When Ann McLane Kuster announced her ideas for creating clean energy jobs in New Hampshire, she visited a Goffstown company that delivers wood pellets to people's homes to be used as fuel, saying it's an example of a successful clean energy business.
"These are not the jobs of tomorrow — they are the jobs of today," Kuster, the Democratic candidate for New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District, said of positions at Woodpellets.com.
In Jaffrey, about 40 miles to the southwest, is New England Wood Pellet, where Republican opponent Charlie Bass is on the board of managers and is an investor. The company makes the pellets and sells them to retail outlets, including Woodpellets.com.
"We're paying people good wages with good benefits," said Bass, an alternative energy consultant since losing the 2006 election to Democrat Paul Hodes, now a U.S. Senate candidate.
Kuster, a first-time candidate, and Bass, a six-time congressman who wants to return to his former job, have a mutual interest in the development of renewable energy — energy generated from and replenished by natural resources — and its potential for job growth. They also share criticism of one another. Kuster accuses Bass of putting the interests of oil and gas over renewable energy while serving in the House, and Bass says Kuster doesn't have enough experience on the subject.
Kuster and Bass may be the exception in an election season where candidates have devoted little discussion to the issue of climate change, clean energy and green jobs, said Farrell Seiler of Littleton, who heads a grassroots group called New Hampshire Carbon Action Alliance. The group has invited federal race candidates to participate in an Oct. 20 debate on the subject in Manchester.
Seiler noted that a recent survey by New Hampshire's Carsey Institute shows that nearly 90 percent of state residents believed that climate change is happening now.
"Climate change issues are kind of at the bottom of the heap," he said. "Why aren't we talking about them?"
Both Bass and Kuster say the goal of creating more jobs in the renewable energy field can't be done without a comprehensive energy law. A bill that passed the House last year contained provisions that subsidized new clean energy technologies, energy efficiency and research and development.
The bill, which didn't make it in the Senate, also included a "cap and trade" plan that would create economic incentives to limit heat-trapping gases from power plants and vehicles. Opponents portrayed cap and trade as an energy tax in disguise, and some energy companies had lobbied against it.
Kuster feels market incentives are needed to reward businesses for using clean energy technologies. She supports a cap and trade provision.
Bass said he's against cap and trade. He prefers creating a national standard that would require companies to produce a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources.
Both Kuster and Bass support making permanent existing tax credits on energy research and development.
Kuster also suggests extending a tax credit on energy manufacturing and creating clean energy business zones for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
"There's no silver bullet that's going to solve every problem facing our economy or put every New Hampshire worker back on the job," but the clean energy job field shows promise, she said. Kuster, who holds a degree in environmental policy from Dartmouth College, cites a 2009 study by the University of California-Berkeley that forecasts New Hampshire can gain 5,000 to 7,000 jobs by 2020 under a strong national energy and climate policy.
Bass said he supports creating a congressional caucus on biomass, the energy from such sources as wood, fuels and plants; pushing the Energy Department to support new technologies; and moving energy-related jobs out of the federal stimulus bill into an energy bill or standalone bills that would be funded faster.
Kuster proposes cutting tax deductions and credits oil and power companies are receiving. She said Bass repeatedly voted on legislation to help such companies, including the 2005 energy bill, the last major piece of energy legislation he supported. It contained tax breaks for those industries.
Bass said if the bill contained subsidies for oil and power companies, "that was obviously not my primary reason for supporting it. My primary reason was because as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, my focus was on trying to develop the areas of alternative energy that I support and consider to be a high priority," provisions that were part of that bill, he said.
Some New Hampshire companies are based on renewable energy technologies, such as solar panel manufacturing and wind farms. Others are branching out. Goss International in Durham, for example, is planning to train workers to make wind turbine components this fall. The expansion would supplement its printing press equipment operations. Another company, Warner Power, which makes electrical equipment, estimates it will create about 150 jobs during the next few years developing technology to make transformers more efficient.
A 2009 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts showed that in New Hampshire, total jobs grew faster than jobs in the clean energy sector — which it counted as about 4,000 in 2007 — but that the field has the potential to increase, partly because the state has attracted nearly $67 million in clean technology investment.
