green jobs

By E. Mark Curtis, Layla O'Kane, and R. Jisung Park - National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2023

Using micro-data representing over 130 million online work profiles, we explore transitions into and out of jobs most likely to be affected by a transition away from carbon-intensive production technologies. Exploiting detailed textual data on job title, firm name, occupation, and industry to focus on workers employed in carbon-intensive (“dirty”) and non-carbon-intensive (“green”) jobs, we find that the rate of transition from dirty to green jobs is rising rapidly, increasing ten-fold over the period 2005-2021 including a significant uptick in EV-related jobs in recent years. Overall however, fewer than 1 percent of all workers who leave a dirty job appear to transition to a green job. We find that the persistence of employment within dirty industries varies enormously across local labor markets; in some states, over half of all transitions out of dirty jobs are into other dirty jobs. Older workers and those without a college education appear less likely to make transitions to green jobs, and more likely to transition to other dirty jobs, other jobs, or non-employment. When accounting for the fact that green jobs tend to have later start dates, it appears that green and dirty jobs have roughly comparable job durations.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Diana DiGangi - Utility Dive, July 27, 2023

Dive Brief:

• The Maine legislature on Tuesday passed a bill requiring the state to procure 3 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040, and establishing provisions regarding the construction and siting of future projects.
• LD 1895 supports the creation of a port facility designed for fabricating and launching the materials needed to establish floating offshore wind farms, as the waters in the Gulf of Maine are too deep to accommodate fixed-bottom wind turbines.
• The bill received broad-based support from state labor and environmental groups, as well as some fishing industry groups, who supported the bill’s provision to give priority to projects sited outside of a key fishing area known as Lobster Management Area 1, or LMA-1.

By Elaine Weinreb - North Coast Journal, July 27, 2023

This graphic shows various types of offshore wind farms. The deep-water variety on the left will be what's used off Humboldt County's shoreline, where the waters reach approximately 2,500 feet deep. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Big changes are afoot on the Samoa Peninsula. The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is planning to construct a large manufacturing center to craft and assemble giant wind turbines suitable for the deep offshore waters of the Pacific Coast.

Officially known as the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Multipurpose Marine Terminal Project, the port development is a crucial step to bring plans to build a first-of-its kind wind farm off the Pacific Coast to fruition. It would also position Humboldt's as the only port on the West Coast built to manufacture and repair the turbines — a potential economic boon for the area as the industry enters a period of unprecedented growth.

In an effort to address the climate crisis, the Biden administration issued an executive order about a year ago requiring 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced by offshore winds by 2030. That's enough to power approximately 15 million homes, or just about all the housing units in California.

"The government has said, 'Within the next seven years, we're going to deploy 60 coal-fired power plants' worth of wind,'" Harbor District Development Director Rob Holmlund said at a recent public meeting initiating the environmental review process for the port project. "That is a really ambitious goal ... it's nearly double what the world currently has."

To achieve this, the federal government has leased out numerous areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in locations where the wind is the strongest.

While wind turbines are already common off the Atlantic Coast, where the ocean water is relatively shallow, the Pacific Coast poses unique challenges. Because the continental shelf drops steeply off only a few miles from the shoreline, wind farms off the Pacific Coast require a different design. While the East Coast's shallow waters allow for turbines to be built directly up from the sea floor, wind farms on the Pacific Ocean must float atop the water on barges tethered to the ocean's floor. It's a relatively new technology only being used at a handful of wind farms in the world on a small scale, and even those are different from what's being proposed off Humboldt's shore. (For example, the world's deepest offshore wind farm is currently in Norway at a depth of 721 feet, according to CalMatters, while Humboldt's farm would be located in waters approximately 2,500 feet deep.)

Pacific Coast wind turbines must be incredibly large. The platforms that will support the turbines alone are each the size of the Arcata Plaza, comprised of three separate pontoons. Atop each platform will stand a 500-foot tower, the top of which will be attached to three 500-foot rotating blades. The entire length of the completed turbine extends about 1,100 feet straight up from the surface of the water. (For reference, the smokestack at the old pulp mill on the Samoa Peninsula stands about 300 feet tall.)

By Lee Harris - The Prospect, July 14, 2023

Last month, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed a bill requiring a project labor agreement (PLA) for Maine offshore wind ports, arguing that the prehire deal would restrict the labor pool narrowly to union construction workers.

After the legislative session dragged on for another month, the building trades are now approaching a compromise on a reworked bill with Mills, a prominent champion of states’ climate action. The bill, which was advanced late Wednesday night by the state legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, is expected to move to Mills’s desk next week.

Instead of a PLA, it spells out a Community and Workforce Enhancement Agreement (CWEA), a list of labor standards for offshore wind development, including apprenticeship requirements and a ban on the use of independent contractors and temp staffing agencies. Most critically, it would require that all work happen at collectively bargained rates.

In other words, even non-union contractors on Maine’s offshore wind projects would be required to pay the statewide wage rates that unions agree upon with their contractors during collective bargaining.

“We want to be sure this industry is competing over things like technological innovation, as opposed to who can bargain down with workers,” Francis Eanes, director of the Maine Labor Climate Council, a coalition of state unions, told the Prospect.

The new bill combines two earlier pieces of legislation: the vetoed bill on ports, and a second bill on offshore wind energy procurement, which the governor had also threatened to veto due to its use of a PLA.

By Brooklyn Fox and Sarah Lehman - California State Lands Commission, July 7, 2023

Assembly Bill (AB) 525 (Chiu, Chapter 231, Statutes of 2021) was signed by the Governor in 2021 and requires the Californica Energy Commission (CEC), in coordination with the California Coastal Commission, Ocean Protection Council, State Lands Commission (CSLC), Office of Planning and Research, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Independent System Operator, and Public Utilities Commission (and other relevant federal, state, and local agencies as needed) to develop a strategic plan (AB 525 Strategic Plan) for offshore wind development in federal waters by June 30, 2023.

On August 1, 2022, the CEC established a planning goal of 2 to 5 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045 (Flint 2022). To meet these goals, the AB 525 Strategic Plan shall include, at a minimum, the following five chapters:

1. Identification of sea space, including the findings and recommendations resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.2 of AB 525.
2. Waterfront facilities improvements plan, including facilities that could support construction and staging of foundations, manufacturing of components, final assembly, and long-term operations and maintenance, pursuant to Section 25991.3 of AB 525. Economic and workforce development and identification of port space and infrastructure, including the plan developed pursuant to Section 25991.3 of AB 525.
3. Transmission planning, including the findings resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.4 of AB 525.
4. Permitting, including the findings resulting from activities undertaken pursuant to Section 25991.5 of AB 525.
5. Potential impacts on coastal resources, fisheries, Native American and Indigenous peoples, and national defense, and strategies for addressing those potential impacts.

Per Section 25991.3 of AB 525, based on the sea spaces identified pursuant to Section 25991.2 of AB 525, the CEC, in coordination with relevant state and local agencies, must develop a plan to improve waterfront facilities that could support a range of floating offshore wind energy development activities, including construction and staging of foundations, manufacturing of components, final assembly, and long-term operations and maintenance facilities. The purpose of this AB 525 Port Readiness Plan is to perform a detailed assessment of the necessary investments in California ports to support offshore wind energy activities, including construction, assembly, and operations and maintenance. This report will inform the AB 525 Strategic Plan.

For more details, see: AB 525 Reports: Offshore Renewable Energy

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Tahir Latif, Claire James, Ellen Robottom, Don Naylor, and Katy Brown - Working People, July 7, 2023

Greenwash is not always easy to challenge: the claims to offer climate solutions; the PR offensive in local communities; and promises of 'green jobs' that in reality are neither as numerous or as environmentally friendly as promised.

But whether it’s a ‘zero carbon’ coal mine, heating homes with hydrogen, importing wood to burn in power stations, ‘sustainable aviation growth’ or offsetting, there are common themes that can give a reality check on greenwash claims and misleading jobs promises.

Speakers:

• Claire James, Campaign against Climate Change
• Ellen Robottom, Campaign against Climate Change trade union group
• Don Naylor, HyNot (campaigning against HyNet greenwash and the Whitby hydrogen village)
• Katy Brown, Biofuelwatch (using slides from Stuart Boothman, Stop Burning Trees Coalition who was unable to make it).

By Robert Collier, et. al - IBEW Local 1245, et. al., July 5, 2023

California’s offshore wind industry can fill its workforce training needs largely through negotiating labor contracts with unions, thus providing access to the state’s well-honed apprenticeship system. But some workforce gaps exist in the offshore marine services, caused mainly by legal and regulatory hurdles. These are some of the key findings of a new, state-funded report issued by an alliance of industry, labor and academia. Unlike many other desktop research reports issued in recent years about California offshore wind, this report was based on empirical, hands-on planning for California’s first offshore wind project: CADEMO in northern Santa Barbara County.

The new report was produced by the Offshore Wind High Road Training Partnership (HRTP), funded by the California Workforce Development Board. The HRTP members include: Floventis, CADEMO’s owner and developer; the State Building and Construction Trades Council; electrical union IBEW 1245; San Luis Obispo County Office of Education; SLO Partners; and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

CADEMO is a demonstration project comprising four full-size, 15-MW floating turbines in state waters off the coast of Vandenberg Space Force Base. It is expected to be operational in late 2027, years before the first larger-scale projects planned in federal waters.

By staff - Campaign Against Climate Change, July 2023

To have a chance of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees, there must be no new oil and gas production. But fossil fuel industries have other ideas, aggressively promoting themselves as ‘green’, to ensure that extraction (and their mega-profits) continue.

Instead of focusing on proven solutions to cut emissions – renewables and energy efficiency – massive public subsidy is being diverted to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS), and related technologies: 'blue' hydrogen and burning biomass.

Here in the UK, £20 billion funding has just been announced for CCS. Two pilot industrial clusters are already being driven forward, on the East Coast (Humber/Teesside) and Hynet (Liverpool Bay/North Wales).

Carbon capture may prove necessary in a few industries, but industrial and energy policy is being dangerously distorted by the fossil fuel industry’s interest in prolonging the use of oil and gas whilst developing a lucrative new revenue stream in so-called 'carbon management'.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

In what may be the first strike in US history to demand green jobs, 1400 striking members of UE Locals 506 and 618 who build locomotives for Wabtec in Erie, PA are demanding that their employers start producing green locomotives. Their proposals grow out of UE’s “Green Locomotive Project,” which aims to “build the worker and community power necessary to compel the railroads to upgrade their locomotive stock and adopt green technology, and to ensure that new technologies lead to jobs at existing union factories.” A recent report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that building such locomotives would create between 2,600 and 4,300 jobs in the Lawrence Park plant, as well as three to five thousand additional jobs in Erie County.

For more on the strike: Wabtec Workers Walk Out for Grievance Strikes and Green Locomotives | Labor Notes

For background on the Green Locomotive Project: The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm | The American Prospect

To contribute to the strike solidarity fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/support-ue-members-striking-for-green-jobs

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

1400 workers in Erie, PA have been out on strike since June, demanding that their employer, Wabtec, start producing green locomotives. In a statement of solidarity, the Labor Network for Sustainability said:

The unions were denied their basic rights to strike over grievances, and most importantly, over the company’s refusal to move forward with worker-supported, environmentally necessary green locomotive production.

 This strike may well represent the first instance ever of unionized workers striking to force their employers to make products to protect the climate. That’s historic. 

 The Labor Network for Sustainability supports the United Electrical Workers in their fight to manufacture more sustainable transportation. Their decision to strike represents their decision to prolong life on our planet by making lower emission locomotives to carry freight across this great country. Their decision also upholds the livelihood of many communities that these railroads run through that face negative effects from the current engines.

 The railroad industry is still behind with making the necessary steps in maximizing their efficiency with their right-of-way, including: electrifying the last-mile of their urban rail yards, sharing their tracks with electrified inter and intracity transit, and upgrading their locomotives to non-pollutant green locomotives, ones touted by the UE workers in Erie.