Vt. senator to chair first green jobs hearing today

By Nicole Gaudiano, Free Press Washington Writer

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders might have landed the perfect job for a guy who wants to launch an “energy revolution.”

The Vermont independent, chairman of a new Senate subcommittee that focuses on green jobs, will hold his first hearing today. The hearing will look at the possibilities for job growth from clean energy and climate policies.

“It is just a great position to be in, in addressing the major environmental, energy and economic problems facing our country,” he said.

The governors of Colorado, Washington state, New Jersey and North Dakota, three city mayors — including Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss — and one state legislator will testify at the hearing.

Sanders said he hopes to develop national policies that will bolster the innovative work he said state and city governments have done on energy efficiency, sustainable energy and job creation. The committee’s challenge is to figure out how the $400 billion spent annually on foreign oil can be reinvested to create well-paying, clean-energy jobs, he said.

“What I am trying to do, and so are other members of Congress, is basically bring forth an energy revolution, which is essentially a transformation of our energy system away from foreign oil and fossil fuels into energy efficiency ... and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, biomass and other types of developing technologies,” Sanders said.

Sanders co-wrote two green-collar jobs programs in 2007. One financed training for clean-energy technology jobs; the other used block grants to authorize state and local funding for energy-efficient technology.

As chairman of the subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy, Sanders hopes to oversee an expansion of green-jobs legislation that passed Congress in 2007, particularly to provide more training for solar cell technology installation and wind turbine maintenance.

“We do not have at this point the skilled work force that we need,” he said.

He also hopes to focus on heat and energy created from woodchips, which can generate jobs in Vermont’s forests, he said.

Today’s hearing will be held jointly with the full Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is expected to call the hearing to order, then turn the gavel over to Sanders.

Sanders said his subcommittee’s second hearing will be held in Vermont, bringing together companies that have begun creating green jobs.

“I want a serious discussion about where Vermont goes in the next couple of years — what policies we need, what efforts we need to make — as we continue on the very positive path we’ve taken with energy efficiency and we move more aggressively on sustainable energy,” he said.