MetroWest495 Biz

MetroWest495 Biz | May 2014 11 With solid legal advice and nearly a century of experience, Bowditch & Dewey takes pride in providing our clients with big city ideas they require and small town relationships they desire. With offices spanning the Massachusetts business corridor, from Boston to Central Massachusetts, we do business where you do business. community. great lawyers know the law, Good lawyers know the Mass. clean manufacturing alliances boost workers' ability to fill jobs t here's a growing reality across Massachusetts: High-tech manufacturing jobs are not your grandparents' assembly-line jobs of the past; they are the jobs of the future. Highly skilled local workers will build prototypes and market-ready devices and products that will fuel our economy for decades, providing our children and grandchildren with work that pays an average of $75,000 annually. Despite misconceptions, manufacturing production in Massachusetts is actually growing to the tune of 8.7 percent annually; 70 percent of employers expect to add manufacturing jobs in the next five years, according to Staying Power II, a 2012 report by professors at Northeastern University in Boston. Since taking office in 2007, Gov. Deval Patrick has made supporting the state's manufacturing sector a priority of his economic development strategy, including the creation of the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative — a statewide group comprised of leaders of industry, academia and government — which recently hosted its annual summit at Worcester's DCU Center. In the past year alone, we've seen a 20-percent increase in the number of clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to our 2013 Massachusetts Clean Energy Industry Report. Nearly 13,500 of the 80,000 clean energy workers in the commonwealth are performing manufacturing jobs. In November, I was proud to join Gov. Patrick at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Marlborough for Ambri, an energy storage company that opened a manufac- turing facility to produce its large-scale batteries. Ambri's facility builds the company's prototype systems for deployment over the next two years in places like Joint Base Cape Cod, formerly known as the Massachusetts Military Reservation. At the base, the technology will dem- onstrate how energy storage systems can integrate renewable energy generation and increase grid stability, while making the base more energy independent. There are similar stories at work across the commonwealth, with startups us- ing local manufacturers to build the prototypes they hope will be The Next Big Thing; established companies are manufacturing the solar panel components they'll sell and install on the global stage. Staying Power II predicts there will be 100,000 open manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts over the next decade. But we need workers. Gov. Patrick recently filed An Act to Promote Growth and Opportunity, which provides $20 million for an Advanced Manufacturing and Information Technology Training Trust Fund to train 4,000 workers for middle-skill careers in manufacturing and information technology fields. We run a popular internship program (www.masscec.com/intern) that pro- vides funding to clean energy companies across the state to employ interns. In 2011, we gave a grant to the Manufacturing Advancement Center (MAC), a Worcester-based nonprofit founded to create a conduit between today's evolving workforce, skills training, and job opportunities. The grant helped the center work closely with the Massachusetts Manu- facturing Extension Partnership to provide on-the-job training in entry-level manufacturing at contract manufacturers in the clean energy supply chain. And we're also seeing the private sector step in to do its part. Siemens USA recently announced it will donate $660 million in technology to educational institutions across the state, including Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Worcester Technical High School, to help students experience the types of jobs available in the manufacturing sector. By working together, we can ensure that manufacturers have access to the skilled, trained workforce they need to grow businesses here. And as we continue to grow this clean energy manufacturing base, it's in- cumbent upon all of us to get this message out: These aren't the manufacturing jobs of your grandparents; they're the jobs of your grandchil- dren. n green energY By AliciA BArton Special to MetroWest495 Biz Alicia Barton is CEO of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a publicly funded agency charged with helping to grow and support the commonwealth's clean energy sector. We help businesses and organizations communicate with purpose, clarity and effect. Boston | Providence | Washington, DC (866) 411-7321 www.ConoverGould.com

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