Ohioans pursue 'green' jobs with confidence

By The Columbus Dispatch  • 
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Norma True, 50, shows off an alternative-fuels classroom at the Hocking College Energy Institute in Logan, where she is a student. True wants a job helping companies audit and reduce energy use.

[Story published May 18, 2010]

While business leaders and policymakers talk about the potential for "green" jobs, some Ohio workers have made a profound commitment.

They have bet everything on the idea that green energy will lead to jobs - high-wage jobs with decent benefits. Some of them walked away from established industries. Others went straight from high school or college into new fields.

These are not naive dreamers. They don't expect instant results, and they know the next few steps will not be easy. Their risks and their hopes underscore the broad scope of the state's economic transformation, and the potential harm if this change fails to live up to its potential.

"I've known for years that we have to do things that are more sustainable," said Norma True of Londonderry in Ross County.

True, 50, is a student at the Hocking College Energy Institute in Logan, one of a growing number of programs that offer training in alternative energy. She hopes to find work helping companies audit and reduce their energy use.

Few of those jobs exist, but True is betting that the field will expand dramatically in the years to come.

Last year, she took a buyout from her factory job at YSK, an auto-parts supplier in Chillicothe. In doing so, she was able to leave the auto industry on her terms as its job security and benefits continued to shrink. The buyout also gave her the money for school.

She has a special kind of faith mixed with patience, a combination that she shares with many peers who want to work in renewable energy. This is more than simply training for a job.

"The whole green-energy movement is kind of like a religion," said Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics in the Cleveland area. "People accept it as a matter of faith."

For an economist, this is a sign that workers aren't being clear-eyed in their career choices. For the workers themselves, though, this is liberating, providing them with a certainty of purpose that many people don't have.

Ned Hill, the dean of urban affairs at Cleveland State University, offers this advice: be flexible.

Workers need to "make certain that the skills they're learning are generic enough that they can have other uses," he said. "There are lots of blue-collar jobs around 'green' that may be transferable to other jobs and other industries."

The optimists' club

In northeastern Ohio, Jim Maloney is teaching a new generation about the engineering of fuel cells. His classroom, at Stark State College near North Canton, shares a building with the company where some of the students might work one day: Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Systems.

"The students are very optimistic about the future," Maloney said. "They want to get into this area because it's growing."

His students are a diverse group of recent high-school graduates, former manufacturing employees and college graduates who want additional training.

Maloney's background includes a few twists and turns, with stints on the engineering faculty at the University of Southern California and Duke University and several decades as a pilot of a Goodyear blimp.

Most people probably don't know what a fuel cell is, but Maloney is looking ahead to a day when the devices are in most homes and businesses. Put simply, a fuel cell generates electricity by combining a fuel - often natural gas or hydrogen - with air in an electrochemical reaction that produces almost no emissions.

With improvements in technology, researchers hope to mass-produce a model that is as small as a box of cereal and capable of providing most of the power for a household.

"You're going to be able to have your own home power-generation plant," Maloney said. Households still would be connected to the power grid, but they would be able to meet most electricity needs on their own.

One of Maloney's students, Mark Johnson, 47, is a mechanical engineer looking to broaden his training. He describes the promise of fuel cells with the enthusiasm of a kid.

"It's a very, very interesting program," he said. "You don't want to get me started talking about it."

Green in Athens

Athens has become a hub of the state's green economy because of the presence of Ohio University and the entrepreneurial ventures that came from it.

Daniel Weber, 35, graduated from OU with a degree in wildlife biology in 2004. He always envisioned a job working outdoors, among trees, plants, streams and animals, but he landed a green job in a very different environment.

His work realm is enclosed by walls and a roof and has a concrete floor, machines and laboratories. There are few occasions for a workday brush with animals.

Weber is production manager at Global Cooling in Athens, and he feels good about what he and his company are doing for the environment.

"I went to school for wildlife biology because I care about the environment, particularly the welfare of animals," Weber said. "But every aspect of protecting the environment is important to me because it impacts the health of the planet. That's why I like my job and look forward to coming to work on Monday mornings."

Global Cooling, established in 1995, provides high-performance, energy-efficient products to customers in the scientific, medical and electronics fields. The company developed cooling and freezing technology that consumes about half the energy of conventional technology without using environmentally damaging refrigerants.

In late 2008, Global Cooling began manufacturing its own products, not just licensing its intellectual property. It launched the world's first portable ultra-low-temperature freezer for various uses, including preserving stem cells, DNA and other tissue. The freezer weighs less than a third as much as the nearest competitor's and consumes a quarter of the electricity.

The company employs 23 and expects that to grow to 100.

"The reason I have this job is because my wife and I wanted to stay in this area, and there weren't any jobs in wildlife biology, so I'm happy to have a chance to be working with green technology," Weber said.

Another Athens resident, Toby Grove, 32, was a roofer before he decided to look for a job in the solar industry. He is a graduate of the Hocking College program.

Unlike many of his older colleagues, Grove never worked in manufacturing and never faced the instability brought on by the sector's decline.

He has an infectious eagerness. "I wanted to do something in alternative energy - passionately," he said.

He has found a job he loves, but students such as Norma True don't know what to expect when they graduate. They realize that the jobs might not pay as much as manufacturing jobs once did, and might be difficult to find.

But they are undeterred.

"I know it's the way," said True.