Green technology: From steel mills to wind farms?

Steelworkers tending blast furnaces and rolling mills in Pittsburgh 30 years ago could not have imagined that their jobs would turn so green, or that they would be working for foreign companies that needed their skills. Because of the convergence of the right political and economic elements, Spain's Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica, among the largest wind turbine generator manufacturers worldwide, put roots down in the United States in what would seem to be the most unlikely of places–on the carcasses of Pennsylvania steel mills that were famed for their power to pollute. Since its arrival in the state in 2004, Gamesa has become one of the drivers behind creating hundreds of unionized "green-collar" jobs and reducing carbon emissions from electrical generation. It also is part of the renewal that has been going on in Pittsburgh and its environs after the demise of the steel industry beginning the in the 1970s.