John Rebchook is a former Rocky Mountain News reporter with more than 30 years of experience in writing and communications... Yesterday, I blogged about the Golden-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory hosting a clean-energy forum in downtown Denver.
At the time, I thought it could long-term set the stage for creating even more green jobs in the Denver area.
I was wrong.
It’s already happening.
“I just came from there, and deals are going on in the hallways right now,” Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., told me this morning.
“And as I was walking out, I was handed five business cards from people who are interested in doing business here,” added Clark, who was instrumental in helping to convince NREL to hold the forum in Denver for the third consecutive years.
Executives and leaders in solar, energy storage, wind, and nanotechnology are among the speakers, in addition to financial wizards who discuss how to get funding. Experts from household names such as Toyota and Cisco, also are on panels at the forum that started at 7 a.m. on Tuesday and ends at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday. Sessions run into the evening. My initial blog has a link to the agenda.
“Anyone who is anyone in the clean-industry cluster is speaking,” Clark said. “I just heard a guy speaking about nanotechnology that was simply fascinating. Nanotechnology is going to allow us to paint our homes so the paint on the outside becomes solar panels.”
Clark said this forum shows the wisdom of his group to target clusters several years ago, instead of taking a shot-gun approach and go after whatever industry is hot, as economic development agencies had traditionally approached recruiting businesses.
Currently, his group is looking with about 15 companies – including a few done deals such as Vestas – that are in the pipeline, not pie-in-the-sky prospects.
Together, these companies would create 15,000 primary jobs over the next two years.
“When you use the multiplier and spin-off jobs, we’re talking about 40,000 jobs,” Clark said. “About half of them are in the clean-energy field, with the others in clusters such as IT, aerospace, bio-science and in traditional energy, such as oil and gas.”
He said most of the clean-energy jobs pay between $40l,000 and $65,000 annually.
“I think these jobs will give the housing market a boost,” Clark said. “And it probably will keep some people from losing their homes to foreclosures.”
Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865.
[...] The conference already is sowing the seeds to more green jobs in the Denver area, as I describe in another blog post. [...]