cbowman@sacbee.com
Friday, Feb. 27, 2009
Employees at Enxco, developer of the 75-turbine Shiloh II wind farm near Suisun City, are among the growing ranks of "green collar" workers. President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package devotes funding to expand renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Like the first blades of grass in scorched earth, a new crop of wind turbines in Solano County will be generating not only electricity but steady income for refugees of the ravaged housing and automotive industries.
The beneficiaries include Anthony Perales, a 28-year-old father of three from Stockton, who was squeezed out of jobs framing houses and detailing new cars. He's now a "windsmith" trained to climb the 262-foot-high towers and maintain the turbines.
Then there's Julie Walton, 48, an escrow officer in Oakley who arrived at work one day to find her title insurance company's office abandoned, with no notice or final paychecks to employees. She now handles land deals for Enxco, the developer of the new wind farm near Suisun City.
Joining Walton is Jeremy Imbesi, who said he was making a six-figure income as a mortgage lender for a major bank in Modesto until the cascade of foreclosures drowned his business. He now leases large swaths of remote desert and ranchland from eager property owners for future wind farms.
The three Enxco employees are among the growing ranks of "green collar" workers that President Barack Obama references in his plans to lift the nation's economy through investment in clean energy.
Nearly one-tenth of his $787 billion stimulus plan that Congress just approved is devoted to expanding renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and investments in energy efficiency – including high-speed rail and weatherizing homes.
In his debut address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Obama also called for a market-based cap on carbon pollution to drive the production of renewable energy.
"This will allow renewable energy to compete on level playing fields with oil and coal," said Phil Angelides, a Democrat who lost to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the last gubernatorial race and is now chairman of Apollo Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes green jobs.
Wind power has been growing for years, thanks in part to generous federal and state tax credits for renewable energy investments.
Those credits and California incentives for meeting its mandate for generating 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 has allowed Enxco to buy land and build turbines even in the depths of the recession, said Mark Tholke, the company's director of development in California and the Southwest.
That puts Enxco in the enviable position of hiring from a hungry pool of skilled workers.
"It's gratifying to see refugees from the housing and other failed industries coming over to renewables," Tholke said Thursday after an opening ceremony for the company's 150-megawatt Shiloh II Wind Plant Project near Suisun Bay.
Perales, the newly hired windsmith, said the job opening came none too soon. He was laid off last fall for the second time in as many years with no other income to support his wife, their 11-year-old daughter and 23-month-old twins.
"It did a number on me," Perales said. "We had to borrow money – a lot, actually. It was scary."
A tip from a friend landed him the $14-an-hour job at Enxco a week before Christmas.
"This is the best job I ever had," Perales said earlier this week as he strapped on a climbing harness to demonstrate his tower-scaling equipment.
Perales had experienced working at heights during his housing construction jobs, but nothing like this.
"I never even heard of a windsmith," he said.
He was trained to climb with rope supports up narrow ladders inside the towers supporting the turbines. The ordeal included a mock helicopter rescue.
Walton said her 24 years experience in the title insurance industry is paying off at Enxco, where she researches property records of ranchers, farmers and others interested in leasing their land for wind energy and reaping royalties.
She had no notion of what a "green" job or "green" power meant until she started working at the firm's regional office in San Ramon.
"I looked up at these giant blades and thought, 'This is all it takes to generate electricity?' " Walton recalled. "I imagined only plants with smokestacks and hideous wires everywhere."
Imbesi, too, never pictured himself on the front lines of an environmentally lauded pursuit.
"I come from banking," he quipped, hinting at the black eye that profession received from collapsed financing and big federal bailouts.
"It feels good to be associated with something so positive," he said.
Call The Bee's Chris Bowman, (916) 321-1069.
