The United States may be able to add hundreds upon thousands of new jobs if the Congress asks for a part of the electricity of the nation to be taken from renewable sources based on a study which was released on the 4th of February. This study, which was conducted by Navigant Consulting, said that a renewable standard of energy which asked for utilities to start producing between 20% and 25% of their total energy requirements from solar, wind and various other sources of renewable energy and this was going to help in creating between 191,000 & 274,000 fresh jobs. More than half of these created jobs are going to be manufacturing jobs with a high value which could help the U.S. in boosting its exports and in developing an advantage with regard to technological innovation, said Naivgant. Without this type of federal mandate a lot of states in the U.S. were going to lose many jobs linked with renewable sources of energy in the years to come & a few industries like biomass were also risking collapse. A decline in the price of natural gas is making renewable energy a much less competitve source of energy against the conventional sources.

A standard of renewable energy is now getting more attention because the federal legislation on climate change had stumbled. A bill, which was passed in June by the House of representatives, Waxman-Markey included that at least 20% of the energy in U.S. has to come from renewable sources latest by 2020. A few renewable energy & environmental groups are trying to get similar provisions into a jobs bill as well. The Governor of Pennsylvania, Edward Rendell has urged some business leaders to begin supporting federal renewable standards saying that this is critical if U.S. wants to match China, which is now the biggest exporter of equipment used for generating solar & wind power. China devotes more than $200 billion every year to development of clean sources of energy as part of it’s economic stimulus package.

In front of this gathering too, the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger saif that the federal governemnt could learn from the experiences that the states which are tackling climate change have. California itself, has a goal of getting 33% of it’s energy from renewable sources of energy by the year 2020. An increase of 20% from what it currently derives. “We do not mind being a laboratory for the experiments of the federal government,” Arnold said.