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When it comes to having "green jobs," Utah's economy is behind the national curve.
Salt Lake City is doing OK, finishing 50th among the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas. But outside Salt Lake City, jobs that produce "goods and services with an environmental benefit" just aren't that plentiful.
Provo ranked last in a report released Thursday by The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. Ogden was third from the bottom.
That's unfortunate, said the report from Brookings, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., that researches issues impacting the "health and prosperity of metropolitan areas."
For one thing, the report said, what it describes as the "clean economy" employs 2.7 million people, more than the fossil-fuel industry. Also, the median wage of green positions nationally is 13 percent higher than for jobs overall.
And future growth potential is almost unlimited, a concept major U.S. economic competitors such as the Chinese and Germans understand better than Americans, it said.
"The clean-economy sector is already an important source of industrial innovation, good-paying manufacturing jobs and exports for a nation that needs them," said Mark Muro, co-author of the report, touted by Brookings as the first comprehensive look at the distribution of green jobs in metro areas.
"Key segments show great promise for helping us use resources more efficiently, improving our national security, protecting our environment and remaining competitive in rapidly changing global markets," Muro added.
A West Valley City company identified in the report as fitting this bill is Ceramatec Inc., whose 200 employees are involved in several research and development projects.
Its most notable project, said Vice President Dale Taylor, involves the use of a ceramic membrane to remove oxygen from air. Pure oxygen is far more efficient in turning coal into a gas for use in the combustion process.
"The net benefit is you generate electricity more efficiently," Taylor added. "You burn coal, a cheap energy source, and you don't put carbon dioxide into the environment."
But as the report emphasized, companies such as Ceramatec are often hamstrung by policy disputes at the federal and state government levels. Innovative firms are hurt even more by a lack of financial-aid programs that encourage research, Brookings said.
That's how the situation looks to Taylor, a 20-year veteran at Ceramatec.
Congressional fighting in Washington, D.C., over the budget deficit has created "an unfortunate political environment" in which efforts to cut spending left and right leave many worthwhile projects struggling to survive.
"We've found it difficult to get any kind of meaningful seed money out of the government to start new research and development [R&D]," Taylor said.
"Only the government can take on that risk. If you want radical change from the status quo, government has to get involved," he said.
Taylor's convinced the investment would be worthwhile.
"If you put money into someone leveling a road, the return on investment is very poor. But with R&D, you get an amplification factor that creates jobs," he said.
Twitter: @sltribmikeg —
What's a 'green job'?
One that "produces goods and services with an environmental beneļ¬t."
See "Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment" from The Brookings Institution. It is available at http://www.brookings.edu/metro/clean_jobs.aspx.