“Obama is right on both fronts. Clean policies not only offer necessary protections, they stimulate jobs.

From Scotland to Shanghai to Sao Paolo, the world is moving decisively toward a clean technology conversion and the jobs that come with it for urgent environmental, security and competitiveness reasons.

Unbiased research is clear:

• A Deutsche Bank report in July found that ”countries with more ‘TLC’ – transparency, longevity and certainty – in their climate policy frameworks will attract more investment and build new, clean industries, technologies and jobs faster than their policy-lagging counterparts.” The United States was singled out as a laggard.

• A report by the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy Research Institute showed that EPA-mandated clean tech upgrades to America’s Eisenhower-era power plant fleet will generate about 290,000 net new domestic jobs a year in each of the next five years.

• Two Citi Investment Research reports showed that boosting automobile fuel economy standards will boost automakers’ variable profits and sales – especially for the Detroit 3 – and also boost US-based suppliers of fuel-savings technologies. In fact, GM is already pushing to export Michigan-made Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrids to China, the world’s largest auto market, later this year.

• Several recent news accounts (see here and here) point to a lack of clear policy in the U.S. – and its presence elsewhere – as a central reason other countries’ clean tech industries are swiftly eclipsing U.S. firms’ market share. And when American Electric Power this summer abandoned its pioneering effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant, the New York Times reported: “The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P. to take the leap.””

Source: Forbes Magazine