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North Carolina's Road to Energy Indpendence: Building job growth in renewable energy component manufacturing
12/5/2007
 NC-Report4.pdf
News Release
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Executive Summary
A report
developed by the Renewable Energy Policy Project clearly
demonstrates, a major commitment to renewable electric generation will
reduce our national security exposure, stabilize climate and provide a
multi-billion dollar investment and reindustrialization program that
will lead to new job growth in North Carolina. Analyzing the Demand for ComponentsThe
Renewable Energy Policy Project recently completed a state-by-state
analysis of the job-creating potential of renewable energy
technologies. The results of this analysis were very encouraging both
for the country as a whole and for North Carolina in particular. A national program to develop renewable energy will benefit the regions and states that have the best renewable resource base – solar, wind, biomass and geothermal. It will also create a demand for billions of dollars of components, the parts that make up the finished renewable plants. This demand
could, if accompanied by appropriate incentives, provide important new
markets for domestic manufacturers that are already manufacturing
equipment similar to the components that go into new renewable
generation. More than 75% of the potential new demand can be expected to flow to the 20 states that have suffered
the greatest job losses. A program that supported the development of
renewable energy projects while simultaneously supporting the
development of a strong, advanced component manufacturing industry
would benefit many states and regions. The
report breaks renewable generation technologies down into their
component parts and then examines where traditional industries exist
that could, if provided with appropriate incentives, become suppliers
of the billions of dollars of new parts that will be necessary. The
Report analyses the renewable energy industry assuming that the United
States moves to stabilize carbon emissions. Stabilizing emissions of
carbon requires adding 18,500 MW of new renewable projects each
year for the next ten years. The Report looks at the total demand
generated by this ten-year stabilization program and tracks that demand
down to the individual industries capable of manufacturing the
components. Revitalizing North Carolina’s ManufacturingThe national demand is allocated to individual states and eventually to the county level. This report outlines the potential for North Carolina from a national commitment to accelerate renewable energy development. In all, there are more than 457 firms in North Carolina that
are currently active in the industrial sectors that could supply the
component parts to meet the demand necessary to deliver a 15% reduction
in global warming emissions. A
major program to develop renewable energy will create a demand for the
component parts that go into the renewable developments. A major
portion of the potential benefits flowing from the development of renewable energy will go to the manufacturers who supply the component parts. In order to capture as much of that potential as possible for domestic industry, the first step is to understand where the potential manufacturers are located and then devise the incentives that allow them to move efficiently into the industry. In addition, the demand can support the creation of thousands more new jobs related to the expanded manufacturing activity. REPP
had recently completed a study of the labor that goes into renewables
which included a detailed survey of employment related to wind and
solar PV. The overall manufacturing jobs/MW numbers found using the NAICS census method and shown in the table above agree well with the numbers found in the previous REPP study, giving confidence in the above method. Having obtained a jobs/MW number, the jobs are allocated geographically according to the census manufacturing in the exact same manner that the investment was allocated.
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