What It Takes to Lead the Growing Green Economy
By HOWARD A. LEARNER
Chicago is
well-positioned to be a center of the rapidly growing green economy if we seize
the strategic opportunities. That requires savvy policy actions and business
development now before other cities leap ahead. What’s at stake? The jobs of
the future as the global economy transitions to cleaner and greener technologies.
Solving our global
warming problems is the challenge of our generation. The leading presidential
candidates and Congress are moving toward realigning our nation with the
developed world toward achieving rapid, enormous reductions in greenhouse gas
pollution. Cleaner energy and transportation sectors are necessary solutions in
a “carbon-capped” economy.
Mayor Richard M. Daley aspires for Chicago
to be the “greenest city in America.”
Realizing that goal, though, requires more than tree-planting, and the city is
beginning to move forward.
Making Chicago
homes, businesses and public buildings more energy-efficient is a no-brainer.
It’s a win-win-win for jobs, economic vitality and environmental protection.
Retrofitting commercial office buildings, schools, hospitals and apartment
buildings with more efficient lighting, air cooling and heating, windows,
furnaces and boilers and other equipment will create new electrical, plumbing,
carpentry and other construction jobs that pay decent wages. Energy-efficiency
holds down utility bills and thus helps both businesses’ bottom lines and
household budgets. It stems the billion dollar energy drain from Chicago’s
economy to natural gas and coal-producing states and foreign nations. Reducing
energy demand through efficiency also avoids pollution and helps our
environment.
In November, Mayor
Daley announced the key first step of the Chicago Climate Action Plan. Chicago
will begin a new financing program directed at energy-efficiency improvements
for commercial buildings, including the Merchandise Mart, Sears
Tower and Art Institute. Building
owners will be connected with environmental consulting firms, which will design
efficiency plans that will be financed by commercial banks. The retrofit costs
will be financed upfront and then paid back through the energy savings. Through a related city program, JPMorgan Chase
will contribute at least $25 million to support environmental retrofits of
large residential apartment buildings.
Green business
winners include energy engineering and technical consulting firms such as
Johnson Controls, Sieben Energy Associates and the Shaw Group and skilled union
trade workers who will perform the installations. Reducing global warming
pollution and achieving energy bill savings that make businesses more
competitive are spurring this green business growth sector for Chicago’s
economy.
Wind power is the
nation’s fastest growing energy resource, and Illinois
has more wind power under development right now—5,500 megawatts—than any other
state. Chicago is now home to
growing wind businesses, including Invenergy, LM Glasfiber and Midwest Wind
Energy. The venture capital community and the new Illinois Innovation
Accelerator Fund are looking to clean technology opportunities.
But this won’t
come easy. It requires supportive public policies and public-private leadership
to keep building, nurturing and attracting these green businesses. In 2007, Illinois
enacted one of the nation’s leading renewable energy standards, requiring
utilities to ramp up to purchasing 25 percent of their supply from renewable
energy resources by 2025. That will spur more wind energy development.
But we’ve also
lost out on many manufacturing jobs. Iowa
and Minnesota have attracted
seven major wind power equipment manufacturing plants, providing good-paying
jobs for skilled workers. For years, Toledo, Ohio,
has been a glass-producing center for the auto industry. Some of that expertise
and capacity is now being refocused to produce glass for sophisticated solar
photo-voltaic panels, while other Ohio
manufacturers produce ball bearings and other mechanical parts for the wind
power industry.
Chicago
moved early on solar power, but Spire Solar and Solargenix are now sputtering
here. The IBEW-NECA Technical Institute is working hard to retrain electrical
workers for the solar equipment installation jobs of the future, as operating
jobs are cut by Midwest Generation at its aging coal plants in Chicago,
Joliet and Waukegan.
For Chicago to gain solar jobs,
both public policy and business attraction strategies are needed.
The American auto
industry is in wrenching changes with rising gas prices and the imperative to
reduce global warming pollution. In early March, Ford Motor Company announced
that it will cut a production shift at its Chicago plant due to slumping sales
of the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable sedans and the Taurus X crossover vehicle.
Taurus sales dropped 19 percent and Taurus X sales dropped 28.1 percent last
year. Ford’s cutbacks follow Chrysler’s recent cutbacks at its Belvedere plant.
Chicago
and Illinois are caught in the
“death spiral” of the old-tech auto industry. If we keep hitching our economic
wagon only to the low-mpg and higher polluting cars of the past, we’ll keep
losing more jobs and hurt our economy. We have to get policies in place that
connect to the job and economic growth opportunities from the high-mpg and
low-polluting hybrid and other clean cars of the future. This transition is
painful, but vital for Chicago’s
and Illinois’ economic future.
This city is also
the natural hub of a Midwest high-speed rail network
that can connect the 11 major cities within a 400-mile radius and the mid-sized
cities in between. Modern, fast, comfortable and convenient trains can work for
the Midwest as Metroliner and Acela do on the East
Coast.
Midwest
high-speed rail development is good for bringing together our regional economy,
good for job creation and good for the environment by reducing pollution and
counteracting sprawl. It will pull jobs, people and business into Chicago’s
downtown, which is the biggest regional winner. The Chicago Federation of
Labor, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the Environmental
Law & Policy Center
are on board and working together. Let’s get high-speed rail going.
Chicago stepped up early to be a
green city. However, other cities and states are moving rapidly to compete.
Let’s seize the strategic opportunities and Chicago’s competitive advantages
to be a world leader and center of the growing green economy of the future.
Published: April 06, 2008
Issue: 2008 Spring Green Issue
