Green Power Revives
Defunct Battery Plant
By Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
NEW CASTLE, Pa. - Just outside this town in the western part of the state,
famous for its chili dogs and fireworks, a low-rise battery plant sits along a
side road named Clover Lane.
To miss it is to miss a back-from-the-dead story, one that Gov. Rendell hopes
will inspire a manufacturing revival across Pennsylvania.
With a workforce of 59, Axion Power International is no industrial giant. But
its resurrection - from a shuttered lead-acid battery plant to one now turning
out lead-carbon batteries for use in electric cars, among other eco-friendly
applications - is cited by Rendell and his representatives as evidence of the
green economy's transformative powers.
Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced $2.4 billion in grants to
accelerate the manufacture and deployment of the next generation of U.S.
batteries and electric cars.
Of that stimulus money, $34.3 million is to go to Georgia-based battery giant
Exide Technologies "with Axion Power . . . for the production of advanced
lead-acid batteries, using lead-carbon electrodes for micro and mild hybrid
applications," according to a White House statement. Axion said it was not sure
what portion, if any, of that grant it would receive under a four-year supply
agreement it entered into with Exide in April.
Usually mentioned in the same sound bites as Axion are nine other companies the
state considers main players in the green economy, including Gamesa Technology
Corp. Inc., one of the world's largest wind-turbine manufacturers, which has a
plant in Lower Bucks County, on a former U.S. Steel Corp. site.
Yet just how significant a manufacturing game-changer the green movement might
be in Pennsylvania is uncertain, economic experts say.
"The scale of the opportunity is uncertain as yet," said Mark Muro, policy chief
at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"But clearly this is a segment, a potentially large segment, of manufacturing
that actually has got possibility."
That goes for many states, Muro was quick to add.
"It will require very serious concerted, strategic, iterative work," said Muro,
who has advised the Rendell administration on how to make Pennsylvania more
competitive. "It's important to know that many, many states are seeing the same
opportunity."
They are chasing the same pool of stimulus dollars to help attract
manufacturers, or, if the plants are already in their states, to stay and
expand. Experts agree that the green economy's potential impact depends on
investment of stimulus dollars as well as government mandates on development and
use of alternative and renewable energy.
But just as critical, they contend, is a commitment in the schools to
implementing curriculums that will yield graduates equipped for a new breed of
blue-collar jobs.
Green manufacturing jobs will require a solid aptitude for math and science,
largely because they will "utilize technology, computers, intellect," said Mark
Basla, vice president of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, a
nonprofit agency that advises manufacturers on staying competitive.
Green manufacturing will be a mix of blue- and white-collar jobs, Basla said.
Judging by the current inventory, workers range from glass cutters and frame
assemblers at a plant that makes energy-efficient windows and doors, to
doctorate engineers who have figured out how to use a carbon electrode to power
a car and store energy created by wind turbines and solar panels.
Manufacturing still will be "the gateway to the middle class," said Joe Houldin,
chief executive officer of the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center. "But
it's not for uneducated people anymore."
The way of the world
Pennsylvania ended 2008 with 644,200 manufacturing jobs, down from 659,100 in
2007 - on the way down from 1.65 million in 1953, its peak year, according to
records that go back to 1939.
The state attributes some of that to a change in coding in the early 1990s.
Before then, businesses were classified by product; since then, by the activity
in which a company is primarily engaged.
But there is no disputing the overall trend has been downward. Last year brought
the 10th straight year-over-year decline in manufacturing jobs, according to
data from Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry.
The picture was no better for New Jersey, which had 299,000 manufacturing jobs
at the end of 2008, down from 311,300 jobs in 2007. That also represented a 10th
straight year of decline, according to the state Labor Department.
Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party
www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/
