts and serve as a local distributor of residential wind turbines.

But right now, these examples are the exception and not the rule. Many more clean energy manufacturing jobs in such areas as lithium-ion batteries, electrical transformers and large-diameter bolts for wind turbines, and glass for solar panels and energy efficient windows would be created if companies received a clear signal from the U.S. government that it is set to embrace cleaner technologies, and that U.S. manufacturers were going to receive the support they need to be able to compete globally with clean energy manufacturers.

For Green Collar Association Newsletter readers looking to learn more about the national clean energy and climate policy debate, the Apollo Alliance provides an entry-point into the clean energy and green economy policy world, a domain no longer occupied solely by the likes of academics and theorists. These are the ideas and strategies that are going to create a new generation of green-collar jobs that will be the foundation of America’s nascent clean energy economy.