Mayoral candidate, George Smitherman, unveiled his ambitious green energy program for Toronto while on a visit to York School at Rosedale. The school had reduced its air conditioning energy usage by 10% after installing solar power panels on the rooftop. Believing that such measures are vital to the continued growth of Toronto’s green economy, an impressed Mr. Smitherman said that, “We have a unique opportunity to combine employment with green policies.”
Ontario’s Green Collar Jobs
According to market research firm, iSuppli Corp, Ontario’s solar capacity could increase a full 272.5% in 2010, highlighting the popularity of the province’s green legislation. The centerpiece of the Green Energy Act is the Ontario Power Authority’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) program in which power producers earn money for clean energy fed back into the utility grid. Mr. Smitherman, who helped design the FIT program, believes that it will help create “Green Energy Districts, helping to generate the 50,000 green collar jobs outlined in the recently launched legislation.
Although the promise of green jobs is clearly enticing (especially for a mayoral candidate), building such an army of renewable energy experts requires training infrastructure, skill prep, and more robust certification than the province currently offers. There exists a substantial gap between the supply and demand forces of Ontario’s green job market. According to CanSIA, the province (in fact the entire country) suffers from a serious shortage of trained solar professionals with the requisite skills to meet rising consumer demand for sun-powered technology.
Solar training programs like Ontario Solar Academy exist to correct these imbalances, but such programs will only take the province so far. For despite the available training for system designers, engineers, and panel installers, these skills represent only a fraction of what is needed to help Ontario shed its fossil fuel dependency and gravitate towards a sustainable and clean economy. A true green revolution requires admin staff, salespeople, and a host of other support jobs helping to drive demand and expand supply.
