Welcome to Green Job Profiles, a series of interviews with people who have green jobs. I’m Chris Russell, the founder of Green Job Spider. And today I’ll be talking with a green recruiter. Marlo Hughen is a recruiter for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. (download mp3)

Governor Deval Patrick talks about green jobs and touches on the Cape Wind decision. (downlaod mp3) 5 min

The Green Jobcast #30 is brought to you by Green Job Spider – the green job search engine.

The Green Jobcast, episode 28, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news about solar jobs & the biggest ever wind farm. (download mp3) (3 min)

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Construction of what could become the largest wind farm in the world will begin in eastern Oregon after the U.S. Air Force said it will no longer block the $2 billion project over concerns about radar interference. Oregon officials announced construction of theShepherds Flat wind farm project can begin on schedule in May.

The project calls for building 338 wind turbines on 32,000 acres in remote areas of Gilliam and Morrow counties. The project is expected to bring more than 700 construction jobs to Oregon and create a clean renewable energy system capable of generating 845 megawatts of power which is the equivalent of a nuclear plant. Caithness Energy is the New York company developing the project. GE will supply the wind turbines. According to an AP article, “Ross Ain, Caithness executive, said work will begin in May with completion expected before the end of 2011. In addition to the local jobs, Ain estimated the project will add about 16,000 jobs nationally, including manufacturing, fabrication and transportation.”

In solar news…Southern California Edison and SunLink, a solar manufacturing company, have agreed in terms for SCE’s massive new solar project. The project will assist in the installation of nearly 50 megawatts of solar panels in the San Bernardino and Eastern Los Angeles counties by this time next year. The project represents nearly 20 percent of SCE’s projected 250 megawatts of solar installations, which will be installed over the next five years.

The project should create an estimated 800 future jobs in California in the next few years. For more information on SCE and their future projects, you can contact the company here. You can also contact SunLink here for other solar opportunities.

Colorado governor Bill Ritter said at a speech last week in Washington, D.C at the GJGJ conference, that his new energy economy is producing results, including 2,500 jobs from Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems, which made Colorado its North American manufacturing hub, and 700 jobs from SMA Solar, which is opening a manufacturing plant in Colorado this summer, its first outside Germany.

In biofuel news …there is growing concern that more jobs are being lost due to Congress’ inaction on renewing the $1-a-gallon federal biodiesel tax credit.

At The Maple River Energy biodiesel plant near Galva, Iowa. 12 of the facility’s 18 employees are being laid off until the biodiesel blenders credit is reinstated: …About 2,000 biodiesel jobs have already been lost this year in Iowa. The IRFA warns those layoffs could become permanent if Congress doesn’t act soon. Some leaders have promised the bill will be considered before Memorial Day.

Finally …Duke Energy to create Smart Grid jobs…Duke Energy will now be the proud recipient of $204 million from the Department of Energy, or “DOE,” the company reported today, after finalizing the agreement. The funds will be put towards the company’s smart grid projects in its five-state service territory including Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and the Carolinas.

Specifically, Duke will use the maximum about of funds allowed per project under the DOE Smart Grid Investment Grant Program – $200 million – to modernize the company’s power distribution system.
The remaining $4 million will go towards the installation of digital equipment on the Carolina’s transmission system. According to company officials, both projects aim to save and/or create 1,000 new jobs and stimulate the economy. Gianna Manes, Duke Energy senior vice president and chief customer officer, said that the stimulus money will help maintain leadership in modernizing the electric grid while simultaneously revitalizing the nation’s economy.

The Green Jobcast, episode 28, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news about a new solar company HQ, a new wind turbine manufacturer and green2v jobs. (download mp3) (3 min)

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The Associated Press is reporting that a New wind farm is planned for eastern Colorado
An Xcel Energy Inc. company has agreed to buy power from a new wind farm in eastern Colorado that will bring up to 200 construction jobs. Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. based in Broomfield says it will begin construction on Cedar Point Wind farm in Lincoln and Elbert counties by the middle of this year. The company says Cedar Point will employ up to 200 people during construction and about 12 people after the wind farm is complete.
For more info http://www.cedarpointwind.com

In Sacremento CA, Solar Power Inc. will build its new solar-panel manufacturing operation and headquarters at McClellan Business Park, ending weeks of speculation. The company will begin construction on the 100,000-square-foot building in July and should be completed in early 2011.
The nine-month project will create about 120 construction-related jobs, with 100 full-time permanent employees permanently.

Mitsubishi said Tuesday it is aiming to produce wind turbines in Fort Smith Arkansas by next year at a new $100 million plant, a facility that signals the company is seeking to regain its U.S. customers.

Company executives gathered with state and local officials to mark Mitsubishi’s decision to build the plant, which will employ at least 400 people and help stem the tide of manufacturing jobs that have left the Fort Smith area.

Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas is to start construction in the fall, produce its first turbine next year and reach full production in 2012, said Ichiro Fukue, executive vice president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. About 200 construction jobs will be created as the plant is built.

The plant’s work force could expand to 500, Fukue said, if the market grows.

In new mexico Green 2v a solar manufacturer is going to build its headquarters in Rio Rancho New Mexico and bring 1,500 jobs according to a story by KOB4. Green2V will manufacture solar cells and modular glass frames and will design, install, operate and finance the systems. Green2V CEO Bill Sheppard, who ran Intel Corp.’s Rio Rancho plant in the 1990s, said the company expects to break ground on the 124-acre site in the next few weeks. Green2V will manufacture solar cells and modular glass frames and will design, install, operate and finance the systems, Sheppard said.

“We are a fully integrated renewable energy company, and our motto is ‘Sand to kilowatts,’” Sheppard said. “We will take sand and make wafers and glass and produce solar cells and the modules and the frames that the glass will go in.”

Sheppard said he and the company’s seven other founders have 220 collective years of experience in the high-tech industry. He said Green2V’s approach of controlling the entire manufacturing process — from obtaining the sand to producing wafers and glass — will help reduce the cost of solar-generated electricity.
The firm hopes to begin delivering its solar energy systems to customers by the summer of 2011, Sheppard said. Gov. Bill Richardson said the project ultimately could lead to 3,000 new jobs in the state.

This is a special edition of the green jobcast.

From May 4th through 6th, GreenJobSpider.com will be attending the 2010 Good Jobs Green Jobs National Conference in Washington DC, the event is the nation’s leading forum for transforming ideas into action and building a new green economy. If you are interested in learning more about green jobs, attending workshops and networking with a variety of exhibitors including us, this is the conference for you. (download mp3)

The event is organized by The Blue Green Alliance Foundation ,a non-profit, 501 c(3) organization dedicated to research and education about the job-creating potential of global warming solutions and other environmental investments. The Alliance is a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy,

Kelly Schwinghammer…from the Blue Green Alliance will give us a quick overview of this great event.

The Green Jobcast, episode 27, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news about a new battery plant, a new windfarm and green building jobs. (download mp3) (3 min)

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OUr new sponsor is the google for green jobs. Green Job Spider is the creation of Chris Russell, entrepreneur and co-founder of Jobradio.

Green jobs are growing substantially according to several recent studies. Now a new job search engine called Green Job Spider, aims to aggregate those jobs as the ‘Google for green jobs’. (download mp3)

With more than 50 green job boards currently scattered across the web, job seekers are having a hard time finding and applying to this fast growing job market. Green Job Spider will enable them to search for these jobs under one interface. The site will also help green candidates learn about the types of green jobs and where they are through its blog and podcast.

The job search engine will be one of the first of its kind to focus exclusively on a specific niche. To date, most of these job search sites focus on all types of jobs nationwide but Green Job Spider will offer a more targeted experience for those who want a green job. Its crawler will index for jobs from solar to wind to biofuels. Job listings will be indexed nightly and all sources of green jobs will be hand selected to ensure quality.

“The time is right for a service of this kind” says Chris Russell, the site’s founder. “Green jobs are growing and the current method of finding them is too fragmented”. Russell is a ten year veteran of the online job search space. His company, AllCountyJobs.com LLC, is a well established player in the niche job board business.

Green Job Spider will also target green employers and recruiting firms who have jobs online. Listings can be indexed through an XML feed or spidered via web page. Pricing will consist of a flat monthly subscription fee with unlimited clicks. At launch it currently indexes about a dozen green job sources. Efforts are underway to index the remaining green job boards.

Currently in BETA the site is located at http://www.greenjobspider.com/

The Green Jobcast, episode 26, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news about a possible solar panel planet in Austin TX and a biomass plant in Washington and some green job news from GE. (download mp3) (3 min)

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Austin could land a solar panel manufacturing plant that could bring 500 jobs within the next few years, city and state officials said last week. Yingli Green Energy Americas Inc. is considering Austin and Phoenix, Ariz., for a large solar panel manufacturing plant and its North American headquarters. The City Council is scheduled to hold hearings and vote on proposals March 11, after a public briefing Wednesday.

Yingli has only a few weeks to choose between Austin and Phoenix to meet the requirements for a $4.5 million federal tax credit tied to the project, said Dave Porter, senior vice president for economic development at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

The company is a subsidiary of Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. , a Chinese company that is one of the world’s largest makers of solar power panels. The company’s agreement with the city says it would create 303 jobs within three years and spend $19.9 million on plant improvements and manufacturing equipment. Most of the jobs — 240 — would be for entry-level assemblers, but 63 more jobs would include higher-paid managers, supervisors and professional staff.

Green Energy Resources (Pink Sheets:GRGR) is hiring. The company is creating a dozen “Green” jobs to meet orders. Positions include administrative, sales and procurement. New job opportunities exist in the Norfolk – Richmond, Virginia area where International Paper plans to shutter its manufacturing facility in April. Green Energy Resources looks to take up some of the slack by creating a market for exports. The company is seeking assistance from Virginia State Government officials to help with port and logistical concerns. Port costs remain the greatest impediment to the development of an international renewable energy and bio fuels export terminal. The New England and the Ohio Valley areas are also high priority for the company, looking to add at least 2 positions in each area. Interested individuals can email resumes to penney@greenenergyresources.com (no phone calls).

Green Energy Resources is a supplier of woodchips and wood fiber fuels for the power generation industry. Green Energy Resources is an environmentally friendly company, sourcing wood from urban wood waste streams, storm damage and recyclable outlets. The company’s principal goal is to reduce green house gases through the use of sustainable biomass.

The Olympian newspaper In Washington state, Plans are under way to build a $250 million biomass plant near the Shelton Airport with an objective of turning 600,000 tons of wood debris into enough electricity to power 40,000 homes. A joint venture of Duke Energy and a global energy firm called Areva has a long, long way to go to get the plant off the ground, but it’s exciting to think about the potential to turn mounds of leftover logging debris — stumps and tree limbs — into electrical energy. Community and political leaders were quick to praise the woodwaste-to-energy plan because it’s expected to generate 700 direct and indirect jobs during the two-and-a-half year construction.

WQOW in Wisconsin is reporting…Milwaukee (WISN)- Hundreds of green jobs are coming to Milwaukee. Mayor Tom Barrett used his State of the City speech on Monday to announce that a Spanish company named Ingeteam will build a factory to make wind turbine generators. Land just east of Miller Park is set aside for the factory. Nearly 300 jobs are expected to be created. Ingeteam will also make Milwaukee its North American headquarters.

Mayor Barrett says several factors helped convince Ingeteam to build in Milwaukee. The factory site is close to Spanish-speaking neighborhoods and it’s also right next to Interstate 94. The city also threw in $1.6 million in clean-tech manufacturing credits.

GE unveiled a new building for it’s renewable energy global headquarters on Monday. The project, which is estimated to cost $45 million, was announced 2 years ago and has turned the hundred year old building fifty three on Schenectady campus into 1 of the best environmentally friendly buildings all over the Capital region. This building is also going to be the home of six hundred and fifty employees, most of them to be hired from the local colleges to work for GE. Paul Tonko, the U.S. Representative D-Amsterdam, said, “This is the day we all should celebrate as change has finally been brought upon us.”

Apart from the engineers who are designing and servicing wind turbines for GE, the facility is also going to be the home of one remote operations center, where the technicians are going to be watching carefully the 1000’s of wind turbines which have been installed by GE all arounf North America. This is 1 of the major reasons why the equipment from GE has a reliability rate of 98%, saif the vice president of the renewable energy for GE’s water and power unit, Victor Abate. “We have invested $1 billion in the technology just to ensure that you can rely on the wind turbines,” he said.

This new facility is located close to where GE plans to build a $100 million battery manufacturing plant which is going to be employing around 350 people. At this moment, GE provides jobs to around 7,000 people out of which 4,000 jobs are located on the Schenectady Campus. This campus is the one where the steam turbines & generators are produced by GE.

The Green Jobcast, episode 25, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news Dow’s Solar Shingles project, a new wind spire manufacturer and a new renewable engery plant in Milwaukee. (download mp3) (3 min)

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Mariah Power and Mas Tech Manufacturing’s new wind turbine production facility is now open in Manistee (MI). Mas Tech will produce the Windspire turbine, and employ up to 140 people when full production is operational. Currently they have 15 employees but expect up to 100 jobs by the end of the year. They manufacture wind spires for homes and businesses. Visit Mariah Power website.

A new $225 million plan for power creation in Milwaukee says it would go green with garbage.
According to the Journal Sentinel, the Project Apollo renewable energy plant would create power for 20,000 homes and have the potential to double that capacity. Alliance Federated Energy says it wants to build a facility to take tons of garbage, warm it with high heat, and make synthetic gas to be converted into power.
There is no final word on where in Milwaukee this plant will be located, but the former Tower Automotive site is a possibility. The project’s expected to create 250 construction jobs and 45 full time positions by 2013.

A Michigan town has been selected as preferred site of new DOW POWERHOUSE Solar Shingle facility
Midland would be home to the first full-scale production facility for the DOW POWERHOUSE Solar Shingle if local, state and federal funding comes together in support of the project. Once the project moves forward, it could bring more than 1,200 jobs to the region by 2014.

The world’s largest manufacturer of lithium ion batteries is pushing the green-tech revolution forward with an $85 million expansion slated to bring hundreds of jobs to Sylmar, CA. Quallion LLC announced this week that a 50,000-square-foot addition to its Sylmar factory will bring up to 200 more jobs to its northeast San Fernando Valley plant.

The privately held company aims to move beyond making lithium ion cells for medical, aerospace and military use to batteries designed for alternative-energy wind and solar farms…the company now employs 85 workers and has 30 current job openings, from production workers to administrators to engineers, paying from $10 an hour to more than $100,000 a year.

Amid a state-wide feud over the job creation spin-offs of President Obama’s stimulus package, a Massachusetts clean energy design and construction firm announced Tuesday that it has raised $6.5 million in venture financing to help underwrite a national expansion strategy. The move comes scarcely a week after the company, Nexamp Inc., of North Andover, secured a $20 million deal to install 4 megawatts of solar generation capacity on a dozen state water and waste-water treatment facilities. Company officials say that deal will create about 100 engineering and construction jobs in New England’s fast-growing clean energy market.

“Anyone questioning whether the stimulus package is creating jobs should come to Nexamp,” said the state’s governor, Deval Patrick, according to The Eagle-Tribune. With 45 employees, Nexamp designs and builds integrated renewable energy and energy conservation projects on behalf of a range of clients, according to the company’s president and chief operating officer, Dan Leary.

The Green Jobcast, episode 24, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This week news on a new biorefinery plant in wisconsin, growing mkt for fuel cell jobs and new plans from Boone Pickens. (download mp3) (4 min)

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Lack of transmission lines has forced Boone Pickens to shift the location of a proposed wind farm from Texas to Minnesota and Canada. The legendary energy executive had hoped to break ground on the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle in 2011 but has been forced to postpone any plans in the Lone Star State until such a time when the requisite transmission lines are put in place. The 81-year-old is the driving force behind the Pickens Plan, a comprehensive plan to end America’s dangerous addiction to foreign oil by utilizing domestic energy resources such as natural gas, nuclear power, and solar energy. Pickens is adamant in his belief in the opportunity afforded by wind energy – he has called the Great Plains “the Saudi Arabia of wind” – and will take delivery of 300 General Electric turbines in 2011 for use on wind farms in Minnesota and Canada. See other texas green jobs.

SEAL BEACH, Calif. – (Business Wire) Solar panel manufacturer Amonix (www.amonix.com) will create a total of 436 clean energy manufacturing jobs in Nevada and Arizona based on its award of $9.5 million in stimulus funding as part of the federal Recovery Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit. The company was granted $5.9 million for manufacturing work in Nevada, and $3.6 million for work in Arizona.

Amonix, headquartered in Seal Beach, California, designs and manufactures concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar power systems that require less water, use land better, and produce more energy per acre than any other solar technology. The stimulus funding will be used to expand permanent manufacturing operations in Nevada and Arizona.

The company will begin construction of its new manufacturing facility in Nevada by the end of 2010. When completed in the first half of 2011, that facility will create 269 new jobs for the state. The Arizona facility, which will create 167 new jobs, is pegged for a 2011 construction start, with completion scheduled by the end of that year.

Up to 700 000 ‘green’ manufacturing jobs could be created in the global fuel cell industry over the next decade, according to the latest Industry Review, Fuel Cells: Sustainability from the analysts at Fuel Cell Today. The 2010 Industry Review was launched today at the World Future Energy Summit’s Expert Showcase Seminar in Abu Dhabi. The 2010 Industry Review conservatively estimates that the manufacturing of fuel cells will see the largest growth in jobs in the next 10 years, with almost 700 000 cumulative jobs created in this time. In line with Fuel Cell Today’s projections of unit shipments over this period, this could see the creation of more than 1 million new jobs in total when fuel cell installation, servicing, and maintenance are included.

The Journal Sentinel is reporting that Plans are moving ahead to build a $250 million biorefinery that would make diesel and wax out of waste wood and other forms of biomass next to the Flambeau River Papers pulp and paper mill in Park Falls, WI. The Flambeau River biorefinery will create permanent, high-skilled operating jobs in the region, long-term logging jobs, and short-term engineering and construction jobs, contributing to the economic stimulus of Park Falls, Wisconsin, said Butch Johnson, majority owner of Flambeau River Papers and Flambeau River Biofuels. The project is expected to create 160 construction jobs, 40 permanent jobs running and supporting the biorefinery, as well as jobs for 125 loggers and truckers.