Click on a state to view its profile.

As governors across the country look at ways they can help build a green economy in their state, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has commissioned Collaborative Economics Inc. (CEI) to prepare a profile of each state’s "green" economy. State profiles can be found by clicking on the map above. This data is designed to provide a detailed, empirical account of each state’s existing assets across multiple green sectors and serve as a foundation for identifying future growth areas and related needs. The profile is based on a methodology presented by CEI at the NGA Center’s Green Economy State Roundtable in April.

As with all economic, workforce, and energy development strategies, the NGA Center encourages states to start with a careful analysis of their existing capabilities and strengths and build on those. The profile analyzes the scope of green business activity in each state from 2000 to 2007 (the latest year data is available) and patent activity from 1994 to­ 2008. Such an analysis can reveal areas of comparative advantage, targets for workforce development, and opportunities for building partnerships within and across green industry segments. This information also helps reveal the extent to which a state’s business base can meet the coming demand for things such as highly efficiency appliances, renewable energy generation systems, high-efficiency building products, and low-emission fuels.

Background
CEI first developed its methodology to analyze California’s green economy (for The California Green Innovation Index, 2008 and 2009) and refined it further to provide the analysis for the Pew Center on the States to release a state-by-state "count" of clean energy jobs and businesses, a subset of the green economy, that was released earlier this month. Based on the interest many states showed at the Green Economy State Roundtable, the NGA Center arranged for CEI to provide states with some of the more detailed information contained in the California report and that is not in the analysis done for the Pew report.

Definition of a "Green Job"
There are many different definitions for what constitutes a "green job." This, along with a lack of standardized industry data on "green" products, services, and occupations, has resulted in the development of multiple methodological approaches for analyzing the green economy. The approach taken by Collaborative Economics in the link is based on quantifying the core green economic activity defined as business establishments that provide products and services that do the following:

• Provide alternatives to carbon-based energy sources;
• Conserve the use of energy and all natural resources; and,  
• Reduce pollution (including GHG emissions) and repurpose waste.