by Akindele Akinyemi

The local urban communities in America are natural wealth builders with the ability to leverage not just states but entire countries economically if we learn to use our vision for the greater good as opposed to the greater greed.

In this day and age our cities should reflect the 21st century, especially when it comes to sustainable energy production. I am not a person who like to engage in the politics of sustainable energy. Instead, I want to leverage an energy policy to help empower local communities with a new workforce that will help sustain local communities like Inkster, Michigan.

Renewable and sustainable energy technologies, just like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) industries, are needed to help rebuild local urban communities to prosperity. It’s our responsibility, as visionaries on this journey, to lead and strive to build a talented and globally competitive workforce, a vibrant economy and great quality of life and effective, efficient, and accountable government that works for the inner cities of America.

There are several reasons why renewable energy and technology are needed in this day and age more than ever.

Environmental pollution hits the urban community harder than other communities. For example, if you've ever driven on I-75 South of Downtown Detroit (Michigan), it’s hard to miss the smell coming off the landscape of industrial stacks and facilities. Del-Ray residents, located in this highly industrialized area of southwest Detroit, are neighbors with Marathon Oil, Great Lakes Steel, Detroit Edison, wastewater treatment plants, and a dozen other industrial facilities.

Across Detroit and other local urban communities here in Michigan there is a legacy of lead contamination and hazardous waste. Soil samples from lawns and nearby property reveal significantly high levels of lead. Studies show that among infants and young children, lead poisoning has been associated with development and behavioral disorders and juvenile delinquency. In addition, the situation in Flint, Michigan, with lead leeching into the water has just killed off an entire generation.

Three out of the five largest commercial hazardous waste landfills in the United States are located in mostly Black or Hispanic (Latino) communities; these landfills account for 40% of the nation’s estimated commercial landfill space. Cities with large Black populations like St. Louis, Houston, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta and Memphis have the largest numbers of uncontrolled toxic waste sites. About half of all Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans live in communities with uncontrolled waste sites.

Michigan leads the nation in terms of the disparity between the percentages of people of color living within 2 miles of a hazardous waste facility compared to the percentage of minorities outside that radius — 66 percent versus 19 percent. In other words, more than two-thirds of the people living near these sites are people of color, while fewer than 20 percent of those living outside the 2 mile radii are minorities.

The most important thing I would like to drive is the importance for the development of a renewable energy workforce in urban communities. Today, there has to be a sustainable energy strategy which is designed to enable the human race to make the transition from historic fossil fuels which dramatically improved the quality of life over the pre-industrial period to a new clean generation of energy which will: enable us in national security terms to be liberated from dependence on foreigners; enable us in economic terms to be effective in worldwide competition; and enable us in environmental terms to provide for a much cleaner and healthier future. Let’s face it, the use of coal and other industrial age technologies are a thing of the past. Instead, sustainable development involves balancing development needs against protection of the natural environment. In the future, it is likely that cities will be developed to minimize impact on the environment and to use renewable energy sources.

Most cities, controlled by Black people, do not have a sustainable energy plan within their municipality’s Master Plan. Developing a sustainable energy execution plan should be embedded in a city’s Master Plan to be economically sound for a city that is on life support. Some make fun at green jobs and green technology. Some ask how can wind energy support the environment? The answer is competition. Wind energy produce electricity. Here is a chance to contribute to the free market by way of producing sustainable green jobs through manufacturing. That would force other utilities to drive down the cost of utilities.

Local urban communities should not be left behind in this movement. Here is why.

Renewable energy in the United States accounted for 13.44 percent of the domestically produced electricity in 2015 and 11.1 percent of total energy generation.As of 2014, more than 143,000 people work in the solar industry.The U.S. advanced energy market is now $200 billion, nearly double the revenue of beer, more than pharmaceutical manufacturing, and approaching wholesale consumer electronics.

Solar PV revenue grew 21% over last year, wind was up 75%, building efficiency grew 11%, and energy storage multiplied over 10 times year-to-year. Advanced energy is a $1.4 trillion global industry, as big as fashion, twice the size of airlines, and close to worldwide spending on media and entertainment.

Building Efficiency is the largest advanced energy market segment, with $63.6 billion in revenue and 50% growth over 2011, counting only products for which we have all five years of data. Solar continues to be a dynamic growth story in the U.S.

Even as costs have declined by nearly 50%, revenue from Solar PV reached$22.6 billion, up 21% over last year and nearly triple 2011 revenue. State and regional policies promoting energy storage pushed that industry to grow by a massive 1200 percent over in 2015, to $743 million.

Electric vehicle sales grew to almost $5 billion, despite historically low gas prices.

Why local urban communities MUST develop a workforce in renewable energy?

Green workforce rose 5% worldwide in 2015 to 8.1 million.The number of U.S. jobs in solar energy overtook those in oil and natural gas extraction for the first time last year, helping drive a global surge in employment in the clean-energy business as fossil-fuel companies faltered.

Employment in the U.S. solar business grew 12 times faster than overall job creation Workforce in clean energy will grow to 24 million by 2030. Solar PV was the largest renewable energy employer with 2.8 million jobs worldwide, an 11% increase over 2014.

Seriously, investing in sustainable energy jobs mean new green-collar jobs for local urban middle-class workers at a time when blue-collar jobs are drying up or shipping out: Solar panel manufacturer; green building construction worker; sustainable forestry worker. These are all sustainable energy jobs. By their nature, green jobs are also local jobs, meaning that money stays in the community and creates a multiplier effect for the local economy. You can't outsource a green job, and a green job doesn't take a toll on public health.

There is a challenge here, of course: Boom times like the dot-com era didn't do much for communities of color or low-income workers. But green jobs require a specialized skill set, giving workers who have been locked out of the old economy an opportunity to skill up and move to the front of the line for jobs in the new clean and green economy.

As part of a local urban community’s Master Plan we need to incorporate what is called Sustainable Enterprise Zones. These are areas where green businesses and green-collar employers are given incentives and benefits to locate and hire. This will be part of a comprehensive Sustainable Economic Development Plan distinguished by eco-industrial parks.

Let’s go further. Most local cities, that are controlled by Black people, have in their city charter and city code, the right to develop a municipal utility company for their residents. So please explain why are our local urban cities are financially strapped when we have the tools in front of us to invest in a sustainable utility company to generate revenue for our communities? It’s inexcusable for local urban communities not to become 100% sustainable in the next 5-7 years.

Wyandotte, Michigan has a geothermal utility that they are using for some residents in the city. Meanwhile, a group of residents in Leelanau Township (MI), which includes the village of Northport, are finalizing a goal of becoming a 100 percent clean energy community by 2020. What are cities that are economically depressed in traditionally urban communities doing to reduce the cost of energy and increase the workforce in terms of jobs in sustainable energy? What are we doing to convert residential parks that we are not using in the inner cities to sustainable energy incubators?

Cities in Michigan like Inkster, Highland Park, Detroit, Ecorse, River Rouge, Saginaw, Muskegon Heights, Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac and even Benton Harbor must invest in the renewable energy economy, one that will create a new era of high paying middle class jobs, and an investment that strengthens the overall economy by reducing government budget deficits.

Therefore, we should redirect their energy and focus on developing green communities that will include an optimistic, positive, science and technology based, entrepreneurial, market-oriented, incentive-led, environmentalism that creates more solutions faster and that will result in more biodiversity with less pollution and a safer urban community. This is something important that should not be ignored. After all what affects us in the inner city will affect us regionally.

It's time to move away from the industrial age and move into the information age with sustainable energy technology to restore local urban communities.