Sag Harbor - According to Fred Thiele: "The most troubling problem we face in New York, and throughout the entire country, is high unemployment. From young adults looking to enter the workforce for the first time to parents trying to make a living to provide for their families, the main concern for most New Yorkers is jobs, jobs, jobs. And with more and more businesses taking traditional, smokestack manufacturing jobs overseas, it's imperative that we invest in an industry that will produce stable, good-paying jobs right here on the East End.

New York's green economy can be the answer to both our State's current unemployment and long-term economic growth. With increasing opportunities in the green jobs market, investing in green technology and clean energy will create jobs and make New York a national leader in the green economy.

In the past several years, green jobs have become a topic often talked about, but difficult to define. Through innovative ideas such as installing solar panels, weatherizing houses and constructing wind turbines, green jobs focus on decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - by utilizing new technology to produce clean,
renewable energy. By investing in clean energy, we are also taking a vital step toward tackling problems plaguing our environment such as global warming, which is caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions released by burning fossil fuels.

While these green jobs can be helpful to preserving our environment, they also provide the kind of well-paid manufacturing and export-driven work that cannot be easily outsourced to other countries overseas. A recent report released by the Brookings Institute found that the green economy offers more opportunities and better pay for low- and middle-skilled workers than the national economy as a whole.[1] Since many of these jobs don't require a college degree, more opportunities would be made available to people of varying educational and training levels. In addition, the report showed that today's green economy has added half a million jobs between 2003 and 2010, growing at a national annual rate of 3.4 percent.[2] The promise of continued growth in green jobs has the potential to provide greater financial stability for workers and their families. By investing in this expanding market, we can provide East End residents with the tools for success right here and help make sure they aren't forced out of state by unemployment.

New York has already taken fundamental steps toward securing our position in the green economy. In 2009, we created the Green Jobs-Green New York program to provide financing to homes, small businesses and not-for-profits in an effort to revitalize the economy in an energy-efficient and environmentally responsible way. The program offers homeowners low-interest loans of up to $13,000 and small-business owners up to $25,000 for energy-efficient retrofits to their properties. These loans are used to cover the cost of old water heaters, ineffective boilers and leaky weather stripping, and in turn bring new jobs to the green-energy sector.

This past legislative session, we took the Green Jobs-Green New York program a step further by allowing loans to be repaid through a ratepayer's existing utility bill through a practice called on-bill recovery. The expansion of this program has the potential to create thousands of new green jobs through an increased demand for equipment, installation and construction - all while protecting and conserving our state's environment and lowering a consumer's bill once the loan is repaid.

Green jobs provide the kind of stable and secure employment East End residents need. They offer a way for New York to be stronger and more successful than ever before. With programs like Green Jobs-Green New York, we have laid down the groundwork. But more needs to be done. We need to continue investing in green technology and clean energy in order to revitalize our economy, create jobs, reduce energy usage and provide future generations with a cleaner, brighter tomorrow."