Colorado Governor Pushes Green Manufacturing Jobs Kirk Siegler (2009-12-08)

Colorado Governor Pushes Green Manufacturing Jobs
Kirk Siegler (2009-12-08)

www.publicbroadcasting.net/kunc/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1586658/Regional/Colorado.Governor.Pushes.Green.Manufacturing.Jobs

DENVER, CO (KUNC) - Colorado's green economy is looking a little browner today. Danish wind blade manufacturer Vestas has announced widespread furloughs and hiring freezes at its plants in Colorado.

The company said yesterday it will halt production at its Windsor plant at the start of next year, a move that will furlough some 500 workers.

Like many industries, Colorado's renewable energy sector has been plagued by a tightening credit market during this recession. Still, some companies are continuing to hire and expand into Colorado. Governor Bill Ritter believes the state will recover from the downturn faster than others in the region as a result.

"We've been able to announce manufacturing plants opening during the downturn," Ritter says, "and that's why I say we're well positioned because clean energy will be a part of this country's future."

He predicts that manufacturing and research jobs in renewable energy will largely replace home construction jobs once the recovery begins.

Dave Veckerelli may be ahead of the game. Six months ago, he did an about-face after working for 27 years in the local construction industry.

"It's the next thing that's going to be big, solar's our future," he says, as he assembles an aluminum rack mounting system for a solar panel at Lafayette-based Next Generation Energy.

Veckerelli says the work isn't that much different from building houses. But he's glad to have it, since the construction industry has ground to a halt recently in Boulder County. He's not alone amongst his former colleagues either.

"A lot of them are going back to school now, trying to learn the new stuff," Veckerelli says.

They're part of a growing wave of people trying to adapt to a new trade, honing new skills for the green energy economy.

"It's kind of mind boggling to me that we have the industry growing, exponentially, but yet we're in a recession," says Dave Kreutzman, Next Generation's CEO.

"It tells you something," he adds, "There's a demand there, there's a need there. And if we're going to pull out of a recession, which we are, we have to be able to generate our own energy, cleanly."

Next Generation could be the poster company for Governor Ritter's so-called New Energy Economy. The company is hiring, and struggling to meet demands. Ritter, who's up for re-election next year, has pinned much of his economic strategy on growing the clean energy sector.

"That's long been (the strategy) before we ever went into a downturn, Ritter says, "And I believe that if you look at states that people might say are similar to Colorado, the fact we're in relatively better shape is because we have that strategy in place."

But some economists think these projections are being overblown.

"Well I guess it depends on whether you're making a political prediction, or an economic prediction," says Tucker Hart Adams, of the Adams Group in Colorado-Springs.

She says the energy sector - renewable or conventional - is still a small slice of the overall economy here. Like three percent. And she doesn't think it's going to be the lynch pin that brings the state out of the recession in the next year.

"If we're talking about the next fifty or a hundred years, than yeah, the renewable energy sector may very well be good for Colorado," Hart-Adams says.

Meantime the industry's growth in the coming months may depend largely on what happens to conventional fuel prices, according to Richard Wobbekind of the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business.

Wobbekind says natural gas prices are at historic lows. Plus there's the frozen credit market.

"All of that said, renewable energy is on the edge, the wave of the future, and is certainly something that spawns the innovation and creation in the economy and is something that is good to be invested in," Wobbekind says.

Back in Lafayette, a couple of Next Generation assembly workers are putting the finishing touches on an order of pre-fab solar racks headed to the Fort Carson Army Base, as CEO David Kreutzmen stops in to check on their work.

Kreutzmen concedes it may take a bit longer than a year to get this untested industry roaring. He says some banks don't yet understand what he calls - the paradigm shift - that's occurring in the economy. But he's confident they will catch on.

"We're expanding and that's a good thing. Somebody's got to employ the people who are unemployed. We're hoping to be those people in a big way," Kreutzmen says.

And given the just announced furloughs at the Vestas wind turbine plant, Kreutzmen may have 500 more resumes showing up in his inbox soon.
This Story was produced as part of NPR's Economy Project © Copyright 2009, KUNC