There’s no doubt that job growth in the clean energy sector is big news this week.

Following a report from the Solar Foundation earlier in the week that the solar industry expects to grow its labor force by 26 percent in the next year, A University of California, Merced, professor released a study indicating that the San Joaquin Valley of California can expect 103,000 new jobs from the growing green economy.

Those jobs will include short-term construction positions and long-term production roles in big utility-scale photovoltaic solar farms, home solar installations and the creation of a new high-speed rail system, according to a press release about the report.

There will be three jobs in the green energy economy, composed largely of major solar projects, to every one job created by the high-speed rail project, according to the release.

“And that’s just the beginning,” said BreAnda Northcott, spokeswoman for the California Business Alliance for a Green Economy, the agency that commissioned the study. “The central valley is a great place for sun and there’s a lot of land that can’t be farmed.”
The area is also one of the hardest hit by unemployment, Northcott said.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, there was 15.3 percent unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley in July.

"Taken together, clean energy and high-speed rail have the potential to fundamentally change the trajectory of economic development and job creation in the San Joaquin Valley," Dr. Shawn Kantor, author of the study, was quoted in the press release. "The San Joaquin Valley is keeping pace with other regions by creating just as many jobs to support a clean energy economy in California."

In addition to bringing much-needed jobs to the valley, the approved and pending clean energy projects in the pipeline will produce significant amounts of energy, Northcott said. With the projects slated to be built in the San Joaquin Valley, California should meet its goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, she said.

The San Joaquin Valley, according to the press release, is expected to produce 10 percent of California's renewable energy within the next ten years once all pending biomass, solar, hydrogen and wind energy projects come online, with the majority of job creation coming from solar.

Pictured: Chevron's solar facility in California's San Joaquin Valley.