Kaine to offer green-jobs plan

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will call today for state tax incentives and grants to promote environmentally friendly businesses and jobs.

Kaine will lay out his proposals, which require General Assembly approval, this morning in Virginia Beach, according to sources who requested anonymity because Kaine had not released the plan.

Kaine will propose, according to the sources:

—Creating a tax credit for those who install green energy systems, such as solar power. The credit could reach $20,000 for a business and would be less than $8,000 for an individual.

—Making purchases of home energy systems such as solar cells and some windmills exempt from the state’s 5 percent sales tax.

—Providing state grants to makers of renewable-power equipment such as that used to tap wind or geothermal energy. (Geothermal energy relies on underground temperatures to heat or cool buildings.) This would expand eligibility for a little-used program that currently offers up to $18 million over six years for manufacturers of solar-power equipment.

The proposals add detail to Kaine’s Renew Virginia plan, which he launched in mid-December. The program aims to protect the environment and create so-called “green jobs.“

“Virginia has the potential to create tens of thousands of green jobs by 2025,“ Kaine said then.

Kenneth P. Green, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, believes it’s unwise to use tax money to promote green jobs.

That money would be better spent — and would create more jobs overall — if left in the pockets of people and businesses, Green said.

“I’d call [green jobs] more of a fad than a good thing,“ Green said.

Cale Jaffe, a lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center, a conservation group, said he was not aware of Kaine’s latest proposals but generally supported the push for green jobs.

Jaffe said he particularly supported efforts to make homes and businesses more energy-efficient because that reduces emissions, linked to global warming, from coal-burning power plants.

Kaine officials have said they also consider nuclear power plants to be green, since they don’t release greenhouse gases.

But Green and Jaffe said they don’t call nuclear power green, largely because the plants create long-lasting radioactive waste.

“It really depends on how you define green jobs,“ Jaffe said.

Rex Springston is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.