By Jack Pouchet, Director of Energy Initiatives for Emerson Network Power 

It is hard to turn on the news anywhere these days and not hear somebody talking about how the world needs “green” jobs.

Whatever the rationale used to promote these all-so-vital-to-the-economy green jobs, the underlying question isn’t about energy policy but rather: when did jobs get assigned a color (beyond the old white/blue collar?) Certainly the initial idea of categorizing jobs like manufacturing solar panels, solar water heaters, and wind turbines as being within the green or environmental sector was an interesting way to slice and dice the U.S. and global manufacturing and service sectors. Interesting to note that the UN contends green jobs are more about R&D, sciences, energy efficiency (reducing demand), environmental efficiency (protecting resources), and administration.

However, the practice of coloring jobs “green” gets out of hand when people seem to qualify green jobs as intrinsically better for the economy, environment, and globe than any other jobs. This is hardly the case. Let us dispel the myth that jobs have a color and can be ranked on some artificially contrived notion of “greenness” (hence “goodness”), thereby creating a new worker caste system.

Examine with me the “green” job of installing wind turbines – one of the icons of clean energy, and a green economy. Wind turbines are typically installed on large towers made of steel. Inside the turbine are thousands of pounds of copper, steel, iron, numerous power semiconductors, rare earth metals, plastics, etc. These power generators include complex components and subsystems – disclaimer: many manufactured by Emerson – to control and integrate them to the grid. All of these materials, components, and assemblies are manufactured somewhere by skilled laborers utilizing best manufacturing processes that include Six Sigma quality techniques and often lean manufacturing to optimize process yield while reducing both raw material and energy waste. Many of these firms embrace energy efficient practices throughout their organizations, providing increased productivity per unit of natural resource/energy with the potential to eclipse the output of these turbines over several years.

However, none of these valuable engineering, process, quality and manufacturing jobs is considered “green.” Yet we wouldn’t have the benefits of the wind turbine without them. But the problem goes much deeper because if we simply look back into the wind turbine tower supply chain, we quickly find that this wondrous “green” invention requires the “dirtiest” of resources – coal, one of America’s most abundant natural resources – for its very existence.

You see, all that steel comes out of the ground somewhere as iron ore. We add nickel and other elements, depending upon our final steel composition – all of which also come out of the ground. So let’s pretend that one mine in Montana (or Australia) produces all of the iron, nickel, cobalt, etc, that goes into our turbine tower. Does that mean all the miners who work there also have green jobs? And what about that “dirty coal”? Again, let’s pick one mine in West Virginia where all of the coal is used to fuel the steel mill that only makes steel for wind turbine. Well, in my book those miners are all 100 percent engaged in the wind turbine supply chain; therefore, they must be working in “green” jobs.

But wait – how did that coal get to the steel mill? Oh, that would be by rail. So the railroad line carrying the coal must be at least partially “green.” Let’s give them a 50 percent green score. And what about the workers who manufacture the diesel locomotive, all the coal cars, or, for that matter, produce the diesel to power the locomotive? There must be some accounting of their “greenness.”

We could continue this into minute detail along the entire supply chain of all “green” technologies, solutions, etc., assigning various levels of “greenness” along the way. Doing so would show that almost every sector of our economy has some small part to play in ensuring the flow of goods, materials, science, technology, information, skills, and services required to design, manufacture, install, commission, and support these wind turbines as well as solar power systems, hydro, bio-fuels, etc. It would be ridiculous to assume we can quantify the level of “greenness” for every job in real-time given the complexity and dynamics involved of the output and services along the supply chain.

Further, we need to include all of those technical service people engaged in energy efficiency measures, as their efforts to reduce our current energy consumption and improve our nation’s productivity are certainly meaningful from a green perspective. All of us in the data center, IT, networking, and storage industries recognize the intrinsic “green” value we bring when we upgrade data centers with VFDs for the precision cooling systems, install new high-efficiency PDUs and UPS systems, refresh the IT suite increasing productivity per watt by factors of 3 to 5X, upgrade networks, move to virtual servers – and the list goes on and on! 

So let’s stop this nonsense of setting higher value on “green” jobs and get back to the basics of doing what is right for both business and the environment by focusing on those tasks that improve productivity while minimizing our impact on all natural resources. This renewed focus will drive new investments that will put everyone back to work regardless of the role they play in the process.