Clean Energy At Heart Of Mass. Economic Strategy
Deval L. Patrick
The Massachusetts clean energy sector is booming. It grew jobs by 11.8 percent this past year, the third year of strong growth. Over the past two years, this industry has grown 24 percent, to more than 5,500 clean energy firms that employ nearly 80,000.
These achievements result from a disciplined strategy to grow jobs and opportunity by investing in education, infrastructure and innovation.
We invest in education because brainpower is our most abundant natural resource. We cultivate it by investing money, time and new ideas in the public schools, public higher education and college affordability, and in early education.
We invest in infrastructure because rebuilding our roads, rails and bridges, expanding broadband to every community, building new classrooms and labs and more affordable housing give private initiative and personal ambition the platform for growth.
And we invest in innovation because enabling and encouraging industries that depend on brainpower is the best way for Massachusetts to take advantage of the knowledge explosion in today's world economy.
Creating a clean-energy future is a core of our economic strategy for Massachusetts.
Tackling climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is imperative. The answer lies in innovating both behaviors and technology. Given the scale of the challenge, clean energy technologies will be an economic driver for generations. With a skilled workforce, seasoned venture capital, great public and private universities, and abundant entrepreneurial experience and drive, our state has all the ingredients to seize this opportunity and become the disproportionate commercial winner in the race for clean energy. In other words, if we get clean energy right, the whole world will be our customer.
We're seeing growth in startups and well-established firms alike. Like World Energy Solutions of Worcester, an energy management firm that grew from a startup in 1999 to a fully profitable energy-efficiency business that helps companies reduce usage during high-demand times or when prices are higher.
Every region of the commonwealth is participating in growing our clean energy marketplace.
Energy bills are down by 25 percent since their peak in 2009. Cheap natural gas and lower electricity prices mean we have the breathing room to consider and make long-term investments right now — be they in solar, wind, energy efficiency or biogas.
We have 90 times as much installed solar in Massachusetts as we did when I took office, and more than 8,400 people working in the sector. Earlier this year, because prices continued to fall and demand continued to rise, and because of the virtually ubiquitous potential of solar technology, we blew through my ambitious goal of 250 megawatts by 2017. So, I set a new one: 1.6 gigawatts by 2020.
Water innovation is another related cluster we need to cultivate.
With Eastern Canadian premiers and other New England governors, we're working on a regional basis on ways to draw large-scale hydro into our market to continue to drive down energy costs.
The progress we have made is not because of either state government or the private sector acting alone, it's because we have worked together, and focused on governing for the long-term, not for the next election cycle.
The growth and promise of the clean-tech sector has been a highly important and highly successful element that's critical to this approach.
Deval L. Patrick is governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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