Greening our Schools: Are We on Target?

It’s more than evident that our public schools are in terrible shape in all but the wealthiest of communities, resulting from the sporadic investments our governing bodies have made in schools and school buildings and the “do more with less” zeitgeist and tax policy. Schools are an institution that is not unlike a gigantic ship whose course we are trying to alter, while also trying to keep afloat at the same time. It would appear that schools are in a downward spiral, even though we all agree that education is the key to a brighter future. As a father, I long for the day when schools are not only the pride of their communities, but are also safe and healthy places for my child and all children, and reflect the values of conservation, healthy living and fairness. As a citizen, I believe that if we want to move towards a more sustainable society, we must provide the next generation with a new way of thinking that will empower them to realize that change in their lifetime. As a professional, I have taken on the challenge of helping schools embrace sustainability as a means of providing safe and healthy places conducive to learning, while also imparting the values of sustainability in children through pedagogical and cultural learning.

The USGBC’s Center for Green Schools (CGS) has laid out an audacious goal for greening our nation’s K-12 schools: all students will be in green schools within a generation. Bold, to say the least, given the magnitude of the problem. So how do we get there from here? The Center for Green Schools has a multi-pronged approach that includes lobbying on the state, federal and local levels; education and training programs; outreach to schools and communities, including the recent Green Apple Day of Service; and probably other programs that I’m not aware of. Since CGS is an outgrowth of the USGBC, it is not surprising that at the end of the day, LEED for Schools certification is the bar that has been set to measure success. But is this the right way to go? Let’s explore.

Some detailed analysis of The Green Building Certification Institute’s (sister to USGBC that manages project certification and professional credentials) database of registered and certified projects shows that there are about 2,500 LEED-registered schools (all rating systems except LEED for Neighborhood Development) and a little over 700 LEED-certified schools. These represent about 5% each of total LEED registrations and certifications. By all measures this is a great accomplishment, in that these numbers represent a real trend. However, the amount of work left to do is staggering: there are over 130,000 school institutions in the US, and some have ballparked the number of school buildings at 150,000 (this figure is difficult to precisely calculate for a number of reasons). To get 130,000 schools through the LEED pipeline would require a breakneck pace of certifications, about 5,200 per year on average (using 25 years as the timeframe of one generation). 

Looking back at CGS’s goal of green schools for all in a generation, is LEED really the tool to get there? In my opinion, the answer is no; at least not by itself. Complex problems require multifaceted solutions, and schools are certainly no exception. I posit we need to develop and integrate the tools that can complement LEED, but also work to address the other myriad issues that schools face. I present myself as qualified to engage in this discourse as a result of working in green building and LEED consulting for six years, including work on several schools that pursued LEED. Furthermore, I have been working on a healthy schools initiative in Pennsylvania for the past two years, which is focused on giving schools the capacity to implement practices that will provide learning environments that are healthy and safe. Although there are undoubtedly many other professionals that have much greater depths of knowledge and experience in this area than me,  I consider myself familiar enough with the issues to offer my perspective. 

I feel a good starting place to this discussion is to identify the strengths that LEED brings to the vision of greening our schools, but also call out what the shortcomings are and what can be done to improve upon them. 

Strengths 

• LEED provides the structure that helps to guide decisionmaking by project teams on creating greener buildings. This allows projects to incorporate environmentally sensitive strategies into their buildings without having to be fully versed on each and every strategy, why it is important, and how to measure its success.
• LEED is nationally and internationally recognized, and is a household name in many circles. This brings credibility, legitimacy and attention to all of USGBC’s initiatives (including the Center for Green Schools), as well as a megaphone by which to spread the gospel.
• LEED has driven the entire building industry and its supply chain to be more accountable and transparent on its practices. It has incentivized each agent in the supply chain to examine their own role and what they can do differently to better serve the market demand for environmentally responsible products and services.
• LEED creates a means by which buildings can be quantitatively compared against one another with respect to their environmental performance. This helps to minimize confusion on the marketplace from “greenwashing” that occurs when someone refers to a product, building or something else as being “green” without clear substantiation of how or why.
• LEED sets high standards, encouraging people and organizations to strive beyond their comfort zone to achieve greater impact. LEED has been put on a regular update cycle, which allows the USGBC continually raise the bar to ensure that the building industry is continuing to improve and innovate.

Weaknesses

• The biggest shortcoming is that LEED makes it possible and easy to do the “what” without understanding the “why” of green building or sustainability. The rewards that LEED certification offer (such as recognition, stakeholder appreciation, and financial windfall in some  cases) have become so compelling that groups pursue it more for the plaque on the wall than for the actual benefits of a green building. While some would probably say that it is better that people do a half-assed green building than none at all, in some instances the principles of green building can be so misapplied a it actually backfires: energy systems that are well-intentioned but poorly executed, bike racks in places where no one could possibly ride their bike to, or failure to enforce policies like no smoking in and around the building. I would argue that these do more damage than good to the green building movement by undermining its credibility.
• As a result of the brand dominance that LEED holds in the marketplace, the USGBC has been able to frame the problem and its approach to solving it in a manner that suits it. This has its benefits as extolled above, but also has the downside that USGBC doesn’t represent all viewpoints and has the capability of crowding out views it doesn’t agree with.
• Not everything that has a positive impact on the environment or human health can be quantified or measured as LEED requires a project team to demonstrate. LEED’s structure of Intent-Requirements-Submittals is well-suited to quantitative activities, but is not the right approach for strategies that aim to build awareness, change perceptions and create organizational alignment, all of which are crucial to broader sustainability initiatives. 
• There is a wide array of actions that make buildings healthier and more efficient, but are not incorporated into LEED. The structure of LEED is not suited to covering every possible activity, but the absence of these actions from the checklist can deemphasize their importance or value.

May people would say that LEED was never intended to be all things green building, and that project teams and organizations are welcome to pursue any meaningful activity under or outside of LEED’s umbrella. While this may be true, one has to be intimately familiar with green building and its goals to know where to look, what it means, and why one should do it. This also has the trappings of a “take it or leave it” attitude, which doesn’t comport with the collaborative approach that is needed to solve the major environmental issues that LEED is intended to address. LEED’s brand is so bright and its market penetration so thorough that to the newcomer, LEED is green building.
This can be a problem for schools that are just beginning the journey of greening their facilities, and don’t know where to turn and to what to start with. Maybe there are some good first steps or low hanging fruit out there, but how do they know to look for it when LEED is right there? We need something more. 

LEED clearly underlies the mission and programs of the Center for Green Schools. This is readily apparent in the resources that the CGS has developed, including the “Greening Existing Schools Project Management Guide” and “The Paid-From-Savings Guide to Green Existing Buildings.” I would argue that CGS is reinforcing LEED’s brand dominance at the expense of its own success, and should consider developing other tools that are more suited to their target audience and their inspiring goal. 

How could the Center for Green Schools accomplish this? A number of ideas come to mind, all of which are oriented towards building on the strengths of LEED and the USGBC, but also plugging the gaps that LEED is not structured to fill. First, CGS absolutely must acknowledge that it is possible for schools to be on the spectrum of sustainability without being LEED-certified, and directly promote this practice.

Second, and a complement to the first, CGS needs to develop a less challenging and more incremental alternative to LEED that still provides the same basic benefits: a framework that guides actions and offers recognition of success. This can leverage LEED’s international recognition, and also build off the type of framework that made LEED so successful in the first place. This new framework should also incorporate important activities that are currently not included in LEED for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the following:

• Additional environmental health and indoor air quality related topics beyond what is already in LEED (the EPA’s IAQ Tools for Schools is a good model to consider);
• Nutrition and wellness (Healthy Schools Campaign has a very useful online guide); and,
• Equity and empowerment (The Yellow Wood Associates Wealth Creation in Rural Communities model is a great starting place; sound off-topic? Trust me, it’s worth reading).

Third, CGS needs to continue to actively establish and cultivate key partnerships with other organizations pursuing similar missions. The USGBC has generally leaned more towards engaging professional organizations and networks, whereas CGS might be better served by tapping into the wealth of grassroots community organizations that have sprung up around schools and education issues. There are many non-profits out there at the national, state and local levels that championing healthy and high-performing schools, which in many ways are an untapped resource. An emphasis on community may serve as a good complement to the USGBC’s strength in the business sector.

Fourth, CGS must build an effective ground game to get the message out to school districts. Currently this has been relegated to the USGBC chapter organizations, which are limited in number (79 nationwide) and are limited by their own budgets and staff capacity. This outreach campaign should include not only the partnerships mentioned previously, but also the niche industry of green building and sustainability consultants that sprung up around to serve as LEED experts. This type of outreach may already be underway, but the new framework mentioned previously could help attract new groups to the cause.

Bby all accounts, LEED has been a smashing success. Instead of just saying that schools are welcome to pursue any measures they like, let’s give them the guidelines and the incentives that made LEED so compelling to the thousands of buildings that have been registered and certified. The reason I have written this position statement is not to bash LEED, but to help make the Center for Green Schools more effective at achieving their goal. It is only through self-criticism and introspection can we find our weaknesses and then determine how best to improve upon them. I believe that we can actually achieve green schools for all in a generation, or if not, then at least come close. But let’s make sure we have all the tools we need at our disposal to get there…

Greening Our Schools: Is LEED the Elephant in the Room?

Hi and thanks for checking out this post. I have rewritten this post, and it can be found here. Please take a look!

--Andrew

Environmental Health: Think you’re on top of it? Not so fast…

I am a self-professed environmental health wingnut. It drives my wife crazy, as I really know how to take the fun out of many pleasures in life: from a nice meal, to a fun toy, to a roaring campfire. I’ve always had these types of leanings, but my subject matter knowledge was greatly expanded as a result of the school environmental health research I led in 2011. Recently, I’ve been self-reflective about these principles and how far I can take my desire for a healthy lifestyle, before it also becomes a miserable lifestyle saddled with fear, constant avoidance and workarounds? I truly believe that the risk of impacts to our health from environmental exposure has been slowly and quietly becoming more severe. But at the same time it may be that, as consumers, we can only take this so far before we turn our lives completely upside-down. As such, I offer you an examination of this slippery slope to reinforce that there are no absolutes, but each person must define the line where they find it worth it to bother changing habits and lifestyles.

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is by all accounts one of the latest villains of public health. A known endocrine disruptor, BPA has been used widely in plastic products and various resins and coatings for decades. Concern has been mounting over how much BPA we are exposed to, as studies have shown its prevalence in the bloodstream and urine of humans, in umbilical cord blood, and in breastmilk; as well as having linkages to various types of cancers and developmental disabilities. We are often exposed to BPA in many ways that we may not realize, as it is commonly found in the linings of canned food (beans, vegetables, fruit) and drinks in metal cans (soda, beer, fruit juice), on thermal paper receipts, in polycarbonate reusable plastic bottles (think Nalgene bottles and the five-gallon translucent blue bottles used on water coolers), and probably other potential sources for exposure that are not often talked about. Combine these frequent exposures with other prevalent environmental toxins, such as PFOAs found in non-stick cookware coatings, TCE in dry cleaning solvents and PBDE flame retardants in many synthetic consumer products (TVs, stereos, fleece  pajamas, mattresses, molded foam cushions in couches), you end up with a pretty serious poison cocktail right in your own home without really realizing it.

We environmental health zealots and over-reactors do what we can to eliminate exposures wherever possible: buying food products fresh, frozen, or in glass jars; replacing Teflon cookware with uncoated wares; trying not to handle thermal receipts, etc. But does this just give us a false sense of security? Our actions seem simple and effective, but the problems we hope to avoid are often much more complicated than they appear. Here are some examples:

Avoid thermal paper? Studies have shown that BPA is present in trace amounts in many types of paper, as a result of often being commingled with thermal paper in the recycling process;

Purchase BPA-free products? BPA is indeed starting to be voluntarily phased out by many manufacturers; however, it is generally being replaced by Bisphenol S, a compound that has not been deeply studied for its relative health impacts compared to BPA;

Purchase organic? Recent revelations have shown that organic brown rice syrup, for unfortunate reasons, can have high levels of arsenic (we found out that organic brown rice syrup was a main ingredient in the baby formula we were feeding our infant, which we have since switched to a non-organic brand)

Prefer glass to metal cans? I have witnessed firsthand one tomato sauce and salsa producer that distributes food in glass jars, but uses imported tomatoes out of #10 cans, most likely lined with BPA.

But the real basis for my case is…restaurants. That’s right, restaurants. Everyone eats out, some of us more than others. We patronize restaurants so that we can cede control and responsibility for preparing meals to someone else. We also implicitly trust that they are preparing food in a safe and healthy manner, but give little further thought to what happens in the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Having worked in several restaurants over the years, I can personally attest to the numerous environmental health practices of concern that are standard operating procedure:

• Heavy and sometimes complete reliance on canned ingredients; (Potential BPA Exposure)
• The constant use of polycarbonate storage containers that are frequently exposed to high heat (hot soups, being run through dishwashers); (Potential BPA Exposure)
• Large quantities of plastic wrap that are placed over both hot and cold foods, and sometimes put in microwave ovens; (Potential PVC and Phthalate Exposure)
• The prevalence of industrial-grade detergents and cleaning products like quarternary ammonia; and,
• The industry standard of using thermal paper for customer receipts. (Potential BPA Exposure)

Thankfully, non-stick cookware is seldom used, in my experience; it doesn’t stand up to the abuse of the commercial kitchen environment. Unlike other changes resulting from consumer demand like organic and locally sourced food, there has been little to no pressure on the commercial food industry (including manufacturers, vendors, and restaurants) to address any of these health issues. So is this going to change anytime soon? It’s doubtful, given that there aren’t clear alternatives for all of these avenues for negative health impact, and it would be pretty difficult to turn the food industry upside-down to accomplish these changes.

The restaurant environment is merely one example of the way chemicals can infiltrate our lives and our bodies without us even realizing. Just imagine all of the other hidden exposures from the places where we live, work and play. As such, I have come to the conclusion that the real change needs to happen through legislation and policy change (there are already several organizations working on this), which is a long and protracted process with no clear expectation of complete success. BPA happens to have been one that has been studied in great depths, which has been the basis for the legislation that exists in places like Connecticut and California. The real challenge with environmental health is that the real damage to our health results from long-term, low-level exposure, which makes it very difficult to pinpoint specific toxins and to build science and legislation around it.

So while we’re waiting for science and policy to catch up, I suggest we all adhere to some basic words of wisdom: 1) everything in moderation, 2) use common sense, and 3) you can’t control everything (even if you would like to), so sometimes you just need to relax and go with the flow. And, it is okay to eat in restaurants…

The Future of Urban Farms… or Community Gardens… or Are They One and the Same?

Urban farming is certainly an emerging trend across the country, and has been implicated as a means of addressing community problems like vacant and blighted land, food deserts, obesity and malnutrition, and food illiteracy. Individuals, community groups, and non-profits are snapping up unused parcels and quickly setting up small, productive agricultural plots. Clearly it has overall benefit for people, communities and the environment. But one has to ask, is this really the traditional community garden paradigm with a new catch phrase, or are there true substantive differences? Furthermore, what is the future of the trend that has been the darling of the environmental movement as of late? Let’s explore this.

A Community garden in Stanton Heights

At its simplest, a community garden is a group of plots, often located on publicly-owned land but also on private land on occasion, that share some basic needs like water spigots, compost piles, fenced enclosures, and very rarely gardening tools. Plots are generally allotted to participants by waiting list, some with fees and some without, and participants are given domain over what they would like to grow in their plot. The basic model here is that a large group of people each contribute a relatively small amount of time to working their own plot, and receive the fruits of their labor as a result. 

The urban farm is not dissimilar, as it might occupy a similarly sized plot as an entire community garden (1/4 to 2 acres) and grows very similar crops. Plots are more frequently located on private land, whether vacant or condemned, or otherwise made available. Labor is often provided by interns, students and volunteers, as well as by paid staff. The fruits of the harvest are typically given away to those who provided labor, given away to people in need (often in the communities where the farms are located), or sold to local restaurants, retailers or the general public. The managing groups, like Grow Pittsburgh, for example, also likely provide liability coverage for individuals that work on the farm plots. Some have told me that what differentiates a garden from a farm is that the bounty from a garden is meant for private consumption, while the bounty from a farm is intended to be sold in some form.

I would argue that the differences between community garden and urban farm are nuanced, and in the end the same basic activity takes place—food crop cultivation— but within different organizational structures. In the urban farm model, you have a fewer number of people spending more time working on about the same area, whereas the community garden has more people working on smaller plots. 

Which brings me to the reason for discussing this topic in the first place: are urban farms, which are often the recipients of operating grants, viable long-term businesses? Or do we need to rethink the urban farm model as being more of a community asset than an enterprise? 

Market conditions do not favor the urban farming enterprise model. Rural farms already face difficult economics in running profitable businesses in places, even though the cost of living is low and the land is plentiful and fertile. Urban environments where farming might be considered are the exact opposite: the cost of living is high and the workable parcels of land are very small, scattered and have low-quality and heavily compacted soils. The distributed nature of urban farming inhibits the ability to use motorized farm equipment like tractors, reduces the economy of scale of providing infrastructure like fences and water supplies, and creates inefficiency by moving tools and labor from parcel to parcel. Furthermore, the staff time needed to take produce to market destinations (restaurants, grocers, soup kitchens, etc.) is approximately fixed regardless of the quantity delivered, meaning that the per-unit labor cost is higher for smaller quantities of produce versus larger quantities, further driving up costs. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but with all else being equal, urban farms face problematic economic conditions in an already challenged industry. 

So far, foundations have stepped in to fill the funding gap, but is this trend going to last? That remains to be seen as to what the long-term appetite is for underwriting urban agriculture. One blogger on Next American City expressed this concern in a recent post. He likened the urban farm trends to the unchecked growth of the dot-com era, complete with looming bubble. 

But instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, maybe we just need to rethink the ownership and operating structure of urban farms. In the end, the amount of food that urban plots can produce is paltry compared to the volumes moving through rural farms and supermarkets. It will hardly make a dent in the hunger or nutrition problems, or even the massive amount of food imported from far-flung locales. If our goal was to change how much food was produced locally, we would instead attempt to shift some of the one million acres of farmland in Western Pennsylvania from commodity crops, like soy, corn and hay, to fruits, vegetable and grains.

Garfield Community Farm in Garfield Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

But in the end, food production shouldn’t be the goal of urban farming. The real value of urban agriculture is as a tool for education, community engagement (especially with young people), and imparting in people the value of hard work, with the self-esteem and sense of accomplishment that come with it. So perhaps we should re-position these farms as community center gardens, similar to what the YMCA has done in Homewood and Hazelwood. And we could take it one step further, and help the abundance of churches and other similar community organizations, both formal and informal, to start their own gardens. This is how Garfield Community Farm came to be: as a project of the The Open Door ministry that aims to help the community of Garfield through goodwill and volunteerism. We can borrow this model, which by the way is significantly underwritten by the generosity of a number of Pittsburgh churches, to establish community-driven agriculture in other communities, while also helping to connect these groups with existing volunteer networks, food and cooking education programs, and other community outreach mechanisms. 

One of the benefits of this approach is to transform the tasks of toiling in the garden from being an enterprise activity into one that is a civic duty, much like caring for a local park or a flower box located in a public space. We can still get all of the benefits associated with urban farming but aren’t relying on one entity to take ownership of them, shifting away from relying on the sales of actual produce grown to help bankroll the entire effort. 

Either way, we need to refocus our goals on all the benefits that come from growing food, except for the food itself. The long-term presence of food production in our communities should not be overlooked, but should be done in a way that provides long-term sustainability and is in tune with the hard realities of business.

News Update: Republic Food Enterprise Center

We are pleased to announce the Fayette County Community Action Agency was awarded a $749,000 grant for the Republic Food Enterprise Center (RFEC) in Fayette County! The RFEC has been one of InRegion's ongoing projects in the Local Food Systems arena sine May 2010, and we are very please to see that government agencies and other non-profits have taken an interest in what we're working on. The $749,000 grant was made by the Office of Community Services in the US Department of Health & Human Services, and will be used for both business planning and facility upgrade purposes. This influx of cash will be crucial in allowing us to launch the first phase of the food aggregation and stabilization center for the 2012 growing season. Find out more about the RFEC by going here, and stay tuned for additional updates as the project progresses.

Have you ever been to Summerset at Frick Park in Pittsburgh? It’s been heralded as an absolute model of infill development, being built on a slag heap and what not. If you haven’t been there, it’s worth a drive-through, or you can take a look at their website. Back in my college days, friends and I used to bike around at the base of the slag heap along Nine Mile Run. It was a pretty desolate place back them, complete with skeletons of burned-out cars, and you always had the feeling there was something unseemly happening when you weren’t around to see. The new development has all the trappings of New Urbanism, sidewalks and back alleys, on-street parking, some nice public spaces, a community center (of sorts) and a mix of housing sizes and types. It has also helped to restore Nine Mile Run and eliminate acidic runoff from entering the stream and the Monongahela River.

But for all of its neat features and formulaic traditional neighborhood development (TND) qualities, Summerset still has an eerie feeling about it, and I just can’t bring myself to like it. The best I can describe it is like a body without its soul; the place just doesn’t have any vibrance or energy. This may be the result of the relatively homogenous population that is mainly white and middle-class (from what I could see), perhaps along with the total absence of any type of commerce. Furthermore, the neighborhood is walkable within its own confines, but way too isolated for allow residents to get anywhere by any means other than driving, especially shopping (the Waterfront is by far the closest commercial center), child care or schools. As one Squirrel Hill denizen noted, despite its geographic proximity it’s really not a part of Squirrel Hill. Despite the short-lived bus line that terminated at Summerset, public transit is not very viable for this small and affluent community. The community center, although it sounds nice, seems to be more of a pool house and rental facility for residents, and less of a node of activity. Overall, Summerset has the quality of being manufactured, albeit based on a checklist of characteristics found in vibrant neighborhoods. All buildings are subject to pre-established design standards enforced by the developer, and the building types on each lit have all been pre-determined.

Given all of Summerset’s shortcomings, could it have been done any better? What one might have expected is an attempt at a more mixed-income community, but could that even really have worked? Can a New Urbanist development, which is built entirely by one developer, ever have the character and soul of truly vibrant community that is being sought? Or is this an urban incarnation of a typical suburban subdivision? Perhaps true mixed-income communities either doesn’t exist or are extremely rare (see sidebar below), nor can we replicate the social fabric we find in other places. Could this development have been as successful if it were allowed to grow organically, giving it a unique character of its own? Would the city have been able to undertake this all themselves creating the “shovel-ready” parcels for developers and homebuilders to come in? How could this development have turned out any differently? All questions, few answers. Sorry, folks. If you have any answers, let me know, I’d love to hear them!

[relevant sidebar] I believe that the only mixed-income communities that can live harmoniously in perpetuity are those that are one, and at most two, income levels from each other (think three sub-levels within each of lower, middle and upper classes). For example, solid middle class families can coexist long-term with either lower- or upper-middle class families, but lower-upper class families will not mix well with upper-lower class families. These drastically different classes may actually live in the same neighborhood at the same time, but this is often taking place while the community is responding to market demand of being a more or less affluent place. {/sidebar]

Green Jobs, Where Art Thou?

The quest for green jobs in our region, state, and country seems so close, but yet so far. Perhaps the reason these jobs are so elusive is because we are looking for them in the wrong places. The term “green jobs” has been a buzz word for three some-odd years that is essentially a catch-all for any job that is directly or indirectly linked with saving energy, for the most part. It has been explained to us as a set of careers that will not only power our economy in the 21^st century, but be good for the planet to boot.

While this may well be true, we really to look at the “green economy” from a broader perspective. The green economy is not really a new sector unto itself, it’s more of a transformation of certain critical sectors of our current economy to meet larger sustainability goals. These sectors are: energy, construction and building trades, water management, waste reduction, food production, and transportation.

Each of these sectors must undergo a slightly different transformation based on three key factors, the three legs of the stool if you will: availability of skilled workforce, changes in policy and regulation, and a shift in consumer preferences and demand. Thus far, the green jobs discussion has focused almost exclusively on workforce development. This approach of pushing new skills out into the workforce is unprecedented. This was certainly not the approach in either the Industrial Revolution of a century ago or the Digital Revolution of twenty years, and that’s because of two reasons. First, the demand for products and services itself created the demand for jobs, and the necessary skills were taught either by employers or by entrepreneurial agents in the private sector (think third-party training workshops for the plethora of programming and networking certifications). Second, it didn’t make sense to train people when you aren’t sure exactly what skills they will need. We could have dumped tons of resources into training people on programming in the AIX operating system (never heard of it? There’s a reason for that) because we thought it was the next big thing, when in fact .NET and Linux programming would emerge as the skills in demand.

The same is true today with the green economy; it still doesn’t make sense to take this preemptive workforce development approach. With all due respect to the organizations working on green job training, we don’t know and can’t know exactly what our transformed economy will look like, so why would we build up a skilled workforce that may end up being irrelevant? Are solar and wind production Pennsylvania’s wave of the future? Maybe, maybe not; we certainly won’t be the ones to dictate that, it will be the new and existing businesses that will determine our economic future. Furthermore, the battle cry for green jobs has enticed people into these training programs, but has created a glut of workers in the marketplace that, for the most part, isn’t hiring yet. This glut can have the opposite effect of bringing down the wages of some of these positions without making new positions, not exactly the intended effect.

A new trajectory

We need to focus our efforts on demand-driven job creation (aka the “pull” model) instead of the supply-driven approach (aka “push” mode) we are pursuing now. Despite all of the positive impacts and stabilizing force ARRA provided, in the end it was still a push approach, as it didn’t fundamentally change any of the market conditions that have set the tone for our economy. If we’re really truly committed to transforming our economy, we need to take a hard look at long-held policies that hold down the cost of energy, encourage wastefulness, and stifle innovation. We’re trying to have our cake and eat it too. Renewable energy is a prime example: for wind and solar to be cost-effective and demanded in the marketplace, we must allow the price of coal-powered electricity to rise, while also providing incentive for new installations by way of the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). As it stands, Pennsylvania’s RPS, a mandate that requires utility companies to provide a certain percent of their total energy delivered from renewable sources, is a good first step but is lacking in many ways. The requirement for solar photovoltaics is currently a measly 0.02% and will max out at 0.5% in 2021, and utilities may purchase that solar energy generating anywhere within thirteen mid-Atlantic and midwestern states and the District of Columbia. This does very little to create jobs or even stimulate construction of new renewable sources. By contrast, New Jersey has taken a very proactive approach, where their RPS is currently over 0.3% on its way to a peak of nearly 5% by 2026, ALL of which must be purchased from within the state.

How does this manifest itself in the market, you might ask? Well, the price for Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), the means by which renewable energy commodities are traded, are just above $200 for one megawatt-hour (MWh) in Pennsylvania, while they are trading at over $600/MWh in New Jersey. On a practical level, this means that if I were to install a solar electricity array on my roof and Pennsylvania adopted New Jersey’s level of incentive, the payback period on my investment would be cut approximately in half, from 9.3 years to 4.7 years. This larger incentive would be the difference in executing this installation for myself and many others, which in turn means…JOBS! Perhaps our elected officials are starting to hear this. There is currently a bill up in the Legislature to modify the RPS to increase the demand for Pennsylvania solar. This is a step in the right direction, as bill sponsor Chris Ross (R-Chester) has explained that we’re oversaturated with supply.

So, let’s keep the discussion about green jobs going, but we must really shift our focus to “green businesses.” What are the barriers preventing these businesses and industries from burgeoning? My belief is that they are primarily policy barriers reinforced by the cozy relationship between industry and politics. We will need to have some hard conversations, but it is crucial that we start and keep talking about this dark side of the issue. I can guarantee that some very powerful industries will not be happy about it, but this is the proverbial omelet; and it’s time to crack a few eggs.