Source: Pew Charitable Trusts

A report released this week by The Pew Charitable Trusts ranks Oregon way ahead of Washington state when it comes to jobs in the clean tech sector. 

According to the report, more than one percent of Oregon's jobs were in wind, solar and other clean tech business in 2007 -- the biggest share in the country. That compares to .55 percent in Washington, which ranked in the third tier in terms of percentage of jobs in the clean tech business.

Oregon -- with 19,340 jobs in clean tech -- also added jobs in the sector at a brisk pace between 1998 and 2007. It had a clean tech job growth rate of 50.7 percent for that period, which compares to a stagnant growth rate of just 0.5 percent in Washington.

In response to the report, Alan Durning of the environmental think tank Sightline Institute tells Seattle Weekly that measuring green collar jobs is "quite challenging." And he argues that Washington is actually making progress in terms of building a clean tech economy -- an argument that runs counter to what guest columnist Rob Elam of Propel Biofuels had to say on TechFlash a few months ago.

In fact, the numbers aren't quite as bad as they seem for Washington. The state still ranks in the top five in terms of venture capital investments in clean tech, according to the report. (However, a large portion of that capital may be tied to massive investments in troubled Imperium Renewables).

And the Pew study put Washington in the "large and growing" category along with 11 other states.

"These states’ clean energy economies are expanding at a moderate but steady rate, and they have a strong foundation on which
to build," the report said.

Nationally, the report found that clean tech jobs grew at a rate of 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007, ahead of all jobs which grew at 3.7 percent.