During the Internet boom of the 1990s and early this decade, technology drove a whole new realm of communications, creating jobs for us and economic security.  As we move toward a clean energy economy, technology is going to unleash millions of jobs that provide environmentally friendly ways to build our communities and power our lives with sources of energy that we can produce here and that improves our community's quality of life. 

Today, the House passed H.R. 3585, the Solar Technology Roadmap Act, to strengthen the American solar technology industry through coordinated research and development and public-private partnerships.  These partnerships would identify the actions needed to improve the performance and reliability of solar technologies, decrease costs, and reduce water use.  Recommendations that come out of this work would direct a growing percentage of federal solar funding over time.

We New Yorkers stand to gain in this development as renewable energies like solar provide a broad variety of good-paying jobs − from electricians and truck drivers to cashiers and IT specialists − that are distributable across the U.S. economy.  Energy from the sun offers a tremendous opportunity for us, with the potential to help create tens of thousands of clean energy jobs, including estimates of 250,000 jobs by 2020. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal even mentioned the huge potential in trapping solar energy from space! ("Five Technologies That Could Change Everything," by Michael Totty, October 19, 2009) 

This is one of the many reasons for investing in solar research, development, and projects.  But we risk falling behind to other countries and losing job opportunities if we do not accelerate our efforts as our global competitors are devoted to expanding solar technology development.

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