Green Collar jobs and sustainable industries are all the rage
nowadays. But how do you get such enterprises off the ground – before
they’re earning money? And how do you get the industries to the areas
where people need the jobs? In California, one way they are addressing
this issue is with the Cleantech Innovation Center (CIC), which opened
recently in Oroville in Butte County.

A vacant manufacturing building at the Oroville Airport Business
Park was renovated into the new 42,000-square-foot multi-use facility.
CIC is home to a variety of enterprises aimed at growing a burgeoning
green economy in the region, including groups promoting sustainable and
alternative building and construction practices, a worker training
facility and classrooms, and one of but a few High Altitude Wind Power
research projects in the U.S. The Zero Energy Homes project, an experiment in new house construction funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is adjacent to the center.

"The Cleantech Innovation Center is a perfect example of what works
today -- a locally-driven partn