A British supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, opened a new store yesterday where the checkouts will be people-powered. The store features a new kinetic energy generator that will draw power from moving vehicles in the Gloucester supermarket’s parking lot.

Whenever a vehicle passes over the ‘Kinetic Road Plates’ in the car park, energy is captured and channeled back into the store saving power that would normally be taken from the National Grid.

The road plates are expected to produce 30 kW of green energy an hour, more than enough to power the store’s checkouts. The system, pioneered for Sainsbury’s by Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems, does not affect the car or fuel efficiency; and drivers feel no disturbance as they drive over the plates.    

The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according to a report (PDF) released last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The report also found that this promising sector is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing consumer demand, venture capital and government infusions of cash, and  federal and state policy reforms.

Pew found the count of the actual jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007.  Across all 50 states green job growth outperformed overall job growth in 38 states and the District of Columbia.

The report finds that the emerging clean energy economy is creating well-paying jobs in every state for people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds.  Included in Pew’s definition are jobs as diverse as engineers, plumbers, administrative assistants, construction workers, machine setters, marketing consultants, teachers and many others, with annual incomes ranging from $21,000 to $111,000.