Green Jobs In WA-Are The Programs Working?

With the stimulus program launched by Obama, The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act of 2009,  thousands, if not millions, of green jobs were supposed to be created--that included Washington State.

Has is happened?  According to the non-partisan Washington Policy Center, 3 major weatherization programs in Washington State received over 90 million in stimulus dollars.  They were the WEB Act, or Weatherize Every Building program,  The SB 5649 Washington State pilot program (which sent money to WSU), and the Low Income Weatherization program.  According to WPC, once the figures have been tallied,  using figures from The City Of Seattle, WSU, and the state Department of Commerce, 229 fulltime jobs were created from out of that 90 million.  The Average cost of creating each of those jobs was between $215,000 and 233,000.   That means if it's that expensive to create a "job" or create the enviornment where that job was needed, it would not survive without public funding.   And due to stimulus money, there are no gurantees these jobs will last.  We have seen at Hanford the effect of losing stimulus money---upwards of 3,000 workers could eventually be gone, although NOT all are directly due to stimulus money running out.  In addition, from the buildings that have been "weatherized" and retrofitted, the energy savings themselves have been nearly half of what was projected, and it will take nearly 16 years of those savings to pay for the average cost of the homes that have been weatherized.   The idea was to create all these jobs, and the weatherizing and "greening" of buildings was supposed to dramatically save millions in energy costs that would offset them.   It does not appear it is working out that way.