Vice President Joe Biden arrived in the Triangle on Thursday and headed straight for the headquarters of a Durham company that has become a symbol of the Obama administration's economic hopes.
In front of excited employees and friendly local politicians, Biden praised LED maker Cree's energy-efficient lights as exactly the kind of products that the country needs to design, manufacture and export.
"I don't think I've ever seen a success story quite like this one here at Cree," Biden said. "It ties so muchinto what President Obama and I are trying to do."
Visiting Cree allowed the vice president to talk about both the 375 jobs Cree has added since February 2009 and the $39 million in federal tax credits the company has received under a stimulus program for green energy manufacturers.
Not directly mentioned were the half-million North Carolinians now out of work. The state's unemployment rate, which hit 11.1 percent in January, is the highest it has been since the state began keeping track in 1976.
Putting people back to work will require rebuilding the economy from the ground up, Biden said, and a key part of this new foundation is green energy.
Biden was joined at Thursday's event by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who praised Cree for manufacturing its LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, in Durham.
"Some people think our economy might be based on white-collar jobs, such as financial services and service jobs, but I believe that making stuff is still a part of wealth creation," Chu said. "There's no reason why America should cede the manufacturing of high-quality products to any country."
Is clean energy enough?
The question for North Carolina, which has lost more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs just since the recession began in December 2007, is whether the clean-energy sector will ever create enough manufacturing jobs to make a serious dent in those that vanished in the textile and furniture industries.
The success of Cree, a leader in making LEDs for overhead lighting, shows the potential of the sector. Overhead lighting is a $120 billion worldwide industry, and less than 1 percent of it is now LEDs.
"The revolution is really just started," said Greg Merritt, Cree's vice president of corporate marketing. "We're at the very beginning."
The $39 million in tax credits Cree received represents 30 percent of the money the company will spend expanding its Durham manufacturing facility. The company also has plants in China.
Cree was the only North Carolina company out of 183 nationwide to receive some of the $2.3 billion in tax credits allotted for green energy manufacturing. Biden announced Thursday that the Obama administration wants to expand the program by an additional $5 billion, but it's unclear whether more of that will go to North Carolina companies the second time around.
David Kirkpatrick, managing director of SJF Ventures, a Durham venture capital firm that invests in clean energy companies, said the real opportunity for job creation is likely to be in the integration of green building systems and the installation of lighting, solar and wind technology.
"Those kind of things have to happen in the U.S. because you physically have to be here to do it," he said.
A global marketplace
Kirkpatrick estimated that North Carolina is among the top states in the Southeast in terms of creating clean-technology jobs, and in the top 10 to 20 nationwide.
While many clean-energy businesses may retain some higher-end assembly in the United States, the fact is, those companies compete in a global marketplace.
"There needs to be not this sense that everything has to be done in the U.S.," Kirkpatrick said. "You have to understand the global market and be smart about what can be done effectively here."
