Energy Efficiency Jobs: Nearly 1.9 Million and Growing

President-elect Trump should look to clean energy and energy efficiency if he wants to make good on his jobs promise to Americans. Energy efficiency already accounts for nearly 1.9 million U.S. jobsten times more than oil and gas drilling, and 30 times more than coal mining.

Energy efficiency has long been touted—rightly—as the easiest and cheapest way to cut climate-changing pollution, while saving customers money on their utility bills. And there’s plenty of evidence that it packs a really big punch—energy efficiency has contributed more to meeting growing U.S. energy needs in the last four decades than oil, gas, and nuclear combined.

But it also is a significant job creator as a new analysis by the nonpartisan groups Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) and E4TheFuture shows, with 245,000 more jobs projected to be added over the coming year alone. That’s a 13 percent growth rate!

And the United States could create even more clean energy jobs. The analysis released last week shows that strengthened local, state, and federal efficiency policies, as well as increased utility investment in efficiency programs, could create many additional energy efficiency jobs–and further reduce harmful pollution from power plant generation, strengthen the electricity grid, and lower energy costs for everybody.

Read more (NRDC)