An issue I stressed as Lieutenant Governor and one that I continue to emphasize as Governor, is the importance of developing “green jobs” and “green industries.”
Those are buzzwords. They’re on the tip of many people’s tongues these days and, when that happens, it can be easy to lose sight of what they really mean.
But visiting a country like Japan and talking with officials and leaders of industry here quickly draws their importance into focus. While the U.S. essentially stuck its head in the sand over alternative fuels and the threat of global warming for the past eight years, other countries surged ahead. They get the fact that carbon-based fuels – at least in their current form – are no longer sustainable as an energy source.
Research dollars are being poured into alternative energy technologies – not because they are trendy but because they are economically essential in the long-term. Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco met the other day with a company aggressively exploring high-efficiency battery systems that will be a key part of smart grids and that are essential to getting full value out of wind and solar systems. And even from the hotel where I am staying you can look down on a rooftop covered with grass and with banks of solar cells catching the sun’s rays.
The bottom line is this. Energy – how we make, how we store it, and how we use it – will be the next frontier for business, for governments and for innovators. We’re seeing it now in North Carolina with the innovative work being done by Celgard in Charlotte – or by Toshiba (a venerable Japanese company) that recently announced plans to add several hundred engineering jobs in our state.
I’ll post more on this topic as we go on to China, so stay tuned.