Still wondering what green collar jobs are? Maybe you heard them mentioned on the presidential campaign trail, by candidates from both parties. Maybe you have seen the numbers – wind power created 35,000 jobs in 2008 alone despite the economic downturn, many of them in manufacturing. Maybe you have read the stories about re-purposing shuttered factories and re-hiring laid-off workers to build a new energy future.

Regardless, the stories are exciting, real, and affecting communities all across America. President Obama, setting off on a trip that culminated in his inauguration in January, visited a wind turbine component factory in Ohio. Cardinal Fastener makes large nuts and bolts once used in the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge, and now services the wind industry. On Earth Day, the president visited and spoke at a factory in Newton, Iowa, that once made washing machines for Maytag, but now makes wind turbine towers. Vice President Biden was in Jefferson City, Missouri, earlier this month at a plant that will make transformers for a new wind project going up in Missouri.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, more than 70 manufacturing facilities opened, expanded or were announced in 2007 and 2008. We seem to easily understand that building a new energy future will be good for the environment; what we starting to grasp is that wind power is an engine of the economy that will also put Americans to work.