In these hard economic times, it's good to hear positive news about young men and women participating in green job training. One school highlighted recently in the news is Sierra College in Rocklin, CA. Officials there applied for a grant through the Center for Applied Competitive Technologies, and are now offering a course for California Conservation Corps members out of Auburn, CA.

This course, titled Technical Education in Energy Efficiency and Construction, will prepare students in topics such as weatherization, energy efficiency, and alternative energy. With the grant Sierra College put together this 128 hour course that will gain students entry-level employment in the Energy Efficiency Construction Industry. The hope is that this course will serve as a model for the rest of the state, and that job opportunities will be filled across the same area. According to a recent study, the Sacramento Region of the state is expected to have the highest rate of green job growth through 2012, introducing as many as 3,530 jobs!

The EPA released their top 50 list of green power partners the other day, and many of the entries are nothing new. Intel, Whole Foods Market, and the U.S. Air Force are all within the top 10. Something to note however is one of the entries, the Chicago Public Schools system.

Ranked number 35 on the list for its purchase of solar power, it buys the most green power of any K-12 institution. The only other educational institutions in the list are the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, and Carnegie Mellon University. Both the State of Pennsylvania and the windy city and its suburbs are doing a great job in weaning themselves off of fossil fuels. I hope that by next year the list has a few additional entries within the education field, and other institutions take a hint as to what direction they should be heading.

Scouring the web this morning for information and projects to go along with this month's journal, I found quite a lot with regards to schools embracing net-zero construction. The concept of becoming energy-neutral, and even carbon-neutral, is gradually increasing its hold within the US. It makes sense then that one of the groups taking a proactive stance is that of the students and their community.

One example of this is Portland Community College, one of the top 20 community colleges of its size in the nation. Starting with the Sylvania campus, it will begin to retrofit all existing buildings to reach net-zero with the help of the Department of Energy's Net-Zero Commercial Building Initiative. From there it will focus on its Newberg Campus, currently being constructed with net-zero in the plan from the beginning.

Right now the UC Extension website has open enrollment for Winter Quarter 2010. A particular highlight is a course being offered on energy and its future within the State of California. It continues the Environmental Studies x489 series, which began this past fall quarter with a course on sustainability and green building concepts. It was headed by Lindsey Taggart, an energy specialist with the Community Environmental Council (CEC), and I had the pleasure of taking it. This new course covers a broad range of topics related to both energy and energy consumption and is held on the UCSB campus.

I wanted to say a little bit about the course that recently finished and why I recommend this next class. The lecture presentations are general in order to provide an overview with students. Through site visits and guest speakers the topics covered in class are explored in more depth. This past quarter was concerned with green building and specifically the LEED rating system. However there were one to two guest speakers a week that spoke on a variety of topics: building, waste management, sustainable sites, water efficiency, and green materials to name a few. It was this speaker series that really made the class worth it to me, not to mention the group project I was assigned which got me into contact with an interior designer, environmental scientist, and fellow UCSB student. That's another aspect of the class I like, in that individuals from a variety of fields took the course to learn and engage in positive discussion.