Editor’s Note: The is a guest contribution by Danny Kennedy, President of Sungevity. This is part of a series from the CEO’s of major solar companies. You can follow the complete series here.

Sometimes it is hard to contemplate what a good news story our industry – solar sales and installation – and the broader clean energy economy really represents. I was reminded on Monday at the graduation ceremony for the Oakland Green Collar Jobs Corps.

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In short, forty diverse, young and not-so-young people graduated from a tough, practical 30 week training course to be job-ready for work in the solar, weatherization and green construction sectors. 8 of them were not able to attend their own graduation, which had the Mayor and the great and good of the East Bay present because they already had jobs!

That is a big deal given that at this time something like 25 – 40% of union electricians in the area are going without work. It speaks to the excellence of their training, their own caliber, and the fact that green collar jobs are hot jobs even in a recession. And cities like Oakland are leading the way out of it with programs like this, which, at a very human level mean a lot to the people involved. They are also important for the whole economy.

Yesterday, I heard someone from the government-backed California Clean Energy Fund say that a clean energy company employs 4 – 5 people more than a non-green company, for every unit of production. And of those jobs created in solar, most are in the community – not short-term construction gigs or heartless factory jobs - but service positions selling systems, installing them on roofs, or maintaining them in other ways.

Obama, the Arnold Schwarzenegger, and everyone on down has been talking about green-collar jobs and workforce development, which is great. There’s a lot more they can do to support the kinds of job creation that are possible with the clean energy economy but I won’t try to tell you just what they should be doing in DC and Sacramento right now with various bills being debated.

But I do want to point out that at the end of the day, people are the limiting factor on the success of the solar industry. It is not just about the hardware. It’s about employees that sell, install and service the solar systems that will make our business’ succeed and grow and spread the sunshine of solar electricity. We have to train more of them for all the functions required to get this great technology onto the rooftops of middle America.

I look forward to the time when there are too many Green Collar Jobs cohorts coming out of various programs nationwide to go to them all. That’s when we’ll know we’re winning! Shine on!

Photo Courtesy greenforall.org via Flickr under Creative Commons License.