In February 2009, I visited the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington and wrote a column about the hope and excitement elicited by the incoming Obama administration and newly minted federal stimulus programs.

The 2010 edition of Good Jobs, Green Jobs returned to Washington in May, and I attended to see how a deep green audience of over 3,000 labor and environmental activists viewed the president's progress some 15 months later.

What I found was hope tempered by a gritty realism.

Conference participants had endured a difficult year of continuing job losses, grueling Congressional battles, and the spectacle of Deepwater Horizon spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But, remarkably, there was satisfaction about what had been achieved and hope -- albeit more guarded than it had been in 2009 -- for continuing progress on the green jobs front.

At the sessions I attended, speakers stressed that the federal stimulus created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) remained very much a work in progress.

The consensus: It had been unrealistic to expect a green jobs program to have been implemented fully in 12 to 15 months, especially in newly emerging industries.

The Department of Energy's $6 billion home weatherization program, for example, put the federal government and its state and local partners into a sector where retrofit protocols, wage standards and training opportunities were fluid and evolving. As of mid-2010, the weatherization program is just getting off the ground.

Other errors were those of program design. The failure to provide administrative funding for state and local government charged with rolling out many green ARRA initiatives slowed funds deployment and job creation, as did rigorous reporting requirements adopted to ensure transparency.

Finally, capital markets disarray prevented full utilization of green investment incentives for much of 2009 -- a situation that is turning around in 2010.

Despite these initial setbacks, there are accomplishments to report. ARRA has created or saved an estimated 2 to 2.4 million jobs, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Others cited ARRA's role in the development of record numbers of alternative energy projects, and the creation of some 50,000 new jobs in the wind sector alone during 2009.

A longer-term -- and no less crucial -- outcome is ARRA's probable effect on American competitiveness. ARRA has jumpstarted America's transition to a green supply chain, agreed Chu, EPA Deputy Administrator Robert Perciasepe and the Sierra Club's Carl Pope. Without this transition, said Chu, the U.S. will fall further behind China and the European Union, where regulators and industry are already beginning to embrace low-carbon strategies.

I appreciated that Obama administration officials at Good Jobs, Green Jobs stressed the competitive urgency of America's transition to a green economy. It's a thoughtful, long-term take on economic growth.

What surprised me though, was the grass roots support for green technologies from conference attendees whose livelihoods depend on conventional energy. Labor and community officials from Kentucky and southwest Virginia told me that they were working to bring ARRA-supported alternative energy projects to the Appalachian region.

Their motive? Concern about peak coal, which could lead to an eroding economic base and lowered employment in coming years. When coal country starts to support green jobs, a significant shift is underway.

Leanne Tobias is founder and managing principal of Malachite LLC, an advisory firm that specializes in the development, leasing, management, financing and certification of sustainable or green real estate on a global basis. You can get in touch with Leanne at this link

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