Pennsylvania stands to gain more than 40,000 jobs in renewable energy manufacturing if the United States commits to a 10-year program of stabilizing carbon emissions, according to a report released yesterday.

"Pennsylvania's Road to Energy Independence," issued by the Blue-Green Action Alliance, a public policy partnership of the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers, said 42,688 jobs could be created in the state for workers who would manufacture components for wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable energy equipment.

According to the report, stabilizing carbon emissions would require adding 185,00 megawatts of new renewable projects each year, whether solar, wind, biomass or geothermal.

Based on that demand, it then ranked states and counties according to the number of existing firms that could supply the components for the new equipment needed to produce the power.

Pennsylvania ranked sixth, with 2,188 such firms that could produce 19,588 jobs in wind power, 15,767 in solar, 3,911 in biomass and 3,402 in geothermal.

Speakers at the news briefing announcing the report took the opportunity to express support for the energy bill, which likely will come up for a vote in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate this week.

The bill contains a provision that will require electricity suppliers to generate 15 percent of their electricity from alternative sources by 2020 -- a provision that could lead to a presidential veto.

Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said the bill would create "a real capability for the low-hanging fruit of job creation," giving as an example Gamesa, the Spanish wind energy developer that located its U.S. headquarters and a wind turbine plant in Pennsylvania after the state passed its renewable energy portfolio standard, creating "close to 1,000 steelworker jobs."