As a fact more than 68,200 jobs across 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs relating to clean energy. California led the U.S. with about 124,000 green-collar jobs in 2007, followed by Texas with 56,000 and policymakers are coming up with fresh legislation which includes the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, along with upcoming renewable electricity standards and possible measures to limit carbon-dioxide emissions. There is more hope for job creation in the near future even as the economy struggles.

Besides government stimulus, venture capitalists have invested about $12.6 billion into this category during the last three years.
An excerpt from the Carbon Salary Survey

* The average salary in the booming climate sector was $76,000.
* The big green guns, upper-level managers, etc., earn six figures easily.
* Half of the survey respondents reported scoring a yearly bonus to the tune of $11,000.
* Monster.com is out .Greenjobsearch.org is in.

President Barack Obama said that he wants to create millions of “green collar” jobs. His stimulus bill includes more than $60 billion for clean energy including $11 billion to modernize the power grid to move energy from renewable energy projects to the cities and $2 billion in grants to develop better batteries for cars. He also supports a comprehensive federal energy plan that would launch a “cap and trade” market on greenhouse gases and national mandates forcing power companies to generate a part of their electricity from renewable sources.

So, we can conclude that Green-collar jobs are far more pink-slip proof than the other jobs.

This is well timed to benefit from Obama’s renewable energy intiative.

Full video is available on funny sounding website – meettheboss.tv. Apparently they are using teaser YouTube video to increase site registration.

To see full video you need to sign up and to sign up one has to cross both Nile and Sahara!

It definitely can’t be lack of awareness considering its hype everywhere, so what’s the deal here?

For example companies like HP, IBM, Cisco and Microsoft are not too excited about Obama’s green initiative. Actually these companies are not even  offering many green jobs. There is lot of talk about green computing initiatives but its not translating into green jobs or green certification/training.

So is this all green washing? CIO will demand demonstrable expertise, as any gear sold by vendors on green promise will create green portfolio related job roles. If vendors are not leading by example then what’s the incentive for CIOs to have resident energy efficiency experts.

Watch it:

Takeaway for executives is to emphasize common sense. Save power, do power intensive operations at the right time. Common sense will drive Green IT revolution.

What do you think? Is your company planning to allocate budget for green computing?

Community site Green Grid is rated by New York Times as one of the sites IT professionals should put on their must visit list. Rising popularity of Green Grid site shows that Green IT is a cost management initiative. Initiative has less to do with oil price dynamics.

With the economy in shambles and energy prices plummeting, you’re likely to hear a lot less about global climate change and carbon neutral business operations than you did six months ago. Nonetheless, green IT can still be a huge advantage for IT departments because it will save you money. Plain and simple: green IT saves greenbacks. So get to know the Green Grid’s Web site and make sure that whatever you buy in 2009 for your data centers is in line with their advice and metrics. Here’s more information about the Green Grid along with three other organizations that offer advice about lowering data center power consumption.

Other sites to master include Twitter, Yammer, Google App, VMWare Communities, Secunia, Ruby on Rails, Enterprise Mobility Matters and LinkedIn.

US President-elect Barack Obama has promised massive economic stimulus package to revive flagging economy. Most of this money will go into green jobs and is expected to generate close to 2 million new jobs.

This will have clear impact on IT industry. No wonder we see all IT services companies flaunting green credentials on their website home pages.

2 million new jobs will require at huge amount of investment in PC hardware, software, related software services. Not to mention data center growth, which if we are reading it right, will get incentive to adopt green practices. LA Times reports on industry buzz around this expectation:

Obama’s proposal to weatherize homes would pay for itself through energy savings while putting legions of unemployed construction workers back on the job. A $100-billion investment in a green recovery could create 2 million jobs within two years, a good chunk of them in retrofitting, according to a recent University of Massachusetts study.

Now is a time for IT workers, who are already thinking of making a career move, to pick up expertise in green and sustainable technology skills.

It’s good to be in demand. Let us know how you are planning to aim for this market. What are the popular certifications and training courses avaiable for this?

Because we design our products to last and have a global Nokia service network to look after them, they keep working. But a lot of our phones are no longer used. Our global consumer survey reveals that 44% of old mobile phones are lying in drawers at home and not being recycled. Find out from our latest survey why only 3% of people recycle their mobile phones globally. Why should you recycle a phone that’s not being used? Recycling means we don’t need to extract and refine as much material for new products, saving energy, chemicals and waste. If every Nokia user recycled just one unused phone at the end of its life, together we would save nearly 80,000 tonnes of raw materials.

Recycling gives your phone a second life

We work with carefully selected companies who reclaim materials from the phones and accessories we pass on to them. These companies are assessed on a regular basis to make sure they’re doing things properly and that anything handed to them is recycled responsibly.

In India, company is planning to install close to 1300 recycling bins in all Nokia dealers.Though company clarified that it has no intention of going into refurbished product business

Nokia does not carry out refurbishment business as a company, or support any refurbishment carried out by refurbishment companies, at the moment. The reasons are that we have no control over the quality or safety of the phones that are resold after restoration. Furthermore, we would not like to see the third world a place where industrialised world dumps old technology. A more sustainable solution is to utilize the significant advances made in technology in the past decade, and offer products that are optimised for developing markets, where recycling infrastructure is often lacking.

As we head into 2009, which is all set to become year of Green IT, we will expect more such initiatives from high tech manufacturers.

Outlook Business magazine predicts Green IT to be one of the trends to  pick up in 2009:

Research shows tht almost 80% of a PC’s computing power remains unused, while energy consumption remains the same. nComputing’s switches consume less than one watt of power and distribute the unused capacity among more than seven users. Similarly, Qualcomm’s Kayak promises to give all the features of a PC but consumes only five watts. It connects to the Internet wirelessly, but doesn’t have a hard disk to store data.