Jennifer Granholm and the golden opportunities of clean energy jobs
By Sarah Golden
Courtesy of TED Talk 2013 Close Authorship Last week, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm got a new job: U.S. Secretary of Energy. Much has been written about how she is sure to support clean energy, from grid investment to clean energy deployment. Just as important is Granholm’s understanding of clean energy as a potential job creator.
“Oh, there’s more than a one-to-one replacement,” Granholm said in an NPR interview, when asked if there are enough clean energy jobs for displaced fossil fuel workers. “There will be millions of jobs that will be created in clean energy.” Nothing exemplifies Granholm’s understanding of clean energy’s economic opportunity than a lesser-known line on her resume: founding the nonprofit The American Jobs Project (AJP) while serving as a guest professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The American Jobs Project and what it tells us about Granholm’s priorities Beginning in 2014, AJP released a series of rigorously researched reports that identify individual states’ strategic advantages to become leaders and create jobs in specific emerging advanced energy technologies. Advance energy, as defined by AJP , includes technologies that make energy smarter, cleaner and more efficient. The approach was brilliant. Instead of looking back to […]