PUBLISHED 1/23/08 ----

California is trying to grow a green-tech economy, which is certainly noble and forward-thinking. But it’s all been just talk. The state has failed to develop the workforce that eco-friendly businesses need.

According to corporate and government leaders who addressed a Jan. 7 summit on so-called green-collar jobs, the work force is so miserably failing to keep up with the growing demand, California runs the risk of losing these fledgling industries to other states before green-tech business gets anywhere near full speed.

California sorely lacks workers all across the green-tech spectrum, from college-educated engineers to skilled laborers trained in construction and electrical work. Solar-power companies can’t find enough solar panel installers to keep up with demand, and electrical utilities can’t find enough qualified workers to help them expand into renewable energy projects, according to experts at the Advancing the New Energy Economy summit.

If California schools fail to start training prospective workers for those jobs, the green-tech industry will pack up and leave — or it’ll start importing skilled workers from outside California, which would be a terrible irony for the underemployed, working-class Californians who would benefit from the new economy.

Few universities would be more ideal incubators for engineers and managers in green-tech and alternative energy fields than Cal State Bakersfield. CSUB is situated in the midst of two of California’s most important energy resources — the Central Valley oil fields and the emerging wind farms of the Tehachapis.

But CSUB has not fully tapped into its potential as a center for advanced energy development education. CSUB has also failed to develop a unique identity that, to the mainstream observer, would set it apart from any of a dozen other state universities. An investment of green-tech education might do precisely that.

Meanwhile, industry leaders are crying out for better and faster training of green-tech workers.

Someone will eventually fill that void. Whether that someone does business in the southern San Joaquin Valley, or even in California, remains to be seen.