Gov. Patrick touts continued green energy job growth
For the third straight year, jobs in the Massachusetts clean energy industry experienced double-digit growth, increasing by 10.5 percent between July 2013 and 2014, Gov. Deval Patrick announced Monday in Brighton.
A state government-sponsored Clean Energy Industry Report released Monday forecasts additional growth of 13.5 percent over the next year, increasing employment in the burgeoning sector to 100,000 by early 2015.
"Conventional thinking often says that clean energy is an economic drag. That's false, and we've proved it," Patrick said at the Boston Green Academy, a Horace Mann charter school. He said, "Clean tech is no niche industry in Massachusetts. It's a $10-billion sector of our economy and it's growing. That didn't happen by accident."
Southeastern Massachusetts had the largest job growth in the sector with employment shooting up 22 percent to a total of about 21,000 workers in a field that comprises renewable energy and energy efficiency as well as smart grid, energy storage, electric and hybrid vehicles.
Central Massachusetts experienced no significant growth since last year, and employed about 15,400 people in the sector.
While renewable and energy-efficiency companies are taking off - receiving more investors but less overall investment dollars - and serving customers all over the country and internationally, the state still relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels for electricity and transportation.
"We still have a long way to go on meeting the goal of having renewable energy comprise a significant portion of the generation," said Clean Energy Center CEO Alicia Barton, who said the biggest opportunity to make strides is likely in offshore wind, as well as energy storage that can mitigate the instability of drawing power from the sun and wind. Barton told the News Service many clean-energy projects are cost-competitive, and that will increase as the sector reaches a "critical mass."
Patrick said when he entered office the state had the capacity to generate 3 megawatts of solar energy and 3 megawatts of wind energy, and now there is 643 megawatts of solar and 103 megawatts of wind. According to grid operator ISO New England, the state's peak demand in 2013 was for 12,996 megawatts.
"We've come a huge way over the last almost eight years of the Patrick administration, both private sector and public sector, but we're really only about 10-, 15-, 20-percent of the way toward a clean-energy economy and being fully renewable, being highly energy efficient and also having a modernized grid," said Peter Rothstein, president of the New England Clean Energy Council, a business organization.
The clean energy sector is a significant player in the state's economy, constituting 2.4 percent of all workers in the state, which is more than the insurance industry and about half the information technology sector. Since 2010, the clean energy sector added more than 28,000 jobs and there are now nearly 6,000 firms, according to the report.
Overall, Massachusetts has about 3.4 million people employed and the unemployment rate stood at 5.8 percent in August, down from 7.2 percent in August 2013.
The report determined private investments declined by 65 percent from 2012 to 2013, falling from a peak of $2 billion to $700 million. At the same time the number of investment deals has increased. Federal investments have declined from $160 million in 2011 to $10 million in 2013, according to the report which said clean energy is responsible for $10 billion, or 2.5 percent of gross state product.
Rothstein said investors value clean-energy investments for environmental and financial reasons, saying they offer "very little risk, very nice returns."
The report was prepared by BW Research Partnership, based in Wrentham, and is based on a survey of businesses in April and May with a 2.23 margin of error. The report also determined regulations, taxes and lack of financial support are seen as impediments to the clean tech sector.
About 29 percent of energy efficiency companies rated taxes as the biggest barrier to growth, followed by 17 percent listing regulations.
Among renewable energy companies, 21 percent listed taxes as the biggest barrier, followed by 19 percent listing lack of financial support.
The companies cited access to a skilled workforce, a "thriving" clean-energy marketplace and incentives or rebates, as some of the state's major advantages.
With about 12,100 workers, solar accounts for the bulk of the 20,980 jobs in the clean-energy generation sector, followed by wind, hydro, bioenergy, geothermal and other methods. Energy efficiency firms employed about 65,200 clean-energy workers, making it the "largest component of the clean energy workforce," while renewable energy is expected to be the fastest growing area, adding 3,800 workers over the next year
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