As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an OpEd in today’s Detroit News suggests that Michigan has much to gain in the emerging green economy. Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank’s asset management division, highlights the connection between protecting our environment and creating the clean energy jobs of the future.

Where can the clean-energy economy take root fastest?

From where I sit as head of a multibillion-dollar green investment fund, the answer is in places like Michigan thanks to its advanced industrial capacity and smart moves by state lawmakers.

This comes on top of recent indications that our efforts are bearing fruit when it comes to creating jobs for Michigan workers and turning our economy around. Last year, the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth released the state’s first-ever Green Jobs Report, which showed that more than 100,000 of our state’s residents are already employed in Michigan’s emerging green economy. And just this month, the American Wind Energy Association said that Michigan was fast becoming a manufacturing powerhouse in wind energy, with this fast-growing economic sector already supporting as many as 4000 good-paying manufacturing jobs for Michigan workers.

Perhaps even more important than these numbers is the rate of growth, and what these trends mean for our future. From 2005-2008, during a time when the overall Michigan economy shrank by a rate of 5.4%, job creation in Michigan’s Green Economy actually increased by 7.7%, and job creation in the renewable energy sector grew by an incredible 30% during that time.

So how did we get here? Well it wasn’t on accident. Deutsche Bank’s Kevin Parker:

In Michigan, lawmakers have enacted a slew of critically important mandates and incentives to spur renewable energy, including a robust renewable portfolio standard that requires 10 percent of the state’s power to be green by 2015; strong preferences for solar power; so-called “feed-in tariffs” that encourage production of wind power by giving its producers easy access to the electricity grid with competitive prices; a net-metering law that pays customers who generate their own electricity; rebates, loans and tax credits for renewables; and efficiency requirements for utilities.

Lawmakers’ actions have begun to make Michigan an attractive place for climate-change investors. Indeed, the state earned a top rating in a recent study by DB Climate Change Advisors, an investment arm of the Deutsche Bank Group.

While we have a long, long way to go to erase the lost automotive jobs and others of the last decade, reports like this show the rest of the world is taking note of our success in creating jobs and attracting investment in emerging sectors of our economy. And on Earth Day, that’s reason for hope.