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Green Collar jobs and sustainable industries are all the rage nowadays. But how do you get such enterprises off the ground – before they’re earning money? And how do you get the industries to the areas where people need the jobs? In California, one way they are addressing this issue is with the Cleantech Innovation Center (CIC), which opened recently in Oroville in Butte County.
A vacant manufacturing building at the Oroville Airport Business Park was renovated into the new 42,000-square-foot multi-use facility. CIC is home to a variety of enterprises aimed at growing a burgeoning green economy in the region, including groups promoting sustainable and alternative building and construction practices, a worker training facility and classrooms, and one of but a few High Altitude Wind Power research projects in the U.S. The Zero Energy Homes project, an experiment in new house construction funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is adjacent to the center.
"The Cleantech Innovation Center is a perfect example of what works today -- a locally-driven partnership between the public and private sectors combining regional initiative and gumption with state and federal funding sources," said Barbara Halsey, executive director of the California Workforce Investment Board and Green Collar Jobs Council. "In many ways, the CIC-Oroville is a role model project for enterprising communities around the state and country that want to reinvent themselves for the new economy."
CIC is a flagship initiative of the public-private BayTEC Alliance, and is the first of several centers planned for the area north of Sacramento. With training facilities to prepare workers for jobs in emerging industries such as green building, solar power and energy conservation, and its cutting-edge research focus on new forms of energy generation, CIC is a key part of the region's economic rebuilding strategy. It will position the region to win its share of the green jobs sector. According to the Center for American Progress, America's emerging clean energy economy will create 1.7 million jobs and spur $150 billion in clean investments a year.
"What was until recently an empty and unused facility, is now a symbol of our region's rebirth," said Bud Tracy, the project coordinator for CIC. "The new life given to this building represents the new hope our community can have for the future through collaboration."
The BayTEC Alliance is a non-profit collaboration of individuals from the public sector, the private sector, academia and the community at large in the Butte County region. The group's objective is to unify regional action around a common set of initiatives and to create awareness for the region's attractiveness as a place to build a business and to live.
Alison Pruitt is a freelance writer/editor living near Washington DC. She has written about a variety of issues, including education, healthcare, IT, the arts, and energy/environment -- and has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy. She has a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Rutgers University.
