Green technology and clean power are now employing more people than the fossil fuels industries, says the Brookings Institution. A separate analysis of the same data indicates that the cleantech sector of those green jobs offer median wages that are 20 percent better than regular jobs. And the rate of job creation in this sector was twice that of the regular economy from 2003-2010. All this despite the notoriously inconsistent support for green jobs in the U.S.!
What's more, cleantech is now bigger than biotech (though not information technology, which is a monster). Still, authors of the Brookings report argue that the U.S. isn't investing at a level sufficient to keep pace with the rest of the world, which pumped a collective $154 billion in venture capital into renewable energy in 2010 alone.
*"There's no existing U.S. institution that is willing to provide funding at the levels needed," Brookings analyst Jonathan Rothwell told USA Today. "Banks are the most appropriate lending institution for this, and few of them will take the risk."
