Following on the heels of a study from the Pew Charitable Trusts last week, two more reports from a broad coalition of environmental groups and research institutes suggest that clean-energy investments have the potential to kick-start the economy and employ millions of workers — particularly those at the lower end of the economic scale.

In a statement accompanying the release of the two reports — one authored jointly by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the other by the institute, the green jobs advocacy group Green For All and the Natural Resources Defense Council — the researchers assert that a “$150 billion investment in clean energy could create a net increase of 1.7 million American jobs and significantly lower the national unemployment rate.”

As part of their study, P.E.R.I. and the Center for American Progress provide a state-by-state breakdown of where jobs are most likely to be generated.

And Robert Pollin, James Heintz and Heidi Garrett-Peltier — researchers at P.E.R.I. — wrote on the center’s Web site on Thursday that the estimated 1.7 million jobs could make a significant impact on the nation’s jobless rate:

These job gains would be enough — on their own — to reduce the unemployment rate in today’s economy by about one full percentage point, to 8.4 percent from current 9.4-percent levels — even after taking into full account the inevitable job losses in conventional fossil-fuel sectors of the U.S. economy as they contract. Our detailed analysis … calculates that roughly 2.5 million new jobs will be created overall by spending $150 billion on clean-energy investments, while close to 800,000 jobs would be lost if conventional fossil-fuel spending were to decline by an equivalent amount. It is not likely that all $150 billion in new clean-energy investment spending would come at the expense of reductions in the fossil-fuel industry. However, we present this scenario to establish a high-end estimate for reductions in conventional fossil-fuel spending, and the net gains in employment that will still result through spending $150 billion per year on clean-energy investments.

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