If bundled with the right incentives, comprehensive climate and energy legislation will generate as many as 150,000 jobs in the American auto sector by 2020, according to a study released Tuesday.

This report "tracks a trend where more efficiency means more jobs," said Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which commissioned the study along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the United Auto Workers. "More efficiency means more investment in skilled labor, and in high-quality manufactured content, and that directly translates to jobs."

"The move to greater fuel economy means greater labor content per vehicle and higher employment across the fleet," the report states. "This will include new investment in a host of incremental improvements to conventional gasoline powered internal combustion engines, from new controls for valves and timing, to variable speed transmissions and advanced electronics. It will also include entirely new systems like hybrid drive trains and advanced diesel engines."

Transitioning to more fuel-efficient models would constitute a sea change for automakers, Hendricks said, allowing them to accommodate a global demand that "will increasingly be shaped by a desire to reduce dependence on oil, reduce climate impact."

Plus, he insisted, the report is "very concrete" and does not assume the advent of new technology. The changes proposed are essentially a matter of replacing the drive trains and "swapping out a less-efficient engine for a more-efficient engine."

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