Walmart has started a Green Jobs Council. We’re officially saved. Seriously though, we are seeing some incredible growth on the green jobs front in America. Could you imagine, America, in it’s current slump, without the prospect of massive numbers of green-collar jobs to help give us at least a glimpse of a better economic future?

The Green Communities Act of Massachusetts is a sweeping piece of legislation slated to fully take effect in the coming months. Passed in 2007, this energy and environmentally focused act promises to make Massachusetts a leader in addressing climate change and energy independence. All of the regulations are currently being hashed out by the public and other stake holders with the goal being to have all the nuances of the act agreed upon so the regulations can be put into practice in the new year. While we could write a book on all the great, good and (few) not so good aspects of the act, for this series of posts we are going to focus on the changes to Net Metering as it pertains to distributed generation.

Although you may or may not agree with Obama’s philosophies and policies, one thing is certain: He was able to utilize the internet to formulate a fundraising effort like no presidential candidate before him. This type of grassroots movement would not have been possible 15 years ago without the internet and the ability to disseminate information as easily and cost effective as it is today.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about a potential federal stimulus package that will rival President Eisenhower’s massive investments in highway infrastructure during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System (read an interesting viewpoint on the highway system here) from that era launched America into living model that is economically and environmentally unsustainable; we’re finally finding that out now. During the 50s and 60s, middle class Americans fled urban centers and flocked to rural farmland areas to live in single family homes accessible only by automobile.

The lazy days of summer have done quite a bit to bring attention to America’s energy problems. We’ve had heat waves that require us to turn out our pockets and foot the huge bill for air conditioning; we’ve realized that our annual 4^th of July trip to Lake George is no longer affordable because of gas prices. And we’ve been bombarded from all directions by the presidential candidates about all the myriad ways they hope to take the strain of high energy prices off of us.

Here are some thoughts that came to my mind when reading this article. Most of what I am saying does not have to do with exports but rather popular topics in the news today. The alternative energy/ sustainability movement is unlike anything the United States has seen since WWII. Instead of blue collar jobs we will have “green collar jobs”.

Some of you may have noticed some very negative news articles in the New York Times regarding wind power developments in northern New York State. There are quite a few topics for discussion among these articles, and if you don’t mind, we’re going to break them up into multiple posts to do justice to each issue. For this post I’d like to focus on what I like to call the ‘Green-Rush,’ similar in many ways to the American gold rush and almost identical to another rush much less spoken about but oh so much more applicable, the American rush for oil at the beginning of the last century.

Wednesday evening marked another successful illustration of Emergent Energy Group’s integrated approach to renewable energy development through community involvement.

A quote about high gas prices:

In Boston, where turnpike use declined by 600,000 cars in May, officials are pleading with public-transit passengers to travel at nonpeak times.

Time Magazine and CNN have released a list of ten positive effects of high gas prices on America and its people. Is $4 gasoline making America a better country? Read about it here.

Our Cohasset Wind Project at the Graham Waste Services (GWS) site in Cohasset, Massachusetts has been featured in the Cohasset Mariner and the Patriot Ledger; read more about the project here. Emergent has provided feasibility consulting services for the project, including permitting, impact on the community and wildlife, and power output studies.