Charlottesville looks for green boost

Area officials have made strides this year in establishing energy efficiency programs, and many are hopeful that the efforts will provide the Charlottesville region with a much-desired economic boost.

The Local Energy Alliance Program will coordinate area energy efficiency initiatives and oversee a revolving loan program that will help homeowners purchase weatherization upgrades and renewable energy technology. The program, which officials have said is a priority to get up and running, aims to make 500 homes more energy efficient in 2010 and another 1,500 homes in 2011.
Overall, its goal is to make between a third and half of all buildings in Charlottesville and Albemarle County between 20 percent and 40 percent more energy efficient within five to seven years.
“That’s a huge, huge number of construction projects we’re talking about,” Mayor Dave Norris said. “That’s work somebody has to do.”

But roughly how many people would be doing that work, or how many jobs could be created through an expansion in green industry overall in the Charlottesville area, is unknown. Norris said he has deliberately steered clear from committing to a number, because he does not know whether jobs would decrease the area’s unemployment rate.
But, he said, “they have seen people put to work.”

LEAP is primarily getting off the ground with a $500,000 grant awarded to Charlottesville and Albemarle by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. The city and county are also setting aside $195,300 and $60,000, respectively, to get the local energy efficiency program started. That money came from a federal grant that was funded this year with economic stimulus money, as a part of the $787 billion package passed in February.
“We’re going to be looking for some other grant funding,” said Kristel Riddervold, Charlottesville’s environmental administrator.
Riddervold said there have been some indicators used to judge how many possible jobs could be created or saved through programs like LEAP, where home weatherization efforts could increase. She said there is expected to be one job associated with every $100,000 invested in energy efficiency, but “we can’t guarantee the number of jobs.”
“It’s making sure that our existing workforce, especially in the construction industry, remain employed,” she said. “If you have an increased demand for the materials, you would anticipate some related jobs.”
“The capacity is here, green or otherwise,” said Timothy Hulbert, president of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. “There’s an available workforce here.”
Federal jobs data does not classify those that are associated with “green” industries, so there is no way to know how many people in the area might be employed in that sector, Hulbert said.
According to the 2009 Chamber Jobs Report, released in September, the region lost 2,620 jobs in the manufacturing sector between 1995 and 2008, a decline of nearly 32 percent. Over the same 13-year period, there was an overall gain in construction jobs — from 4,551 to 7,002, an increase of almost 54 percent — but the sector lost 597 jobs last year.

Expanding the “green job” market needs to have much more thought put into it before any real economic expansion will be seen, said Michael Harvey, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development. Harvey said the region has a large number of residents who commute out of the area for work. He thinks those are the residents they should be paying the most attention to.
“We haven’t crossed that threshold yet of saying, as a region, how do we build a strategy around the people that live here and what does that entail?” Harvey said. Plus, he said, the region still needs to identify its strengths and what it wants in terms of economic advancement.

“We still have yet to do that,” he said.
Norris has also advocated for getting the region to attract green industry, such as by using old manufacturing plants to build parts for renewable energy technology.
“I think all the pieces are here, it’s just a matter of pulling them together and packaging them,” he said. Norris said the plan is to hold a forum early next year with government officials and business leaders to help take advantage of this new labor sector.
“There’s no reason the Charlottesville region shouldn’t be in the forefront,” he said.