The blue-collar jobs that have long supported a strong American middle class -- jobs for electricians, plumbers and transportation and manufacturing workers of all kinds -- are getting a green update.

It's a nationwide movement to refresh the traditional trades with training in 21st century knowledge and skills.

The green-collar movement advances new, more environmental technologies by training the work force that can manufacture, install and maintain them.

It seeks energy security and climate change prevention through an emphasis on non-fossil fuels and energy efficiency.

But more than any of that, it promotes jobs.

Green-collar advocates point out that these jobs are inherently local: Upgrades to a building's energy efficiency, for example, cannot be installed overseas.

And what is especially hopeful about the movement is that it insists at its foundation on family-sustaining wages and upward mobility.

Whose Collar Is Green?

A narrow application of the green-collar concept focuses on jobs in new energy technologies.

The Green Jobs Act of 2007, for example, authorized $125 million per year to create a pilot Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Worker Training Program.

These industries represented more than 8.5 million jobs in the U.S. in 2006, according to a 2007 report from the American Solar Energy Society. With moderately supportive policies in place, the society forecasts that 20 million more could be created by 2030.

In West Virginia, one thinks of the eight employees at FPL Energy's Mountaineer Wind Energy Center in Tucker County, installers of geothermal heating systems and workers providing energy audits for homes and businesses across the state.

A larger definition includes areas that benefit the environment more broadly: jobs in recycling, storm water management, acid mine drainage and other water quality remediation.

The national groups that promote the concept -- the Apollo Alliance, Green for All and The Workforce Alliance, to name a few -- use a definition that includes all of that, while emphasizing the foundation in traditional blue-collar skills.

"Retrofitting American cities, for example, requires not 'green construction workers' but rather workers with traditional construction skills who also have up-to-date training on energy-efficient construction," reads "Greener Pathways," a recent report from the Center on Wisconsin Strategy. And "the new energy economy will create some brand new industries and many brand new jobs. But even more of it will involve transforming the industries and jobs we already have."

Zero Sum Game?

But if we support jobs in renewable energy, are we reducing demand for West Virginia's fossil fuel industries?

Not to worry, say those close to the subject.

"We need all the forms of energy that we can develop right now to be secure of foreign governments or natural catastrophes such as hurricanes," said Nicholas "Corky" DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association. He pointed to projections from the Interstate Oil and Gas Commission showing that demand will increase dramatically energy from all sources.

"I don't look at that as threatening at all," said West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney similarly. "We need all sources to satisfy the energy appetite of this country."

And development of new, non-fossil sources requires a trained work force.

Green-Collar Job Growth Drivers

What jumpstarts that trained green-collar work force, some say, is legislated commitment.

Many states and cities across the nation, for example, have committed to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards in government buildings.

"I think there would be a big impact on green-collar jobs because you'd create a demand" if the state mandated LEED standards in public building construction and renovation, said Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia. A Green Buildings bill Fleischauer introduced in the recent legislative session would have created that mandate.

Another Fleischauer bill would have created a Renewable Portfolio Standard, requiring electricity providers to phase in renewable sources up to 20 percent by 2020.

An RPS is opposed by the Coal Association's Raney, but more than half of states now have them, with more states creating them each year.

"We are going to be studying these issues in interims," Fleischauer said. "They're still new issues for West Virginia legislators, and people don't want to offend the mine workers and the coal industry, but the focus should be on jobs."

Work Force Development

West Virginia's green-collar work force is in the early stages of development.

"I don't know how much of that's going on in the state of West Virginia," said Ron Radcliff, director of the Governor's Workforce Investment Division.

But he noted, on reviewing the Green Jobs Act, that the populations it targets are those his own agency works with.

"People in need of updated training, veterans, at-risk youth -- we serve all these populations," Radcliff said.

And should it happen that energy demand moves away from coal, as some believe will happen if proposed carbon emissions regulations are enacted, green jobs advocates have provided for that: Workers displaced through changes brought about by national energy and environmental policy are listed first among those targeted for retraining.

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