The Green Way: The 'Green' Economy

By Stan Sersen

On Friday April 19, I once again felt like a proud Papa.
No, it wasn't that one of my daughters made me a grandfather. My recent proud moment started when I met two hardworking, committed people, Richard Duetchmann and Jeff Gilbert, in 2004 with a startup renewable energy company called Chesapeake Wind & Solar. Their systems convert the sun's ever-abundant energy into electricity through photo voltaic (PV) cells and into heat via simple panels that heat a transfer liquid (solar thermal).
They had been working out of their home in Columbia for years and were intrigued with the potential to rent a small space in a building that supported their triple bottom-line corporate philosophy. They started in an office that displayed their handiwork and supported their business.
People came to tour the building, their solar systems were seen by many people and their business took off; they hired a business consultant, sales staff, installation crews, one, then two, trucks and then added more office space.

New Distribution Center
After merging with GroSolar, a national company, they moved their service crews into a 12,000-square-foot regional distribution center. Ah, the Green Economy at work. An economy where jobs are created, offices are built and people are shown a better way to live more in harmony with the earth's natural rhythm.
My proud moment, days before Earth Day, was to witness the ribbon-cutting at their new solar distribution center. In the warehouse stood racks after racks of PV panels - enough to provide 100% clean renewable power to 100 homes and to, hopefully, begin a movement that finally puts an end to environmental degradation caused by current wasteful extractive technologies, including those responsible for mountaintop destruction in West Virginia.
Hopefully, their new landlord will allow them to install the very solar panels they distribute onto their new warehouse roof.

Obstacle to Opportunity
Here's why we need a green economy:With unemployment at 1992 levels, 6.9% of Maryland's workforce is looking for work. That equates to 250,000 people. As businesses and the government feel the pinch of reduced revenues, they are forced to cut their workforce.
Some socially responsible businesses gather all the employees and collectively reduce across the board, starting at the top and working their way down so that the heart of the workforce stays employed and everyone refocuses their business to make it stronger and more resilient. In the long run, a more dedicated workforce is created.
Unfortunately, others sever entire divisions of their company, like jettisoning rocket parts to create space trash. This disrupts, and often devastates, the lives of hard-working people who, for many years, had worked diligently to make money for that company in better times.
While laudable, corporate social responsibility (also known as CSR) must go beyond donations to a local charity or simply setting up a recycling program. It is those very obstacles that businesses face which create opportunities for those very same businesses to adapt or for new businesses to emerge from the economic turmoil.
The Green Economy is about creating long-term solutions, and hence jobs, that will keep money invested in the local economies. After all, that was once the backbone of this country. In 2006, the Baltimore-based International Center for Sustainable Development issued a study to the state of Maryland, titled "Economic Development Potential of Clean Energy Technology in Maryland."
This 283-page report summarized that, with just a low level of effort (20% energy-efficiency improvement, 10% renewable energy increase and 10% ethanol production increase), 144,000 jobs can be created in Maryland alone. The report further states in the summary, "At the highest level of effort ... the economic impacts more than double."

Part of the Whole
What a fit: We have great job potential, a growing workforce looking for work, a way to improve the environment and a way to eliminate dependency on fuels that travel around the world to reach us.
Local energy audits will point the way to millions of dollars a year in energy savings while local contractors will buy and install insulation, windows, caulk and mechanical systems to enable the buildings not only to use less energy, but to use the energy that they need more efficiently.
Efficient systems make the use of renewable energy even more cost effective, further increasing demand for local companies focused on providing appropriate technology products and services.
And at the end of the day, we can look back and go fishing because there just might be some fish to catch as the water and the air get cleaner - thanks to the Green Economy.

Stan Sersen is an eco-architect, the developer of the EnviroCenter and the founder of the nonprofit educational organization. The Green Building Institute, in Jessup. He can be contacted at buildinggreen@greenbuildinginstitute.org.