The Obama administration is continuing its pledge to reach out to these higher education institutions in New Mexico with a $2 million grant to three community colleges to focus on green jobs training as part of the the State Energy Sector Partnership Program (SESP), a three year, six-million dollar bundle of funds established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Here’s the story from New Mexico Business Weekly:

The grant, funded through a $6 million award from the U.S. Department of Labor will allow Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, Central New Mexico Community College and Santa Fe Community College to expand or develop occupational training programs in the wind, solar biofuels, green building and energy efficiency sectors.

Those colleges have been designated “centers of excellence” by Workforce Solutions. They will develop statewide green training programs for their local communities, and for other communities through a “train-the-trainer” approach that will help other New Mexico colleges set up energy-related curricula and courses, said Workforce Solutions Secretary Celina Bussey in a news release.

“The centers of excellence will assist in meeting the training needs for these emerging industries in New Mexico,” Bussey said. “The green energy curricula will be available statewide and will bring training to the areas where the work is taking place.”

Targeting New Mexico for green jobs training could not only good stimulus, say some economists, but targets an industry that’s growing in the Land of Enlightenment.

The solar industry alone employs nearly 100,000 workers, and New Mexico is near the top of the list of where green jobs can be found.

The New Mexico Independent previously reported on several large solar panel farms slated to offer thousands living wages.

The New Mexico state government operates a website where job seekers can link up with green employers, which can be found here. The site includes a listing of colleges that offer green jobs training, as well.

The chart, included in an Economic Policy Institute primer on the issue, illustrates the United States’ massive trade deficit with China on clean energy technology, a deficit that estimates indicate has more than doubled in the last two years. The Economic Policy Institute put it this way:

Overall, imports of clean energy products increased 74% per year, on average, between 2000 and 2010.  U.S. exports also increased very rapidly, but from a tiny base.  As a result, the U.S. developed large and very rapidly growing trade deficits with China in clean energy products.

It’s this trade deficit with China that’s got the United Steelworkers all worked up. The Steelworkers are concerned that China is going to leave the United States in the dust and the union is hoping it can stop China before it’s too late. In a 5,000-page-plus petition to the Obama administration, the union alleges that China is breaking a number of World Trade Organization rules by subsidizing key energy technology exports, among other things.

The Obama administration announced last week that it’s investigating the Steelworkers’ allegations. In the next 90 days, the administration (led by United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk) will decide whether to bring a trade case before the WTO.

As I noted earlier today, the announcement has already led to heightened tension between the U.S. and China. A Chinese official accused the administration of trying to score political points ahead of the midterm elections (It’s not clear whether it was the administration’s intent, but the announcement was popular on both sides of the aisle). And today, The New York Times reported that China is blocking shipments to the United States of rare earth minerals necessary in the manufacturing of key clean energy technologies.

But challenging China’s trade policies is just one way to ensure that the United States can compete on the world stage. Without the right policies, economists say it will be nearly impossible to develop the so-called “clean energy” economy that President Obama and others have been touting for years. At the end of the day, the United States imports so many components for clean energy technology not just because it’s so cheap to buy them from China and other countries, but also because the U.S. clean energy manufacturing sector is underdeveloped.

Here are a few of the major points:

• The assumption that immigrant-driven population growth alone drives the U.S. carbon footprint is false. The 10 highest carbon-emitting cities have an average immigrant population below 5 percent, according to a 2008 Brookings Institution study. [...]
• Immigrants, especially recent immigrants, tend to lead “greener” lifestyles than the native-born and are more likely to use public transportation and practice sustainable habits like compact living, conservation, and recycling. [...]
• Immigrants are disproportionately hurt by the dirty energy economy and face unique environmental challenges. Consequently, they fight for greener solutions, including challenging the use of hazardous pesticides in the agricultural fields where many immigrants work. A successful campaign by immigrant farm workers during the 1960s led to the banning of the dangerous pesticide DDT.
• 2010 polls of key electoral states find that immigrant-rich communities overwhelmingly favor policy that will create green jobs and tend to support congres- sional candidates who back efforts to fight global warming.

The main argument made by groups that tie environmental concerns to immigration is that immigration will increase the population, which will in turn increase consumption, decrease open spaces and harm the environment. In some ways, this may be true: Immigrants from third-world countries in particular are likely to consume more energy in the U.S. than they did in their native countries.

But as the CAP report points out, many of the environmental arguments against immigration are heavily flawed because not all people impact the environment in the same way. Many of the cities with the lowest levels of carbon emissions have higher percentages of immigrants, while many cities with small immigrant populations have far higher carbon emissions:

Tying immigration to environmental concerns can have some serious consequences, particularly in the debate over whether volunteers should be allowed to leave water bottles in the Arizona desert for border crossers. Groups that push for more border enforcement argue illegal immigrants are destroying open spaces along the U.S.-Mexico border by trekking through them into the U.S., and Minutemen reportedly routinely slash and drain bottles they find there. (They leave the bottles, which seems to point to a non-environmental motivation.) Meanwhile, representatives from a Tuscon-based group, No More Deaths, that leaves out bottles have been arrested for leaving garbage in a national refuge.

China established itself years ago as one of the world's leading producers of solar energy equipment. (Imaginechina/ZUMApress.com)

In a last-ditch effort to build support in the Senate for a comprehensive climate bill this July, President Obama told the White House press corps that a failure to pass the legislation could help cement China’s position as the world clean energy industry leader.

[Environment1] “We can’t stand by as we let China race ahead to create the clean energy jobs and industries of the future,” he said. “We should be developing those renewable energy sources, and creating those high-wage, high-skill jobs right here in the United States of America.”

Conjuring up images of the Cold War, the race metaphor has become a go-to talking point for American politicians during the last year. By all accounts, the United States is getting lapped in the race for the so-called clean energy economy. During the last year or so, the Chinese government has made huge strides in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions and, above all else, making the country a veritable testing ground for research, development and large-scale deployment of wind and solar technology.

The United States, on the other hand, has failed to pass even scaled-back energy and climate change legislation. The Obama administration is betting that there is still hope — that the clean energy race is not yet won and the United States can come out on top.

But some experts say that while competition is essential, the metaphors used to describe our relationship with China on energy and climate change fail to account for a number of nuances, including the fact that the global supply chain makes any one country’s border less clear. In a sense, America and China are more like partners in a relay race, where each country’s advances helps the other get ahead.

Edward Steinfeld, a political economy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the school’s China program, argues that framing the relationship between the United States and other countries as a race is “sort of divorced” from the way technology is developed and deployed. The parts necessary to manufacture a wind turbine, for example, are likely produced all over the country by multinational corporations.

“We’re talking about complicated systems,” he said. “We’re not talking about a shoe. Usually these systems involve constellations of companies, in most cases global companies. In the end, it’s really hard to identify exactly what flag is on any given product.”

Because China has positioned itself as a clean energy leader, many companies are looking to China to conduct necessary research and development. In order to bring costs down, research and development must be done in the location where the product can be deployed on a massive level. Right now, Steinfeld said, that place is China.

But although technologies are fine-tuned in China, they are not always manufactured by Chinese companies. For example, several years ago, as part of a massive effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s rapidly growing industrial sector, the Chinese government declared that all coal plants must install technology that keeps sulfur dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

“Out of nowhere, the world’s biggest market for smoke-stack scrubbers was in China,” Steinfeld said.

Though local technology companies came forward to design the scrubbers, the Chinese government opted to use designs from Europe, Japan and the United States, partly because there was little confidence in the skills of local companies and partly because the foreign technology was more developed, Steinfeld said.

The same thing is now happening with other Chinese policies. The country is looking outside its borders, and foreign companies, including many in the United States, are eager to step up to the plate.

“If you’re an American company, of course you’re going to go to China,” Steinfeld says. “Where else are you going to go? You need to team up with the people that are going to let you develop the technology.”

Because companies are able to use China as a testing ground for their clean energy technologies, the price of solar panels and wind turbines has gone down.

“I think the most tangible impact of China’s energy policies is that we’re now buying not just wind turbines, but solar panels from China,” said Sierra Club Director of International Climate Policy John Coequyt, “and the price of those products is very competitive.”

Therein lies the problem for many in the Obama administration and elsewhere. Though in some ways it’s good that Chinese development has made the cost of parts for wind turbines and solar panels cheaper, it makes it much more difficult to develop a domestic clean energy manufacturing base here in the United States.

The United Steelworkers, in a September petition to the Obama administration, argue that China is unfairly subsidizing exports to encourage companies in the country to send their clean energy products around the world. At the same time, the union accuses China of limiting the exports of certain rare-earth minerals necessary to produce solar panels so that foreign companies will settle in the country.

Both of these charges would be violations of international trading rules, and the United Steelworkers are hoping that the Obama administration will raise the issue in front of the World Trade Organization. “I do think they will take up some of this because some of it is so obvious,” said Linda Andros, legislative counsel on trade law issues at the United Steelworkers. “They don’t have to. They have discretion. But on the merits the case is there. The blatant stuff you’ve just got to take up.”

But some experts argue that regardless of whether the United States can compete with China on clean energy manufacturing, expanding U.S. reliance on wind and solar will create local jobs that can’t be exported to China.

Lutz Weischer, research analyst at the World Resources Institute, says many solar facilities create a significant number of local, American jobs. “If you look at job creation in the solar industry, most jobs are in construction, installation and maintenance,” he said. “Those jobs have to be local. If you import panels that are cheap, you’re able to install more panels and create more local jobs.”

“That’s the thing you have to weigh. It’s pretty likely that you’ll have less manufacturing jobs in the United States,” he said. “But you have to look at the entire supply chain. You’re gaining jobs elsewhere.”

Weischer also says that Chinese manufacturing has helped to lower the cost of solar panels, which fell in price by some 40 percent in 2009 as compared to 2008. “Even though this decline has a number of reasons — including technological progress, less demand due to the recession and changing policies in Spain, etc. — it would not have been possible without China producing large quantities of low-cost modules,” said Weischer.

The Chinese market is also important because it often functions as a “laboratory” to test new technology. Because the United States has lagged behind other countries in developing a stable investment environment for the wind industry, for example, General Electric has focused much of its attention on China. It recently announced a partnership with Harbin Power Equipment, a Chinese company, to expand its presence in the country, which currently has the largest wind market in the world.

For these reasons, Weischer says the race metaphor might not work for the relationship between China and the United States on clean energy. “The problem with the race image is that it suggests that only one country can win,” he says. “But if you look at wind, every country that has decided to focus on wind has won. You win if you decide to play.”

Like other experts, Barbara Finamore, China Program Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the clean energy race metaphor oversimplifies the way global supply chains work. “Race is not necessarily the right term here,” she says. “Because of the way supply chains are interconnected, you can’t win the clean energy race by banning technologies from other countries or by banning investment because it hurts U.S. companies.”

There are a number of examples of Chinese companies coming to the United States and creating jobs for American workers. Suntech, a Chinese solar company, began production this month at a solar manufacturing facility in Arizona, the first in the country. The facility will create almost 100 American manufacturing jobs.

At the same time, despite initial resistance, the United Steelworkers signed an agreement in August with A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese company, to allow the construction of a wind power plant in Texas and a wind turbine manufacturing plant in Nevada. Despite the fact that the company is Chinese, the thinking goes, the jobs created will be American.

Finamore says there are a number of reasons that China is eclipsing the United States in terms of its clean energy development. But at the end of the day, the main reason is because the United States has not enacted policies that create a stable investment climate.

“The countries that establish strong national policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize renewable energy are the ones that are establishing strong positions in the clean energy economy,” she said.

In a statement, Bingaman said:

We must continue to ensure that the Tax Code contains well-designed incentives that will help us transition to an energy efficient economy. Our bill will significantly expand domestic clean energy manufacturing; help American businesses and families reduce their energy use and dependence on fossil fuels; and create thousands of jobs.  This is a common-sense, bipartisan proposal that deserves priority consideration.

Here’s a summary of the bill’s provisions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in a statement on the bill, said:

By passing the Rural Energy Savings Program Act, we are supporting local workers and strengthening demand for products made in America – such as insulation and windows – because when we ‘make it in America,’ we create jobs and lead the world economy.

According to Pelosi’s office, the bill would create 40,000 construction, manufacturing and retail jobs a year.

Politico pointed today to an Aug. 11 Reuters story that says Deutsche Bank will funnel the $6 billion to $7 billion in investment money it puts aside for climate change not to the United States, but to Western Europe and, wait for it, China.

According to Reuters:

Amid so much political uncertainty in the United States, Parker said Deutsche Bank will focus its “green” investment dollars more and more on opportunities in China and Western Europe, where it sees governments providing a more positive environment.

“They’re asleep at the wheel on climate change, asleep at the wheel on job growth, asleep at the wheel on this industrial revolution taking place in the energy industry,” [Deutsche Bank's Kevin] Parker said of Washington’s inability to seal a climate-change program and other alternative energy incentives into place.

It’s the nightmare scenario for the renewable energy industry, which has been howling in recent months over a lack of investment in renewable energy technology. And it appears to play right into Democrats’ talking points. A failure to act on climate change legislation is in fact driving investment to other countries, including China, which announced last month that it would begin capping its greenhouse gas emissions.

Administration officials say the stimulus remains on schedule, with 70 percent expected to be spent by Sept. 30. And some economists note that the sluggish economy will still need a boost until 2012, the deadline for spending most stimulus cash.

“Some stuff is taking a longer time to have an impact, but we still have over 9 percent unemployment,” said John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute. “The fact that we still have dollars coming on line now should not be seen as a negative.”

Many of the unspent funds lie in programs portrayed from the outset as true long-term investments, such as $8 billion for high-speed rail, $17 billion for health information technology and $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health. But other programs that had been viewed as quicker job-generators are also taking a while to get rolling.

One positive note: Much of the money is tied up in programs to help green cities and build infrastructure — highly labor-intensive, and therefore job-creating, tasks.

With many people locked in homes by underwater mortgages, only 1.6 percent of Americans moved between states in a one-year period that ended in March 2009 — a labor stagnation not seen in half a century. Though household mobility has gradually declined for more than two decades, the recent sharp downturn has caused economists to worry that it could harm the already struggling recovery.

“In the past, people tended to move to where the jobs are,” said Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan B. Krueger, who oversees economic policy for the department. “Now it is necessary to have more of a strategy to move the jobs — and create new jobs — in areas where the people are.”

The labor migration rate is down sharply since the start of the economic downturn in 2007 and is just half the rate of a decade earlier, according to William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer who has analyzed Internal Revenue Service and census data. “Overall, interstate migration has reached its lowest point since World War II,” Frey said.

This is part of the reason that, to take care of the long-term unemployment situation, the government will likely need to subsidize or create massive jobs programs in regions with the worst unemployment and housing problems — interior California, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan. Making Detroit the new home of green jobs is one example.

- Oil spill response

- Clean energy job creation

- A title to “reduce oil consumption”

- A “broader” title, which he’s working on with the Finance Committee, and which will address the utilities sector. No details on whether it’ll include a cap on emissions, but he said it would deal with “pollution.”

More to come…