Green Public Investment

Green public investment should be a key part of America's industrial policy

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Mar 05, 2011 - Between 1999 and November 2009, Ohio lost 418,000 manufacturing jobs. And for a long time, well before the recession, Ohio's unemployment rate was higher than the nation's. At 9.4 percent, it still is, but improvement is on the way. And green energy is one reason.

Ohio is one of the many states—targeted by Republicans for whom anything green is a red flag—that has a renewable energy standard. Three years ago, Ohio mandated that, by 2025, 12.5 percent of electricity sold in the state must come from renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Another 12.5 percent must come from alternatives, such as nuclear power, natural gas and so-called "clean coal." That's going to be an uphill climb since currently Ohio only has 10 megawatts of installed wind-power operations and a little more than that in solar power. A single coal-fired plant typically has a rated capacity 600 megawatts or more.

But there's movement in the right direction in Ohio thanks to operations like Cardinal Fastener & Specialty Co., the maker of bolts for wind turbines visited by Barack Obama two years ago just days before his inauguration. That visit was the first of many that the President has made throughout the country—mostly in the Midwest—to tout what is the closest thing the country has to an industrial plan: public investment in green manufacturing and related projects. {continued}