A new online data base created by the Environmental Defense Fund maps a sector of Pennsylvania’s economy–along with similar profiles for 11 other states–that would be likely to receive a direct boost in revenue and jobs from nationwide caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Tagged with pop-up push-pins to identify individual companies, the online map for Pennsylvania displays the names and locations of more than 150 businesses across the Commonwealth that provide products and services for energy conservation and alternative sources of power.
“We made the maps to give people a very concrete sense of where these jobs are going to be,” Jackie Roberts, EDF director of sustainable technologies, says. “These are the companies that would see new customers and grow and add jobs.”
The site was launched February 27, to coincide with a meeting in Philadelphia of Vice President Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force. Its immediate goal is to persuade policymakers, particularly in certain key swing states, to recognize the economic upside in policies that shift energy policy toward alternatives to carbon fuels.
The site includes some case studies for individual companies, such as Axion Power International of New Castle, a manufacturer of advanced batteries and energy storage components, and Gamesa of Langhorne, a wind turbine manufacturer. But that’s only a start, Roberts says.
“We want to reach out to all kinds of business associations to say that this is the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “There are a lot of companies that should be on this map that aren’t on this map. We want companies to self-identify”–and enable the numbers of pins on the map to grow as other companies are identified as likely to participate in a market for clean energy that is projected to grow to $255 billion by 2017.
Source: Environmental Defense Fund, Jackie Roberts
Writer: Joseph Plummer
To receive Keystone Edge free every week, click here.