renewable energy workers

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, June 5, 2024

By Joe Uehlein - Labor Network for Sustainability, March 6, 2024

Good afternoon Chair Stauber, Ranking Member Ocasio-Cortez, and Members of the Committee.

My name is Joseph Uehlein. I’m the founder and Board President of the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS). We are dedicated to making a living on a living planet. We believe that sustainability starts at the kitchen table, where working people every day worry about how they will secure health care, send their children to college, save for a family vacation, and maybe save for a pension. Advanced industrial societies around the world provide many of these things to their people. We do not.

I worked building the Texas-Eastern Pipeline as it wound its way through the rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania. I worked on the construction of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility near Harrisburg. I worked in an aluminum mill in Mechanicsburg, PA. As secretary Treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Division, and Secretary to the North American Coordinating Committee of the International Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers Federation, I have represented fossil fuel and manufacturing workers throughout my career.

In 1988 I began attending meetings of the United Nations first global warming commission. At that time 2c of warming was a level we never wanted to reach. Now it’s a goal, and we are ushering in a world of hurt for a lot of people. This has to stop, and be reversed. I have spent my life working on labor and environmental issues, with climate change at the core of my endeavors.

My experience tells me that climate change is the real job killer, not the answers to climate change. Climate is as much an economic issue as it is an environmental issue. The impacts of unchecked global warming and climate change will decimate our economy and ecology. Whether you work on the ports, or in the agricultural fields, or in a warehouse, or in transportation, manufacturing, health care ~ even nurses and public employees will all suffer job loss due to unchecked global warming and climate change.

Before 2010 we would have one, maybe two, one-billion dollar weather events a year. Then we had a dozen such events in one year. The earth was waging its own public relations campaign. The costs of dealing with forest fires has increased dramatically over the past decade, and that’s just fire. Hurricane Katrina destroyed 40% of the New Orleans economy. Over time, much of that has come back, but not all of it. Massive storms, massive fires, melting polar ice caps, melting glaciers, famine, water shortages, and more are ravaging the planet and the people on it are suffering and fleeing to find a more stable places to live. You think we have an immigration problem now? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We will see mass migration of starving angry people. What do we do then? Wage war on humanity?

Climate change is a budget-killer, and is also a dagger pointed at our jobs. The fossil fuel industry and its allies love to spin the jobs v environment frame. We not only can, but we must, provide good jobs for our people, and protect the only planet we know of that can support life. The costs of fighting wild fires in the west has grown astronomically in the past 20 years. And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

With all due respect to the UN Paris accords, 1.5c of warming is a mirage fading in the rearview mirror. We have no time to lose and we need all of the renewable energy options. It’s not about a 2c goal, beause that’s a horrible level of warming. We need to roll warming back, not adjust to higher levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

By Veronica Wilson - Labor Network for Sustainability, March 1, 2024

Workers in California have allied with environmental, environmental justice, and community groups to move the state closer to a just transition to renewable energy. 

California has a strong movement for Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), which allows municipalities to bargain with electricity suppliers over both price and environmental responsibility. Nine Community Choice Aggregators are united in a joint power procurement agency called California Community Power. 

California’s Workforce and Environmental Justice Alliance has been pushing California Community Power to establish policies to protect workers in the transition to climate-safe energy. In a recent win, Ava Energy in the East Bay adopted these policies – the fourth member of California Community Power to do so. According to Andreas Cluver, Building Trades Council of Alameda County:

Any approach to climate action must also factor in the sustainability of our workforce. By passing this package of policies, Ava Community Energy uplifts local workers while fulfilling its obligation towards responsible environmental stewardship. We look forward to partnering with Ava on these important community projects. 

This marks a pivotal moment for workers and communities as the region looks to ramp up investments in green technology and decarbonization. Ava’s new policies underscore the positive impact CCAs can have on labor standards, environmental stewardship, and community well-being.

Learn more about the Alliance’s impactful work: https://action.greencal.org/action/wej 

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

By Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager - Inside Climate News, February 21, 2024

On a recent Tuesday evening, several oil workers in Kern County, California, spoke out in support of a project that they hope will create much-needed jobs.

“What I’m hoping to get out of this is hope for my grandson’s generation,” said Allen Miller, a third-generation oilman who came to work in the petroleum-rich region in 1984. “That they can provide for their family the way my grandpa did and the way I did.”

The audience applauded Miller’s comments during a crowded public meeting in Taft, a city of about 8,500, in the heart of the state’s oil country. 

The proposed project, known as Carbon TerraVault 1, would store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon a mile beneath the nearby Elk Hills Oil Field. Oil production in that field and others nearby has sustained the county’s economy for over a century. 

“This is our oil field,” said Manny Campos, a longtime Taft resident and businessman. “I’m glad to see we are being intentional about keeping it that way and keeping the benefits local.”

Some environmental advocates are skeptical of the carbon removal industry — and its ability to create a significant number of jobs — but California policymakers view carbon removal and storage as a necessary tool to manage greenhouse gas emissions. 

The fledgling technology is a key part of the state’s plan to fight climate change, which also includes phasing out oil drilling by 2045. The county and California Resources Corporation (CRC), the oil company hoping to build the TerraVault, see carbon management as a vital new revenue stream. Kern County stands to lose thousands of jobs and millions in tax dollars as drilling declines 

But carbon storage facilities themselves are not currently projected to generate large numbers of jobs, according to a report prepared for the county. Kern’s own analysis shows the initial phase of the TerraVault project will only produce five permanent positions.

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 staff - Local Clean Energy Alliance, January 18, 2024

By Jessica Tovar, Ratha Lai, Alexis Sutterman, Jason Gumataotao, Anne Olivia Eldred, and Eric Veium - Local Clean Energy Alliance, January 13, 2024

By Melissa Jones, Jim Bartridge, and Lorelei Walker - California Energy Commission, January 2024

Assembly Bill 525 (AB 525, Chiu, Chapter 231, Statutes of 2021) directs the California Energy Commission (CEC) to complete and submit a strategic plan for offshore wind development in federal waters off the California coast to the Natural Resources Agency and the relevant fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature.

This strategic plan is the last of four work products the CEC is directed to prepare by AB 525. The strategic plan consists of three volumes: Volume I is an overview report, Volume II is the main report, and Volume III contains the technical appendices.

In preparing the strategic plan, the CEC coordinated with federal, state, and local agencies and a wide variety of stakeholders. As required by AB 525, this strategic plan identifies suitable sea space to accommodate the offshore wind planning goals, includes a discussion of economic and workforce development and port space and infrastructure, and assesses transmission investments, upgrades, and associated costs. In addition, this strategic plan discusses the permitting processes for offshore wind facilities and identifies potential impacts on coastal resources, fisheries, Native American and Indigenous peoples, national defense, and underserved communities. The plan also includes a discussion of strategies that could address those potential impacts such as avoidance, minimization, monitoring, mitigation, and adaptive management.

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

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Melissa Jones, Jim Bartridge, and Lorelei Walker - California Energy Commission, January 2024

Assembly Bill 525 (AB 525, Chiu, Chapter 231, Statutes of 2021) directs the California Energy Commission (CEC) to complete and submit a strategic plan for offshore wind development in federal waters off the California coast to the Natural Resources Agency and the relevant fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature.

This strategic plan is the last of four work products the CEC is directed to prepare by AB 525. The strategic plan consists of three volumes: Volume I is an overview report, Volume II is the main report, and Volume III contains the technical appendices.

In preparing the strategic plan, the CEC coordinated with federal, state, and local agencies and a wide variety of stakeholders. As required by AB 525, this strategic plan identifies suitable sea space to accommodate the offshore wind planning goals, includes a discussion of economic and workforce development and port space and infrastructure, and assesses transmission investments, upgrades, and associated costs. In addition, this strategic plan discusses the permitting processes for offshore wind facilities and identifies potential impacts on coastal resources, fisheries, Native American and Indigenous peoples, national defense, and underserved communities. The plan also includes a discussion of strategies that could address those potential impacts such as avoidance, minimization, monitoring, mitigation, and adaptive management.

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

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).