Clean energy and transportation projects announced in the third quarter could create 1,800 new jobs in the state, the bulk of which will be forged in Yonkers, according to a report by the business group Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2).
New York ranked third in the country in the number of jobs created in the clean energy and transportation fields. California and Nevada ranked first and second with 2,467 jobs and 2,081 jobs announced, respectively.
More than 30 states had major projects announced in the quarter, the group stated. The report said that state governments with renewable procurement policies saw more projects announced on average. Texas was the only state in the top five, with 774 jobs expected, that didn”™t have a procurement policy on the books, the report said.
“Clean energy continues to put Americans to work,” Judith Albert, the group”™s director, said. “Clean energy and clean transportation aren”™t limited by geography and politics.”
Fifteen-hundred of the jobs expected in New York are from the $1.83 billion deal announced in September between Yonkers”™ Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Kawasaki will design and build up to 676 electric cars, representing the next generation of rail cars for the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North”™s Harlem and Hudson lines. The commuter rails are seeing increased ridership in recent years.
New York has seen 5,000 clean-energy jobs added since 2011, E2 said. New York”™s mass transit, wind and solar industries have all seen “substantial investment” in recent years, according to the group”™s figures.
Other notable state projects tallied by E2 include New York City”™s construction of a municipal recycling center with solar panels in Brooklyn. That project, announced in August, is expected to net 100 jobs. A SUNY Rochester project announced in July to produce solar technology is expected to create 100 jobs upstate.
The only other project announced in 2013”™s third quarter in the lower part of the state was the opening of a new office in Nyack for the company RevoluSun, which will produce 15 new jobs in solar sales and operations.
Countrywide, the wind industry has been tentative, the report said, because a federal tax credit for wind-generated energy is set to expire at year”™s end. There were no jobs announced from wind industry projects in New York in 2013, though two upstate projects announced in 2012 accounted for an expected 600 new jobs, according to E2. Across the country, wind-job production slowed after two quarters of growth based on uncertainty that the tax credit will be extended, the report said.
“Washington, D.C., may be far removed from what”™s happening in the heartland, but wind-industry workers there will feel the pinch as the wind-tax credit expires, the project pipeline dries up and wind jobs become scarce,” Albert said in a press release.
Still, most of the expected jobs across the country came from announcements of clean energy production from solar, wind and other forms. Renewable energy projects would produce 6,700 jobs, the report said, while 3,300 announced jobs came from the manufacturing sector.
In total, 15,000 jobs are set to be created from 80 projects announced throughout the country in the third quarter, the report said. Comparatively, the third quarter of 2012 saw 10,000 jobs announced, although 2013 was the first year the group tallied recycling announcements. The recycling sector accounted for more than 1,300 of the jobs expected as a result of projects announced in the 2013 third quarter.
The report also ranked congressional representatives based on the number of jobs expected to be created within their district. Rep. Eliot Engel, a Bronx Democrat who represents part of Westchester, including Yonkers, ranked first ”“ entirely from the expected 1,500 Kawasaki jobs.
