With more details coming out almost daily on the Obama administration’s proposed economic stimulus plan, the creation of green jobs has become a hot-button issue. But even before the need arose to jolt the economy out a major downturn, Tennessee was positioning itself to become a big-time player in the alternative energy industry. The state has two key things going for it when it comes to attracting green industries: a favorable location and available skilled workforce.
A good look at what Tennessee is doing can be found in this article in the Tennessean newspaper.
“Green is a good direction to go,” said Bill Fox, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. “It will be a growth industry, especially with the Obama stimulus package.
Tennessee provides an excellent location for the new industries, primarily because of its location and available work force, he said.
The green-energy industry could replace many of the manufacturing jobs the state has lost over the past decade, and they would be high-paying positions in a growing sector, Fox said.
For more insight into the policy implications of creating green jobs, EMSI recently crafted this data spotlight.