Green Job News Updates, News and Alerts: GreenJobFeed.com

Green Job Site Sponsorship – Michigan Economic Development

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has become the first complete site sponsor for Green Job Feed. Their partnership with Matter Network led to the now-live integrated marketing campaign that is being syndicated across Matter’s partner sites, including CleanTech Authority and other leading portals.

If your company or group is interested in appearing alongside top cleantech jobs and resources, contact Matter Network for more information and pricing options. Our complete site takeover includes one banner on each page of Green Job Feed as well as a matching thematic background image to draw in viewers.

Create Custom Job Alerts and RSS Feeds

Today Green Job Feed released a new tool to help job seekers sort through the clutter and stay up to date with the latest positions. Using RSS and email alerts, users can now passively subscribe to any job type in any location they choose… Using any search criteria they can dream up, this tool empowers candidates to go beyond what is currently available in our list and benefit from real-time alerts as new jobs are posted. Furthermore, users don’t even have to sign up or become a member of our site to benefit from this free tool!

The technology used to power our custom job alert tool is very similar to Google Alerts and other news and blog updates however, the difference in this case is that all alerts correspond with green jobs. RSS, which stands for “Really Simple Syndication” allows users to subscribe to updates using any popular RSS reader such as Google Reader or NewsGator. Some new browsers can use RSS to create active bookmarks which show you the most recent updates from your favorite sites.

For those of you who prefer good old fashioned email alerts, we have provided instructions for using Yahoo! Alerts. Aside from email this tool can also be used to send alerts to Yahoo! Messenger or even your mobile phone. That’s right, if you create a custom RSS job search using our tool and then subscribe to it using Yahoo’s mobile phone update service you will actually get a text the moment a new job is indexed on our site!

These new tools empower job seekers everywhere to find the best renewable energy jobs uniquely tailored to them in the most meaningful and efficient way possible. Simply type your job criteria into the new tool and see what comes up, then remember to subscribe so you don’t get left out.

Where Are People Looking for Green Jobs?

One of the neat advantages of working in the online space is that aggregating market data is being made increasingly easy through the use analytics programs. Here at Green Job Feed we use Google Analytics in combination with AdSense and Widgetbox to determine trends and thus allocate our resources.

Just below, you can see our basic traffic overview chart. When we rebranded the site from Green Jobs Authority in mid June we decided to create a fresh analytics tracking account and thus you see a large spike up from zero as old visitors were redirected to the new URL. In the days and weeks following, our traffic has remained high and even begun to increase as more and more visitors notice the widgets and marketing going on.

The majority of visitors we see here at the CleanTech Authority network are from the United States, but that is slowly changing as more and more articles and jobs are added from around the world. Just below is a map showing the domestic traffic we’ve seen to date. The darker the state, the more visitors we’ve seen.

The top five states are California, New York, Florida, Texas, and New Jersey. Colorado ranked 7th, though we believe that slowly they will begin to rise as more and more stimulus grants are awarded there and Boulder eventually reaches its goal of becoming the first major smart grid city in the US. California is the clear leader in jobs however, with more cleantech company headquarters located in and around Silicon Valley than any other state. Indeed, our own corporate headquarters are located in Mountain View, CA.

Internationally we have seen visitors from all over. Specifically, there has been a bit of activity in Germany but not as much as we had hoped for or expected. With such great companies as the wind power leader Vestas being based in Germany, and expansion into solar production and research by US firms such as Nanosolar which just opened a plant in Luckenwalde, we believe Germany has a bright “green” future.

It is worth noting that Germany has been the international leader in wind power for the past decade, only recently being passed up by the United States as Texas began a shift from oil production to wind farming in 2008. Even here at the Green Job Feed, Texas seems to be beating Germany in terms of traffic. This is your chance for redemption Germany, bring your jobs and we’ll help your citizens connect!

Just for fun, we’ve tossed in New Zealand here which gave us just one visitor over the past 18 days. Come on New Zealand! Let’s double that traffic before the beginning of next month, we believe in you! Despite their poor showing here, New Zealand is actually an amazingly sustainable country and a great example for the world. Back when we were just getting started here in September of 2007, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke announced New Zealand’s intention to commit to 90% renewable electricity by 2025. The country already uses 70% renewable electricity, primarily hydro- and geothermal power, and eventually, the Prime Minister would like to see the country be completely carbon-neutral.

Helen Clarke said “I have set out the challenge to our nation to become the first truly sustainable nation on earth . . . to dare to aspire to be carbon neutral”. Well rock on NZ! Here at Green Job Feed we would like to invite all New Zealand based companies to post jobs free of charge for the next three months. Just use our contact or feedback form and let us know about your company. We’ll work hand in hand with you to implement the discount once you’ve created a company profile.

A New Green Job Brand and Logo

Green Job Authority has been online since late 2007 and evolved along with the entire Clean Tech Authority network. Initially solar was the primary focus and http://cleantechauthority.com didn’t even exist. It now functions as the central hub of the network, syndicating articles and content from the other five sites and featuring such innovative tools as the EV Charging Stations Map, recently covered by CNET, and the CleanTech Events Calendar. Over time new verticals were added such as Electric Vehicles and Green Home and Building.

CleanTech Authority Network Logo

In late 2008 the authority logo was created with the help of several design consultants. Leading up to this point the sites’ favicon icons were used to represent the brand. Ultimately the logo shown here was chosen as the new primary symbol as it represents the A of authority as well as a branching network. Additionally, the sprouting branches from the A also signify plantlife which absorbs CO2 in a symbiotic relationship with humans and animals. In this way the A logo captures our focus on environmental sustainability and our commitment to teamwork and network syndication.

In early 2009 it was decided that Green Job Authority should be repositioned as Green Job Feed. Not only does it require fewer syllables, making it faster and easier to say, it represents the new direction of the Authority Network; to syndicate content in a Web 2.0 fashion. Green Job Feed aims to become the easiest, most user friendly renewable energy job portal while also presenting tools and resources for sharing content with partner sites.

Green Job Feed Logo

The inclusion of the Feed element is plainly visible in the new logo which still appreciates plants and the symbolic “tree” logo that many green brands adopt. Wrather than adopting an orange box as it’s feed icon, which is the industry standard, Green Job Feed has combined this element with the tree as shown at left. The brand has also added a new tagline. While the Authority brand verticals still use “the dirt on clean” for their tagline, Green Job Feed has opted for a more relevant statement “supporting sustainable careers” which fits nicely below the title.

Over the long term as Green Job Feed gains critical mass and new widgets and partners are added to the offering this logo may stand on it’s own without the title or tagline. As a closing note, there was discussion of an alternative logo which would follow a play on words. We have created a basic mockup of that logo below, see if you can catch what we’re going for.

Wind and Solar Jobs Quadruple by 2018

In it’s March 2009 Clean Energy Trends report, market authority Clean Edge projects long term wind and solar industry job growth. Clean Edge, Inc., founded in 2000, is the world’s first research and publishing firm devoted to the clean-tech sector. The quote and table below were taken directly from their Clean Energy Trends report.

Solar and Wind jobs - growth projection by Clean Edge

In addition to its other benefits, clean energy offers the promise of creating new jobs and rebuilding downtrodden economies. Some people refer to this as the “green jobs” dividend.

Our analysis shows that solar photovoltaics and wind power industries currently account for more than 190,000 and 413,000 direct and indirect jobs worldwide, respectively, a total of more than 600,000 jobs. By 2018, we project the number of jobs at more than 1,341,000 for solar and 1,315,000 for wind, for a total of nearly 2.7 million jobs. These numbers are based on our projections for global industry growth through 2018.

These numbers are very encouraging to us here at the Green Job Feed and we look forward to a decade of growth and progress in the renewable energy space. Check out the Clean Edge website for more great research and keep an eye on our job board for the latest renewable energy jobs worldwide.

Green Job Widget

For the past week or so we’ve been working on a few widgets to be used across the CleanTech Authority Network of sites which are partnered with Green Job Feed. Today we are announcing the first custom widget and inviting you to test it out and install it on your own blog or website!

Widgets are a great way to build interactivity into any website and create value for users beyond ads and post links. Many people find their jobs through word of mouth or being at the right place at the right time so this widget will be a real enabler in connecting renewable energy employers with the best candidates – your visitors!

This is just the first of several widgets to come and it is setup to be 250×250 pixels which is a standard ad size. We have tested it on Safari, FireFox, and IE6 and 7 but if you notice an error please let us know by commenting on this blogpost. Jobs sent through this feed will be updated immediately as they are added at http://greenjobfeed.com and the search box will search our entire catalog of positions. Any clicks or searches done through this widget will open in a new window so your readers will not be completely removed from your site content.

To get your own copy of this widget visit our profile at Widgetbox and customize the font, background and border colors to match your site. You can also leave a review and comments there!

McKinsey & Company Project Green Job Growth

In late 2008 McKinsey and Company published a story entitled “Not sky-high“. This article set out goals and projections  for how the world can “avoid the potential nightmares of global warming, such as mass migrations from flooded cities and starvation due to drought”. Scientific consensus is that carbon emissions must be reduced to at least 50% below 1990 levels by 2050 in order to avoid this fate and that means a shift in technology and jobs akin to the industrial revolution. This shift will drastically change today’s industrial landscape and create a whole new category of green collar jobs in renewable energy sectors such as wind, solar, geothermal and biofuel.

The article goes on to state that McKinsey & Company has “conducted a detailed bottom-up analysis of…what a clean-energy revolution would entail and how much it would cost…overall, the shift to a low-carbon economy would require new global capital investment averaging $570 billion per year between 2010 and 2030…many of these “costs” are actually long-term investments—new clean power and industry infrastructure—that have the potential to spur economic growth and create jobs, just as the “costs” of building the Internet ultimately led to new sources of growth.”

Put a different way, McKinsey & Company suggest that the world’s economies will have to increase their carbon productivity (how much energy or goods/services are produced vs. how much carbon is sent into the atmosphere) by ten fold in the next forty years. That’s a high increase but it is achievable; over the course of the Industrial Revolution labor productivity increased by 10x but it took over 120 years. The challenge we are facing today must be met in less than half that time but today’s advanced technologies are a huge enabler and many experts agree that the green revolution has really been going on for the past 50 years. McKinsey & Company estimate that 70% of the technology needed to meet our 2050 goal is already available or will become available by 2020. Germany, for example, gets 12% of its energy from solar, wind or geothermal sources that leverage advanced photovoltaic and nanotechnology based devices that are currently available. Today, the “Silicon Valley” area of Northern California, best known for being the birthplace of Google, HP, and Stanford University, is experiencing high growth as new companies such as Nanosolar, Solaria, and Tesla Motors all contribute advances in clean technologies like those being used in Germany. The clean technology front has grown out of many of the same technologies and advances that helped create computers and a similar growth curve is anticipated by many experts investing in the industry.

Aside from advances in technology and energy production, new carbon markets will emerge and investments will be made in preserving the rainforests of the world (which act as giant Carbon sinks, reducing the impact of CO2). Green Job Feed is one of many companies that has invested in CO2 offset to help mitigate the impact of doing business on the environment. The “gray costs” of running servers and office utilities are paid through the investment we make in planting new trees and erecting solar and wind power stations through Carbonfund.org. Carbonfund.org is a great example of a green company that is not directly working on clean technology, instead they are helping to offset some of today’s harmful technologies until tomorrow’s solutions arrive.

There are really two alternative paths that can be taken as 2050 approaches and the world’s systems are strained under population growth and diminishing resources. Consume less or create more efficient ways of living. McKinsey & Company provides the following anecdote for consuming less: “the average citizen of a developed country emits 27 to 63 kilograms of carbon equivalents per day depending on where he or she lives. In order to minimize climate damage, that number needs to come down to less than 6 kilograms per day. To live on such a budget at today’s levels of carbon productivity, one would be forced to choose between taking a 40 kilometer car ride (~25 miles), using air conditioning for the day, purchasing two new T-shirts (without driving to a shop to buy them), or eating two meals that included meat. In short, without a major boost in carbon productivity, stabilizing the climate would require a painful change in lifestyles in the developed world and the loss of hope for greater prosperity in the developing world.”

The clear pathway into a sustainable future is really a mixture of both consuming less and changing the way companies work along with a refocus on conserving natural resources and world forrests. This all means that more and more companies will be exploring renewable energy and sustainable production. Traditional companies will need in house experts and consultants to help them optimize their products as new standards emerge and that means more green jobs.

A Greener Jobsite

Sharing green jobs is our mission but we also want to be green in the way we do it… We consider our IT jobs here at Green Job Feed to be sustainable even though we aren’t producing energy from the sun or wind as many of our partners do. However, by reducing electrical use, investing in cleantech, and saving paper we are taking every opportunity we can to lessen our impact on the environment and we invite you to learn more about it’s being done.

Consider this, the web is one of the most efficient ways to spread information about jobs. Utilizing web 2.0 techniques and beyond, we are able to reach a larger number of applicants all across the world while targeting better and reducing redundancy and waste as compared to newspapers, magazines, commercials or other traditional media. Just using the internet to post green jobs verses a paper medium is a good start but it doesn’t have to stop there. There are a number of things that can be done to a website in order to reduce the electrical use and paper consumption it requires from users.

First of all, Green Job Feed is proud to be Carbon Neutral! It’s a title we’ve held for over a year now along with our network of cleantech sites (http://cleantechauthority.com). By utilizing carbon credits to plant new trees and invest in wind and solar prjects around the world, Green Job Feed has more than offset the CO2 created by the electricity running our servers and office utilities.

Things get a little less clear when you consider the electrical use of our customers’ and visitors’ computers, but we’ve taken that into consideration in the way we’ve designed the code on our pages. They are all fast loading and optimized with smaller images and scripts to save load requirements. This adds up to a better user experience as well as electricity savings because computers don’t have to process as much.

In addition to carbon credits and coding efficiency, the most important ingredient in making http://greenjobfeed.com one of the most environmentally friendly jobsites on the web is how it prints. Did you know that websites can include special instructions that tell printers how to behave. Optimizing what to print, what to ignore, and how much space to leave around objects can add up to significant paper savings.

In most cases a website can easily half the number of pieces of paper a user needs to print because even one extra line can spill over and thus require two sheets instead of just one! All things considered, this is one of the best ways for a website to reduce the impact they have on the environment and ultimately save a lot of trees, ink, toner and bleaching chemicals (used to create the white printing paper) from going to waste. Paper isn’t exactly light either, printing less means buying less and that means less has to be shipped around the world and that saves gas and electricity.

In the example images below we show how two versions of our site differe when being printed. The one on the left doesn’t include any special instructions on how to print and thus looks wrather sloppy and takes up extra room. On the right part of the images the same page is being printed and a file called print.css is being called on in the header of our site documents. The print CSS file tells the printer to ignore many of the forms and fields that wouldn’t be necessary for a home user who is printing the site. This technique goes a long way in saving paper but it can also be about design and having fun. Notice that in the print friendly version of our site we programmed in a black Green Job Feed logo in the upper left side of the page.

This is the home page of GJF

This is a job post on GJF, print.css saves 50% here!

If you want to make your own print.css use the snippet of code below and set it to a print.css file on your own site. Next, go through your site html code and identify any elements you don’t need to have printed. Include these “extra” classes and ID’s in the lines of your print CSS and use the display:none attribute to keep them from printing. You can also change the width, height, and other elements of the page to better utilize your paper real estate. You can view our actual print.css file here. You can test our print.css file by visiting any of the pages at http://greenjobfeed.com and clicking file » print » print preview.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="http://yoursite.com/path/to/your/print.css" />

Green Job Listings Tripled

Today Green Job Feed announced they will be adding green jobs sourced by Indeed to their already thriving network. When the technology behind this site upgrade was tested and then published on June 18th, the number of jobs listed on the Green Job Feed website nearly tripled. This technology partnership will allow http://greenjobfeed.com visitors to discover many more opportunities for employment.

Indeed.com is a search engine that was launched in 2004. The site now features millions of jobs all across the web in many verticals. By leveraging their technology to target green jobs in solar, wind, biomass, and other clean technology verticals, Green Job Feed is stepping up to become one of the largest most feature rich job sites targeting purely renewable energy jobs.

About Green Job Feed  & The CleanTech Authority Network.
The CleanTech Authority Network (http://cleantechauthority.com), headquartered in Mountain View, California, offers a family of products and services that provide those interested in clean technology and green jobs a way to efficiently learn about new products, services, technologies, and local government programs. Green Job Feed applies web 2.0 technology to efficiently connect job seekers with opportunities in clean technology verticals. Leveraging advanced syndication techniques and publishing formats, Green Job Feed is able to accurately target and reach the best applicants around the world. For more information please visit http://greenjobfeed.com. Follow Green Job Feed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/greenjobfeed.

Clean Tech Entrepreneurship Boom?

Today The American, a Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, put out a story entitled “Old and in the Fray: The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom” which discusses the future of jobs in America. This article tied together the notion that most successful entrepreneurs aren’t the 20-34 aged Google and Facebook guys to the fact that our population is shifting to older more experienced (entrepreneurial ripe) workers… whose careers are being disrupted by the economy and changes in corporate career longevity.

Life expectancy in the US is also increasing and advances in technology are making it easier and less expensive to begin a startup. Not only can more people afford it but they can do it later in life with increased health. The article goes on to suggest that these older retiree-aged entrepreneurs will also become great mentors to the younger generation of twentysomethings (like me) who grew up in an entrepreneurial boom time.

Entrepreneurial Activity by Age (linked to full report)

Having worked at Google myself, meeting both of the founders, as well as several startups in the Bay Area I was injected with the entrepreneurship bug at a young age. Clean technology and green business are on the horizon and many companies are shifting their images and practicing corporate stewardship to get onboard, Google notwithstanding. When it comes to cleantech entrepreneurship the challenge is coupling experience with startup capital and connections. These are all things that the older generation of workers currently possess. The American points this out in its article stating “Contrary to popularly held assumptions, it turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity (a measurement of new business creation) belongs to the 55–64 age group.” and that ” Life expectancy . . . keeps extending farther and farther: by 2050, American life expectancy will be 83 years, compared to 78 today.”

Startup costs and barriers to entry for creating solar, wind, and electric vehicle products are much higher than internet companies. Even internet linked startups dealing in smart grid technology and electric vehicle charging infrastructure rely heavily on the ability to network with local governments and regulating bodies, something that twentysomethings aren’t as proficient at and internet startups are able to avoid. These obstacles are inherent to the creation of a solar pv system with a 10 year warranty. All the time I hear investors say “you can’t sell a ten year warranty if your company hasn’t been around for at least five years” and when the big players all offer that kind of product protection, entry becomes very challenging.

I believe the fiftysomethings are going to luck out a gain, just as they have for the past 50 years with the rise of the internet age. They are positioned well in terms of work experience, savings, and ambition and will be able to revisit their youthful 60’s and 70’s green culture with the clean tech movement, only this time they will make a hefty profit. For those seeking jobs in the green job market this is great news because it means you will have more and more small companies to apply to and you will gain the knowledge and experience to become an entrepreneur yourself one day.