(PORTLAND, OR) - - Oregon’s clean energy industry expected to gain 2,831 jobs in 2020, but instead lost 6,055, according to advocates for policies that support the sector.
It’s been digging out of a hole since losing around 9,500 jobs from March through May last year, when the pandemic hit, a report from Environmental Entrepreneurs, or E2, and Oregon Business for Climate says.
Clean energy employment was at 50,562 at the end of 2020, down from 56,617 at the beginning of the year.
“At the current rate of recovery over the final six months of 2020, it would take more than two years for Oregon to reach its pre-COVID clean energy employment levels,” the report says.
The groups behind the report want to see various clean energy programs as part of federal stimulus and infrastructure investments. But they’re also calling for action at the state level.
Most clean energy jobs are in energy efficiency — HVAC and lighting principally. The category accounted for nearly 43,000 of the 56,000-plus clean energy jobs in the state at the end of 2019.
Advocates argue that with support, the sector can deliver an economic boost while also addressing climate-change resiliency and mitigation.
In Oregon, the groups said they want to see “strong implementation” of Gov. Kate Brown’s March 2020 climate order, new regulations on diesel engine emissions along the lines of a step California took last year, and a 100% clean electricity bill.
Brown last year called for a range of actions to cap greenhouse gas emissions at 45% below 1990 levels by 2035 and at least 80% below those levels by 2050. The Department of Environmental Quality has assembled a rule-making advisory committee to implement the Climate Protection Program.
DEQ is also in the beginning stages of diesel engine emissions rulemaking.
A broad range of advocates have promised to push for a 100%
clean energy bill in the current legislative session. One bill already
introduced would require meeting the standard by 2035 with sources of
electricity that don’t use petroleum, natural gas, or coal.
