You know about white- and blue-collar workers, but now there is a new color to add to the spectrum – green collar workers. Green collar jobs are a bit like blue collar jobs, except there is the intent to improve the environment. Van Jones, award winning human rights advocate, saw the opportunity that a clean energy economy would create for the blue collar workforce, and campaigned for the creation of a green collar jobs corps that working class and minority Americans could benefit from. However, over time, the definition of the green collar work force will likely expand to include anyone that works in a job that involves environmental sustainability as the green collar economy continues to expand.

Where Do They Work?

Green collar workers don’t have to look far to find jobs in the growing green economy. In fact, Obama has promised to spend $150 billion over 10 years to create 5 million new green collar jobs, which helps us combat climate change while creating a whole new sector of the economy. Here are just a few of the top fastest growing jobs in the green industry:

• Environmental Education.

Even the educational sector is getting in on the green job market. More and more schools and universities are placing an emphasis on teaching science and science-related subjects from a standpoint of environment protection and sustainability. Some of the environmental courses that are being offered include solar panel installation, green building, energy efficiency, corporate sustainability, and green MBAs. Educational institutions are seeking people can teach these topics.

• Mechanical Engineering. Opportunities abound in the mechanical engineering sector, a discipline of engineering that involves the design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. These jobs are in demand throughout the energy sector, and with the clean energy sector growing, jobs in solar, wind, biofuels, etc will increase as well.
• Organic Agriculture. Just about anything to do with organic agriculture, including raising crops and animals is growing. If you currently own or work on a large farm, you may already be using organic farming methods. These techniques can include growing crops without using pesticides or interspersing plants in your field that act as natural pesticides. You may switch to organic or natural fertilizer or use organic methods of crop farming that benefit both humans and animals. No matter who consumes the harvest, organic farming reduces the risk of exposure to pesticides or chemicals.

What about Other Professional Occupations?

Other established occupations, such as residential and commercial climate control, manufacturing and maintenance, have opportunities for green collar workers as well. For example, builders and manufacturers of machines and appliances are learning how to incorporate new green materials and parts into their products. Repair and maintenance workers are discovering how to use replacement parts that allow products to operate in energy efficient ways never before possible.

In the financial sector, people with experience in cost analysis, as it pertains to current operations and the ways in which a company can become greener, are seeing more job opportunities.

Brand Yourself as a Green Collar Professional

If you are already part of the green collar industry or are introducing changes to make your company greener, make sure you tell people about it. Right now, consumers are as excited by the green movement as businesses and they want to purchase goods and services from companies that are also committed to making the world a better place. Make your commitment to working greener clear in all your promotional materials and in your online presence.

One of the best places to start highlighting your green industry expertise is on your personal blog. Blogs are the perfect platform for you to showcase the your role in making your company more sustainable, or your passion for a particular green niche. Don’t have a website or blog? Not to worry! There are plenty of platforms upon which you can build your personal website, even for free. WordPress is free, open source blogging platform that has made web publishing fantastically easy for even the most non-technical people. With WordPress you can choose from thousands of beautiful WordPress themes that will give your personal blog a professional look.

How Do I Find a Professional Green WordPress Theme that Reflects Who I Am?

A simple Google search will turn up numerous curated lists of beautiful WordPress themes, such as this awesome list of the best green WordPress themes for green business, nonprofits and green bloggers. For example, the free Business Turnkey WordPress theme is versatile enough to be used as a website theme or a blog theme – making it a great choice for small businesses, independent consultants, and career professionals. If you still feel intimidated by the idea of creating a website, take a few minutes to watch the Business Turnkey demo video on how a Marin landscape design company started a its site quickly and took it to the next level.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With so many industries climbing aboard the green bandwagon, opportunities to get a green collar job are increasing. Now is a great time to research the kind of green collar job you want, and leverage a personal website or blog to brand yourself as a green expert so that you are miles ahead of your competition.

Lorna Li is a social media personal branding and green marketing expert. For more great marketing tips for green business professionals, visit her green business blog.

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With the resignation of White House CEQ member and “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones over Labor Day weekend, the movement toward a green tech economy took more than just a symbolic hit. Take these three lessons from Jones’ resignation as signals that the Senate’s lift on energy/climate change legislation in the coming weeks may be even tougher than predicted:

Green as Granola…or Worse? We have seen time and again this year that in spite of further entrenchment with skeptics, the green movement is still not resonant in red state America. In fact, they see climate change and energy reform as hippie holdover hokum. The Jones resignation proves that in at least one way, the movement is still way too far out on the fringe. The idea that a White House-level official with Jones stature and profile could possibly have been affiliated with a 9/11-truth group — even in a peripheral way — demonstrates that a lot of the movement’s leadership comes from well outside the political mainstream.

How to Replace a Rock Star? From a messaging standpoint, Van Jones is irreplaceable for Obama. He – literally – wrote the book on “green-collar jobs” and no other single figure has the kind of bona fides in both the Mother Jones and Fast Company crowds. To his credit, Jones built that reputation as an early adopter of green economy ideals, and the impressive resume of vision and leadership that he cultivated in the Bay Area — especially his innovations on urban job training — looked ripe for nationwide scalability.

A Sign for the Senate? The White House has stumbled in selecting a core message around climate change for the general public, using the summer months to float trial balloons on approaches like national security that are thought to be more resonant with middle America. But, green jobs promised to be a central motif as Senate debate on a climate bill kicks off in September. While the bureaucrats running the programs in Washington will remain in place, Jones departure is a leadership upheaval at an inopportune time for the White House and the Senate progressives who will be carrying the water on the climate/energy bill.

[photo credit: Flickr]

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The week before last was the culmination of a labor of love for Sunil Paul and Claire Tomkins with the launch of the Gigaton Throwdown in DC after 18 months of hard work, researching and – as I witnessed first hand – coralling the efforts of other researchers.

What is the Gigaton Throwdown?

The Gigaton Throwdown Study was launched as a Clinton Global Initiative in 2007. It was started as a project to educate and inspire entrepreneurs, investors, and policy makers to think big about solving the climate crisis.  It was an effort to answer Sunil’s question, “What does it take to make a difference with clean energy technology?”

A team of entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders teamed up with leading academics to answer this question.  I was privileged enough to join the writing team. Specifically, we asked how could any one of nine technology “pathways” scale up so each could avoid one billion tons – a gigaton – of greenhouse gas emissions per year, and do it by 2020.  We refer to this as “gigaton scale.” For an electricity generation technology, this is equivalent to an installed capacity of 205 gigawatts (GW) of carbon-free energy (at 100% capacity) in 2020.

These are the 9 technologies we analyzed in order to find out if they have the potential for achieving  gigaton scale:

I was honored to contribute to the book by offering the national security perspective for supporting the adoption of clean energy and energy efficiency, it is a position I discuss a bit in my Memorial Day blog entry.  I tried to incorporate the perspectives of Jim Woolsey and others like him that chant about the importance of clean energy regularly.  I hope I managed to include a few issues that we don’t often think about in terms of national security… like how we will stretch our nation’s already strained military to patrol the newly exposed Northwest passage and energy resources in the Arctic.

The DC launch was a star studded event which was attended by some contributors and authors (alas… I was stuck in San Francisco on a project), lobbyists, entrepreneurs, investors, policy wonks, key members of the DOE and the White House Staff (Van Jones, John P. Holdren) and some of the  legislators (Senator Kerry) that the book was hoping to engage.

Dan Kammen, one of the lead authors in a number of the chapters, was there at the launch and described the endeavor nicely:

“The Gigaton Throwdown sets our collective sights on game changing combinations of science, technology and policy that can turn the needed levels of climate protection and energy security into a roadmap for laboratory-to-industry partnerships.”

I can’t say it much better. The fact is that this is a huge issue that requires a massive mobilization of our technical, financial and educational resources – and achieving gigaton scale in any of the technologies will require forward thinkers (like you?) in policy, research, finance, engineering and business.

I was very encouraged while working on the book, as I feel that we’ve reached a tipping point of sorts in terms of society acknowledging the magnitude of the challenge. I just hope we can come together as a community to continue to support policy makers that are trying to lay the foundation for this radical shift in our approach to consumption, energy, and lifestyle.

I’d suggest you take the time to at least read the overview or the chapters of the book that interest you most.  I challenge you to  free up the bottlenecks the book addresses in your own small (or big) way, because as Sunil says…

“We are at a crossroads, and the U.S. has an opportunity to become a leader in this new global sector if we act now. To us the choice is clear.”

For non-American readers, I challenge you to beat the US, this is healthy competition at it’s finest.

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Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), yesterday answered questions from Facebook and the White House website about President Obama’s vision for a clean energy economy.

If you missed the live chat, here’s the video of the event.

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Obama promised to create new jobs by supporting clean technologies and renewable energies, and he’s been pushing hard. Last week, he appointed activist and author Van Jones as special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation – a smart move given his popularity by the public, his visibility in the media and his ability to “bring people together like no other,” according to Ian who spoke to him at Berkeley last month. The new administration also just announced plans to channel $8 billion in weatherization and energy efficiency efforts promising to create 87,000 new jobs this way. Time will tell how effective these decisions are.

While the economy doesn’t seem to be anything close to recovery (yet!), career sites like CleanTechies have plenty of openings in cleantech and renewable energy.  Here are some of the exciting opportunities featured on the CleanTechies Job Board as of today – for more jobs, visit our website:

Jobs in the US

Director of Solar Panel Manufacturing (Camarillo, CA) – SolarWorld

Utility Group Professionals (Richmond, CA) – SunPower

VP Business Development (Charleston, SC) – Renewable energy company

Commercial Solar Designer/Estimator (Florham Park, NJ) – Smart Energy Group

VP Solar Development (San Diego, CA) – Renewable energy developer

Performance Engineer (Danville, CA) – Leading solar developer

HVAC Mechanical Engineer (Danville, CA) – Major engineering firm

Senior Project Controls Engineer (Atlanta, GA) – Power generation company

Wastewater Engineer/Business Development (Beltsville, MD) – Growing player in wastewater market

Check out the CleanTechies Job Board for more opportunities…»

International Opportunities

Board Member/Independent Director (Eastern Europe) – Leading power generator

Generation Planning Manager (Ontario, Canada) – Renewable energy provider

Head of Renewable Energy Site Development (Dublin, Ireland) – Leading renewable energy business

Project Manager – Offshore Wind Energy (London, UK) – Exciting UK company

Wind Energy Project and Strategy Manager (London, UK) – Expanding UK company

Check out the CleanTechies Job Board for more opportunities…»

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45 minutes of engaging discourse – last night Van Jones, president and founder of “Green For All”, had his audience, made up largely of members of the greater Berkeley community, enthralled. In an age of public relations, spin and hype we had before us one of the rare respites of integrity, in a man that gets the (positive) credit he deserves.  If you’ve not yet heard him speak, check out the clip below, you will hear a very compelling and articulate argument to invest in our capacity by developing our workforce.

As I looked around the room there were students, faculty, venture capitalists, social workers, community activists, environmentalists, non-profit organizers and reporters; Van can bring people together like no other, but being on a university campus brought an even more diverse group of people to the event. I thought back to the countless symposiums (symposia?) I have been to over the years – without fail it has been those organized by the universities have brought the most diverse audiences of participants together – and in that mix, the magic of cross pollination happens.

The value of an individual’s education is eclipsed by the magnitude of ingenuity and energy that gets created in the pursuit of teaching and learning; sounds a bit new age, but multi-disciplinary universities are an ideal setting to begin to tackle cross functional and cross-industry problems in a way that the rest of the world can’t because it would be so hard to get all those people in the same place at the same time. Berkeley’s Energy and Resource Collaborative (BERC) is a model that has been shown great results and is one that other learning institutions would do well to follow if they are seeking to gain a foothold precisely because of the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, renewables and clean technologies.  Other universities are doing a great job as well, MIT’s Energy Club is an example of a similar organization on the east coast of the United States. (I welcome commentary on any omissions to my paltry list of two, below in the comments).

If I could begin my formal education process from scratch, an interdisciplinary course of study that involved the environment, energy and resources would be a critical factor in my decision making process.  For aspiring clean tech professionals, universities that offer this sort of cross pollination are where you want to be.  They have the professors, the researchers and the resources to explore.  It is well-funded universities that have seen the development of many of the technologies that we now take for granted – and these same universities are going to be the sources for many of the sustainable technologies that our world desperately needs.

For Bay Area residents interested in an earnest discussion to “explore the shifting trends in energy production, delivery and usage by examining the ‘Bold Ideas’ affecting business, science and government,” then I would suggest getting over to Berkeley on the 23rd of this month. Not only will you hear commentary by people the keynote speakers, John Hoffmeister and Mary Nichols, but you will have the opportunity to hear from various business leaders, investors, policy makers, and interact with the future leaders and inventors while meeting their mentors: inspiring professors like Dan Kammen, Drew Isaacs, Michael O’hare and Severin Borenstein.

If you’ve not yet read his book grab it from our bookstore.

For further events head over to the CleanTechies Calendar – we haven’t got them all so please help out your fellow CleanTechies and add to it by submitting events that we’ve missed around the world.

Job seekers, don’t forget to check out our Job Board, great jobs are being posted everyday.

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