Energy Utilities
Alternative Energy = Jobs Expert Reveals How Alternative Energy Will Put Americans Back to Work
T
hat’s the message Tom Rand sees in the current news cycle as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke an-
nounced in January that unemployment rates would take four to five years to get back to “normal.” In the meantime, sever- al states announced that alternative energy jobs were soaring. “In America, we used to make things,”
said Rand, a new millennium combination of scientist and venture capitalist who be- lieves the country’s future hinges on the development and ownership of alternative energy technology. “We built cars, homes and other manufactured goods that we’d use here and export abroad. As our qua- lity of life was raised, other countries used
their lower economic classes to make up a new generation of cheap labor aimed at undercutting American made goods. To- day, we have millions of manufacturing workers who have been displaced and are unable to find work. In the meantime, our dependence on fossil fuels continues to make Americans slaves to foreign oil. Alternative energy is the industry that can break that chain in a variety of ways.” Rand, author of the book KICK the
Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World from Greenleaf Book Group Press (
www.tomrand.com), said he is already seeing an explosion of new jobs in the alternative energy sector. “A Colorado solar energy company is
expected to create 1,200 new jobs within the next couple of years thanks to a $400 million loan guaranteed through the US department of energy and another $110 million in equity financing,” said Rand. “The best thing about it is the company, Abound Solar, won’t require the new hi- res to have experience in alternative ener- gy. Because the jobs are manufacturing oriented, the typical skills learned in tra- ditional manufacturing jobs are transfer- rable to the new initiative. And it’s not just manufacturing, these technologies need to be installed. We’re rebuilding an energy infrastructure, and that takes the trades – all the trades and lots of them.” Rand added that the wind power in- dustry also received a big boost from the
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The Black E.O.E. Journal
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