Denver Green Jobs Initiative helps the unemployed find work

Barney Henderson, who learned to install insulation, explains how to put a fiberglass cover on pipes last week at the Denver Green Jobs Initiative, 3532 Franklin St. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Before Barney Henderson began training at the Denver Green Jobs Initiative in July 2010, he had never heard of employment opportunities in heat and frost insulation. The past few years, Henderson, like other struggling Americans, dealt with the country's economic malaise on a daily basis as best he could.

"I'd work various day labor jobs here and there, but the money was never much and definitely never consistent," said Henderson, a native of Denver.

Tack on that he's black and has a nonviolent felony conviction from the early 1990s, and the 43-year-old quickly fell into the growing number of individuals that statistics show are chronically unemployed.

As President Barack Obama is set to deliver a nationally televised speech to Congress this evening that outlines a jobs plan to reduce the 9.1 percent national unemployment rate, here in Colorado the president faces a complex situation: high minority unemployment and a relatively minute expansion in the green-jobs initiative he has touted as a catalyst to combat unemployment.

Recently the Obama administration has garnered public backlash from members of the Congressional Black Caucus as unemployment among blacks nationwide surged to 16.7 percent in August, its highest level since 1984.

"The Congressional Black Caucus loves the president," said U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and member of the caucus, at a job fair last month. "We're supportive of the president, but we're getting tired. .?.?. The unemployment is unconscionable."

The 2010 annual average for unemployment in Colorado was 9 percent. For blacks and Latinos, it was 13 percent. But Henderson has become a success story of sorts ? a minority who has found work from the president's efforts to combat unemployment through more green jobs.

Still, upward mobility in the green-job sector in Colorado is small and by most accounts is unlikely to put a substantial dent in unemployment.

Michael Suitt, 32, tests a blower door last week at the construction laboratory at the Denver Green Jobs Initiative. The blower door is used to detect air leaks in buildings. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

2.8% of Colorado jobs green

According to a study released in July by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, 2.8 percent of Colorado jobs are green jobs.

Nationwide, clean-energy jobs account for 2 percent of employment, according to a nonpartisan Brookings Institution study released this summer.

This comes even after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ? which Obama signed into law at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science ? doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in Colorado to stimulate the green economy.

For example, the act provided a roughly $370 million loan guarantee last year to Abound Solar Manufacturing, making the Loveland-based company one of the top state recipients of stimulus funds.

The company was slated to create 300 jobs in Colorado from the money, but as of this month it had filled a little more than 80, said Becky Ellzey, marketing and communications director for Abound. The company also has a facility in Indiana that benefits from the loan.

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the president has been too exclusive in his push for green jobs.

"Any job is a good job in this economy, but the challenge is that the market will only create those jobs when it can bear them," Gardner said, who is a green-jobs supporter. "I think that the president believes that the government can create markets, when in actuality the fact is that the market will embrace these technologies when it's ready for them."

Initiative sprang from grant

Soon after Henderson heard about the creation of the green-jobs initiative that specifically targeted his northeast Denver neighborhood, he pounced on the opportunity to better himself and obtain the skills needed to find stable work.

The initiative sprang from a $3.6 million grant through the recovery act.

The intention of the grant money ? dispersed to the local nonprofit Mi Casa, which helped write the grant proposal ? is to train 500 northeast Denver residents in a two-year span for jobs in solar technology energy, green construction, energy efficiency and green-jobs administration.

When Henderson completed the program, which on average takes four weeks, he began working various contracting jobs doing insulation that paid about $17 an hour.

It was the highest hourly rate he had ever made.

"The skills I learned from the initiative were geared specifically toward the green-jobs field, and it's helped me," Henderson said.

But even as the initiative touts that by hiring disadvantaged groups employers can receive tax credits of up to $9,000 per hire, the percentage of individuals who graduate from the program and are employed is relatively low.

To date, 425 have graduated from the city's green-jobs initiative that began last year and ends in January 2012. Of that, 139 ? roughly 33 percent ? are now employed.

Green economy still young

Rick Lawton, the initiative's project manager, said the green economy remains in its infancy and represents a trend that is relatively new.

"What we're giving people are transferable skills that can be used in a green economy and beyond," he said.

Gardner adds that green jobs have tremendous potential in combating unemployment, as do more traditional energy opportunities, such as the extraction of natural gas.

"Here in Colorado and across the nation, we can't isolate our focus," Gardner said. "We have to utilize all our resources."

Kurtis Lee: 303-954-1655, klee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kurtisalee

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