German Renewable Energy Jobs May Double by 2020, Gabriel Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000100&sid=aGbfkSKScFxU&refer=germany

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- Employment in Germany's renewable energy sector may double by 2020, helping to lower the country's near record-high jobless rate, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said.

About 157,000 people worked in the renewable energy industry in 2004 compared with 30,000 people in the nuclear energy industry, according to Gabriel. The number employed in renewables will rise to 170,000 this year and to 300,000 by 2020, he said.

``Environment policies can give momentum for innovation, investments, growth and employment,'' Gabriel said today at a press conference in Berlin. ``Especially in structurally weaker regions, expansion of the renewable energy industry can help to create new jobs and secure old ones.''

Gabriel's comments come as Germany's unemployment rate, adjusted for seasonal swings, leveled at 11.3 percent last month, the same as in January, when it was the third-highest in the euro region after Greece and France. The unadjusted rate remained above 5 million for the second month running, a level reached in February 2004 for the first time since World War II and which it has since remained close to.

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being sponsored by the Canadian Govt. to buy energy from Canadian citizens at a rate that would be profitable for small businesses. Japan, Scandinavia, Portugal and most of the rest of the industrialized world are all making big strides in renewable energy technology. We would be doing that also were it not for the strangle hold by the oil, gas and coal consortium's who have for years done everything in the power to discourage any progress in renew ables.

I believe that the U.S. would be better served if the oil companies were Nationalized.

except in the U.S. and Britain. Is there something in our environment that is making us stupid? I'm serious.

like a cancerous tumor on America....

of humans, they have temporally found ways to bypass Natures' laws of balance. However, in the end, Nature always deals with imbalance, always.