City moves forward on green jobs creation
By Nicholas Smith, Inside Tucson Business
Published on Friday, April 10, 2009
Adding more environmentally-friendly jobs to Tucson might be one little stimulus check away.
City officials are working on a plan to get money from the Department of Energy to create jobs that promote energy efficiency, reduction of greenhouse gasses and a good return on investment.
“We’re breaking new ground here in a lot of ways. The Energy Department is expecting us to be pretty creative in a lot of these projects,” said City of Tucson Sustainability Administrator David Schaller.
The Green Jobs Initiative is an effort to grab some of the federal stimulus dollars for self-sustaining and energy efficient projects around the city. The initiative was passed by the City Council in February and has a May 4 target completion date. Part of the measure calls for establishing a Green Jobs section on the city’s website and evaluating which projects can get funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
“We really have two goals,” said Councilman Steve Leal. He explained that the program should to get the stimulus money, but also work towards establishing permanent programs that don’t rely on federal money.
Those details depend on how much funding the city receives.
“This aspect of creating permanent transformational types of activities is a challenge because we have to set up a revolving fund of some kind that captures the energy efficiency savings from some of the activities we do,” Schaller said.
Tucson has until June 25 to get its paperwork in for federal approval.
Although the 2007 Energy Act called for the creation of self-sustaining jobs, is wasn’t until this year’s stimulus package the funding come through. Eligible cities will share $952 million, with Tucson expecting to get as much as $5.12 million in grant money as part of the Energy and Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program.
Where exactly that money will go towards depends on which of the 14 categories the city chooses to move forward with. Many categories call for energy efficient building codes and transportation plans.
Some of the categories, such as landfill methane gas capture and street light replacement, are already being conducted and therefore are less likely to get the federal funding.
Ten percent of the funding can be used to issue sub-grants to nonprofit organizations working on the city-designated plans.
“That kind of cooperation is what’s really going to make it a great success in Tucson,” Leal said.
The number of jobs the program will create depends not only on how many grants the city gets, but the amount of equipment is needed for the work and the metric for the scope of the work. For example, Schaller said the estimate used in bridge and road construction is for every $90,000 spent, a job is created.
The structure of the new program will likely mirror a job pool.
“If we’re going to be training people in green jobs…those people get trained and fed into a process that gets them hired to do retrofits for example,” Schaller said.
Despite the downturn, retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency is still a lucrative business.
“Oh man, we’re swamped; just buried,” said Expert Solar Systems owner Jerry Samaniego.
The average house uses between four andsix kilowatt-hours. A four kwh solar setup can save between $80 and $100 per month on the electric bill. Federal and state tax credits on solar panels can bring the cost of a $30,000 array down to about $11,000, Samaniego said.
“We’re probably the only industry in Tucson that’s really thriving, other than the people that sell Hershey’s bars,” said Samaniego, adding that he’s seen more people employed now in the energy efficiency industry in his 32 years of being in business.
Contact reporter Nicholas Smith at nsmith@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4238.
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