Work (Energy) Efficiently – It’s Good for Your Economy's Health

By being energy efficient, you’ll not only save money – you’ll help create jobs.

Every day, in everything we do, we have an impact on the planet. This is true for individuals, but it’s even truer for businesses.

Any business leader who doesn’t get this by now is turning down the largest, most lucrative opportunity of this young century: reducing waste and increasing energy efficiency. Companies that figure out how to do both will not only reduce their costs and boost their profits, they’ll win tremendous public support as well.

Not a bad return on investment. But wait, as the TV ad says, “There’s more!” 

It turns out that energy efficiency also creates new jobs, and that’s one benefit everyone can get behind, especially in this economy.

Hard to believe? More studies than you can count pour in daily, illuminating the incredible job growth and economic savings to be had simply by getting serious about energy efficiency and renewable energy.

One of them, released last month by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), found that Ohio could add $2.6 billion to its annual gross state product (GSP) and create more than 32,000 new good-paying trade and professional jobs by 2025 through energy efficiency measures. That’s like having 250 new manufacturing plants move to Ohio – with no need for new public infrastructure investment.

Similarly in Florida, a Center for Climate Strategies analysis found that a package of climate actions – led by energy efficiency – would add over $11 billion to annual GSP and more than 148,000 new jobs by 2025. What’s not to like about that?

These are “what-if” studies, but UC–Berkeley researcher David Roland-Holst took an after-the-fact look at California’s energy efficiency investments over the last 30 years.

His conclusions:

1.5 million more jobs were created than would have occurred otherwise, with a $45 billion payroll;

50 jobs were gained for each job lost from the fossil energy sector;

$56 billion in savings resulted; and

California reduced its dependence on energy imports and ensured a smoother transition to the low-carbon economy of the future.

In a recession, it’s instructive to look at what industries are succeeding:

The energy efficiency industry grew about twice as fast as the overall U.S. economy from 2006-2007.

In the distressed building sector, green buildings still enjoyed strong growth; the U.S. green building industry is now worth $12 billion; 10 years ago, it was unquantifiable.

The renewable energy industry grew more than twice as fast as the U.S. economy from 2006-2007. Excluding drought-stricken hydropower, renewable energy grew more than 3 times as fast as the U.S. economy.

According to Dan Kammen, a leading researcher on energy and jobs, renewable energy produces twice as many jobs as traditional fossil energy for the same amount of power. It’s not hard to see why: more labor goes into designing, manufacturing, selling, shipping, installing, and maintaining hundreds of small distributed renewable generation sources (e.g., windmills, solar photovoltaic arrays, etc.) than capital-intensive power plants and transmission lines. Better yet, more of that money stays in the local economy instead of being “exported” out of state – or worse, out of the country. Not surprisingly, our energy security also improves. And I haven’t even mentioned global warming emissions and other pollution from fossil power plants.

That’s fine and good, you may think, for companies like mine that sell directly to consumers, but it doesn’t apply to manufacturers and other businesses that serve industrial and commercial markets. Wrong again, because consumer-product companies – my own Stonyfield Farm included – are starting to focus on lifecycle emissions, which means we’re pushing the green values our consumers want right up our supply chains to those upstream businesses. You can run from the end-user market, but you can’t hide – at least not for very long!

Happily, these lessons haven’t been lost on policy makers in Washington.