Clean Energy Corps: Jobs, Service, and Equal Opportunity in America’s Clean Energy Economy

America is suffering through an economic recession, rising energy prices and energy insecurity, job losses, and an increasing scarcity of hope and common purpose. Americans are looking for solutions on climate, energy and the economy.

To address these intersecting challenges, Green For All and its partners propose a Clean Energy Corps in a new white paper, Clean Energy Corps: Jobs, Service, and Equal Opportunity in America's Clean Energy Economy.  The CEC would be a combined service, training, and job creation effort to combat global warming, grow local and regional economies and demonstrate the equity and employment promise of the clean energy economy. The CEC would:

• Directly engage millions of Americans in diverse service, service-learning, and volunteer work related to climate protection;
•  Work with employers, unions, educators, and community organizations to put more Americans, particularly the low-income and unemployed, on green-collar career pathways — providing them the training, credentials, work experience, job placement, and other essential elements for good and secure jobs in the clean energy economy;
• Preserve and enlarge green public spaces, strengthen community defenses against climate disruption, and enlist America’s public lands in the fight against climate change by planting trees and restoring wetlands and rivers; and
• Launch a national effort to comprehensively apply cost-effective energy efficiency measures to our nation’s building stock. This effort will generate demand for hundreds of thousands of jobs, and significantly reduce our national energy costs and contribution to global warming. It will also more than pay for itself through on-bill recovery of a portion of the energy savings achieved.