Going, Going Green

Lisa Reynolds, TAGA Brokerage Underwriter

With a drop in fuel prices, we’ve seen a decline in the number of policies for traditional energy contractors, manufacturers and distributors, such as oil & gas. In contrast to this, we’ve seen a surge in green industry applications and policies, such as solar, wind, bio-diesel, geothermal manufacturers & distributors.

In a recent NY Times article, the growth of the “clean-energy economy” is reported to have grown 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007, which translates to 777,000 new jobs. While that is just half a percent of all U.S. jobs, the clean-energy economy is poised to grow significantly with financial support from the public and private sectors, the report concludes.

Texas ranked second in the nation, in terms of workers in clean-energy jobs, with 11.7 million workers.

The report defines the clean-energy economy as including 16 sectors: energy generation, energy transmission, energy storage, energy efficiency, transportation, manufacturing/industrial, construction, agriculture, energy production, materials, air and environment, recycling and waste, water and wastewater, business services, finance/investment, and research and advocacy. The authors of the article counted only companies and jobs on the supply side, not the demand side.

Although traditional energy sources are far from obsolete, in fact we would expect a good resurgence in polices when fuel prices rise, we know that we expect a lot of business to come in the way of clean-energy risks.

Portions sourced from the NY Times.