Climate Jobs Network

By Lara Skinner, Fred Zalcman, Georges Sassine, Julie Tighe, and Vincent Alvarez - Cornell ILR, February 14, 2024

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

It’s not every day that workers get to tell representatives of Congress how federal programs affect their work lives. But that’s just what happened when union members working on clean energy projects in Illinois, Maine, and New York spoke about the impact of federal climate investments in their communities to the Clean Energy Workers Roundtable hosted by the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).

Kilton Webb, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 567 told the Roundtable how his union is training clean energy workers in Maine:

I’m in my final year as an apprentice, and after five years, I have put in 8,000 work hours on commercial, industrial, and solar fields. The work is hard, but rewarding because I am part of this new clean energy industry that is doing great things for the state of Maine. It’s also exciting because of the potential of having more union jobs ready for the next generation of workers. Students who were in middle and high school when I started my journey of becoming an electrician are now apprentices that I work with and teach every day.

By Zach Cunningham, Melissa Shetler, et. al. - Cornell University, ILR School, Climate Jobs Institute, October 2023

With this report, the CJI addresses another core aspect of tackling the dual crises of climate change and inequality: ensuring that frontline, historically underserved communities have expansive, effective pathways into high-quality union clean energy careers. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act have brought increased attention to two important clean energy workforce questions. First, does the U.S. have enough trained workers to meet the demands of the clean energy economy? And second, how do we ensure that the clean energy workforce is diverse and inclusive? This report responds to both of these questions by showing that there are model programs across the U.S. that create pathways for underserved communities into apprenticeship readiness, union apprenticeship programs, and ultimately, good union careers. This study, as well as our many years of experience in the field, have taught us that there is no simple or easy solution to creating or scaling successful pathways.

These pathways exist in an ecosystem of essential and interdependent actors that must be focused on the common goal of building a diverse, equitable and unionized clean energy workforce. Key actors and components include: union-led climate coalitions advocating for bold, equitable climate action; policymakers implementing ambitious, jobs-led climate policy; strong labor and equity standards that ensure clean energy jobs are good union jobs; high-quality union apprenticeship programs that pay apprentices well and make sure that the clean energy workforce is highly-skilled and well-trained; trusting partnerships between labor unions, environmental justice organizations, community groups, employers, MWBE contractors, government, and academic institutions; and the focus of this report, high-quality apprenticeship readiness programs that provide participants with the support they need to successfully enter union apprenticeship.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Autumn Guillotte, Erica Hammond, Mike Roles, and Aislinn Hanley - Labor Vision RI, March 28, 2023

By Sarah Shemkus - Energy News, February 1, 2023

A group of environmental and labor organizations want a state offshore wind advisory committee in its final plan to include more specific language recommending project labor and labor peace agreements.

As Maine comes close to finalizing its roadmap for the development of offshore wind, a coalition of labor and environmental groups is asking the state to strengthen its commitment to supporting union jobs in the burgeoning industry. 

A group of 12 environmental and labor organizations has sent a letter to the Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap Advisory Committee asking that the final plan, expected by early February, incorporate explicit language recommending the use of project labor agreements and labor peace agreements as the offshore wind sector develops in Maine. Many of the same advocates are supporting a bill, announced by Democratic state Sen. Mark Lawrence last month, that would require union labor agreements on offshore wind projects. 

“Organized labor needs to be a crucial part of this investment,” said Kelt Wilska, energy justice manager for Maine Conservation Voters. “And we need to make sure working families, both coastal and inland, benefit from this.”

As states from New England down to North Carolina work on their own plans for implementing offshore wind projects, Maine is expected to be a major player in the growing industry. With strong, consistent winds, the Gulf of Maine is widely considered to be one of the most promising areas for offshore wind development.

Maine convened its Offshore Wind Roadmap Advisory Committee in July 2021 with the mission of creating an economic development plan for the fast-emerging industry. The panel — which includes 25 members representing state and municipal governments, private business, community and environmental nonprofits, and organized labor — released its draft plan in early December. 

The document outlines strategies for investing in infrastructure and workforce development; reducing costs and increasing resilience through renewable power; advancing Maine-based innovation; and protecting and supporting the seafood industry, coastal communities and the ocean ecosystem. Labor and environmental groups have praised much of the plan, particularly its focus on comprehensive planning, workforce and supply chain investment, and environmental monitoring and mitigation. 

By staff - European Trade Union Institute, September 15, 2022

The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is properly recognised as the largest climate policy in US history. In this short essay I will first summarise and comment on its provisions, then outline the reactions to it, with a focus on labour unions, and will close by providing my own thoughts.

The IRA allocates around $370 billion over a period of ten years. About 75% of that is in the form of incentives (rather than direct investments or regulatory mandates) to advance the transition to ‘clean energy’ that includes renewables but also nuclear power, biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration. These incentives focus primarily on advancing the production of clean energy but also on stimulating its consumption. Smaller energy investments focus on tackling pollution in poorer communities and on conservation and rural development.

The IRA also authorises as much as $350 billion of loans to be disbursed by the Department of Energy. While such loans have been around since the Bush Administration, the amounts and the likelihood that they will be used during the Biden Administration are much higher. Finally, its main regulatory provision is the designation of carbon, methane and other heat-trapping emissions from power plants, automobiles, and oil and gas wells as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, one of the bedrocks of US environmental legislation, which the Environmental Protection Agency implements. Overall, it is estimated that by 2030 the IRA will help reduce emissions by around 40% of 2005 levels, compared to the about 25% reduction projected without it. 

However, the policy mandates that renewable energy siting permits cannot be approved during any year unless accompanied by the opening up of 2 million acres of land or 60 million acres of ocean to oil and gas leasing bids, respectively, during the prior year (for more details see 50265 of Act). In either case, the amount of actual leasing and drilling is subject to market dynamics rather than regulatory limits, while the Act also streamlines the permitting process for pipelines. The growing transition to electric vehicles will lessen the market for oil but the strategic repositioning of natural gas in energy production (as well as plastics) suggests that it (along with nuclear power) will be a long-term source of energy, including in the production of hydrogen. Nevertheless, overall, it is the prevailing view that the IRA will decisively transition the US into renewable energy as part of a broader energy mix.

By Jonathan Neale - Fight the Fire, September 2022

This article is about stopping climate change and about fighting for a world based on love and sharing. My argument is that both these projects have to go together. But for either project to work, both climate activists and socialists have to change, fundamentally and fast. And there has to be a deeper change, a change in all humanity.

We may well fail. But with these ideas we have a chance.

Let me explain. I start with climate, and I start with failure.

For thirty years everyone who cares to know has known about the threat of climate change. Over those thirty years more and more world leaders have said louder and louder that the crisis will be upon us, that something must be done, that they promise to do something. And the more the leaders of the world tell us that they will do something, the worse things get.

It is not just that the temperatures continue to rise. It is not just that the temperatures rise faster and faster. The amount of carbon dioxide – CO2 – in the air grows every year, and each year it grows faster and faster. It is not just that the leaders of the world have failed to stop climate change. It is that they have collectively presided over making things worse.

At the United Nations climate talks in Scotland last year Greta Thunberg sent out two tweets. To the leaders of the world, she said: “Blah, blah, blah. Fuck You.”

To us, she said: “Uproot the system.”

That’s the politics of ecosocialism in eight words.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 2022

The Rhode Island legislature has just required that 100 percent of electricity sold in the state comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2033. That’s sooner than any other state in the country.

According to the Boston Globe, “Labor and environmental groups have joined together in the Climate Jobs Rhode Island coalition” which is advocating for a “just transition to a pro-worker and pro-climate green economy” in Rhode Island.

Patrick Crowley, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and Co-Chair of Climate Jobs Rhode Island said,

 We’re hoping that by demonstrating that the labor movement and the environmental movement can work together, that other states—my sister and brother labor organizations across the country—can look at this as an example for how to get things done in a big way.

“If we continue down this path, we will show the labor and environmental communities across the country that this is how it’s done,” Crowley said. “If you want to get it done, you do it the Rhode Island way.”

By Lara Skinner, Auburn Bell, Marina Zhavoronkova, Matt Schlobohm, Laura Fortman, et. al. - Cornell ILR Worker Institute, June 29, 2022