The alternative energy industry in America is strong–and getting stronger.

British Petroleum–the same “BP” whose oil division, earlier in 2006, was energy’s bad boy for its failure to properly address corrosion in its Alaskan pipeline–says it intends to invest $70 million in, and double the production capacity of, its Frederick, Maryland solar panel alternative energy plant.

Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, says that the current number of 20,000 people employed in the solar industry is expected to increase by 35%–or 7000 new workers–each year.

And the alternative energy producers of ethanol, having seen the demand for their product increase 27% over the past year, are building four dozen new ethanol processing plants.

Meanwhile, in the effort to increase the use of wind power as an alternative energy, the State of Pennsylvania, under Governor Edward Rendell, has financed the manufacture of wind towers and blades to be used in alternative energy wind turbines at Fair Hills. The Spanish Company Gamesa will employ 530 people in making the blades.

More state and city officials, like Governor Rendell, are reaching the conclusion that renewable alternative energy will only benefit their constituencies in cost savings and environmental protection. California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed alternative energy legislation mandating that by 2010, 20% of the ethanol consumed in California must be distilled there as well, and that amount will increase to 75% by 2025. Increased ethanol production means increased employment.

And, unlike the fast-food, and other service industry, explosion which has misled people into thinking that America does not have an employment problem, the alternative energy industry is opening up quality manufacturing employment which will replace some of those jobs outsourced to other countries.

Alternative energy, it appears, has come of age–offering not only a way for America to free itself from dependence on foreign fossil fuels, but also a way for Americans to return to the kinds of jobs that will improve their own quality of life, while the work they do improves the environment, and, perhaps, the quality of life elsewhere in the world.