There’s no better place for growing green technology start-ups and creating green-collar jobs than California. That’s the opinion of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, in a rebuttal published by Reuters to political rival Meg Whitman, who was the former President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from March 1998 to March 2008. Both are thinking about entering the race for California governor. Whitman recently penned an op-ed piece saying she’d suspend California’s climate-change legislation if elected governor.
Newsome said that the four largest clean energy industries (solar, wind, biofuel and fuel cells) will have combined annual revenues of $255 billion by 2015. And that California is capturing the lion’s share of “green capital”, some $6.6 billion invested in start-ups between 2006 and 2008.
The emerging green economy in California has created thousands of jobs, through economic growth and through venture capital and entrepreneurship, says Newsome. He feels the state’s climate-change legislation, AB32, is a key element of that growth and has challenged Whitman to a public debate on it.
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