A couple weeks, an L.A. Times article declared that California’s not seeing many new green jobs despite Obama’s stimulus package. Now comes another article from the L.A. Times about how “job growth in California is going green.” Huh?

The first article specifically states we’re not seeing new jobs “in renewable energy or clean technology.” The second article marvels at the fast rate of job growth “in areas such as energy efficiency, renewable fuels and clean tech.”

Which is it? Wouldn’t it be great if the second article addressed the findings in the first? In any case — Although the articles sound contradictory, the differences seem to be mainly due to the fact that the first article focuses just on very recent jobs created by stimulus funds — which are just going to take more time to translate into long-term jobs — while the latter focuses on longer-term trends in the green job market.

And it appears that with or without stimulus funds, green business is booming in California. Between 2007-2008, green jobs in California grew 5 percent while total jobs dropped 1 percent. And between 1995-2008, green businesses increased 45 percent and green jobs grew 36 percent — while total jobs in the state grew only 13 percent.

Those findings comes courtesy of Next 10, an organization that put together a new report called “Many Shades of Green: Diversity and Distribution of California’s Green Jobs” (PDF).

A few bits of good news about Los Angeles from the report: Between 1995 – 2008, energy generation jobs grew by 35 percent, energy efficiency jobs grew by 77 percent, and green transportation jobs grew by 29 percent.

Next 10′s report is one of the many studies about green jobs and the green economy in California the last few weeks. For more forward-looking analyses, check out:

>> Greening Los Angeles: A Case Study of Green Retrofits of City Buildings as a Model for Regional Equity in the Green Economy. This one’s a must-read for environmental justice activists. Put together by the Applied Research Center, a think tank on racial justice, this case study profiles how two community organizations — Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education and the Los Angeles chapter of the Apollo Alliance — managed to get a green retrofit ordinance passed, thereby creating jobs for women and communities of color.

This study’s part of the Green Equity Toolkit, put together to help women and minority groups — and the organizations that serve them — to “maximize and share the benefits of green economy jobs.”

>> Climate Solutions and Economic Growth in California (PDF). Put together by the Center for Resource Solutions, a pro-sustainable energy nonprofit, this report analyzes four previous analyses studying the costs of implementing California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32). The conclusion: “the costs of climate policy are far outweighed by projected economic growth.”

The more nuanced conclusion is that the California Air Resources Board’s analysis was in line with those undertaken by the University of California researchers and the Charles River Associates/Electric Power Research Institute — all of which come to the somewhat rosy conclusion above — while the fourth study by Varshney and Tootelian, which contradicts the others, is bunk due to faulty calculations. Read the full study for the full details.

Top photo via greentheblock.net; images by Next 10 and Applied Research Center

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