While adding new jobs is an important component to a just clean energy transition, an even more important outcome will be to create long-term career opportunities for disadvantaged communities and for those with existing fossil fuel-related jobs, a panel of energy job experts, workers unions and state government officials said Sept. 22.
"This is not just about jobs, it's about careers," said Ali Zaidi, deputy energy secretary to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state chair of climate policy and finance. While governments have a policy imperative to create new full-time jobs for the underemployed and unemployed, "let's keep our eyes on the big prize here, which is creating sustainable, durable careers for folks in clean energy," Zaidi said at the Climate Jobs and Just Transition Summit, sponsored by the Worker Institute and Climate Jobs NY.
The deputy energy secretary argued that some ways to ensure a green transition create long-term jobs that include establishing a durable policy signal such as codifying a decarbonization goal in state law, as New York did. The second component, said Zaidi, will be to set up the supply chain and workforce training in the U.S. now to support the transition as demand for supplies and skilled workers increases.
The U.S. also needs to act fast and scale up quickly in the clean energy transition, said Alex Laskey, a clean energy entrepreneur and founder and executive chair of the nonprofit Rewiring America, which among other things promotes the electrification of homes.
He echoed a call by the U.K's Prince Charles on the first day of a series of "Climate Week" events for a militaristic-scale approach to tackling climate change. Laskey suggested that approach could start with the "near-perfect replacement" of every piece of fossil-fuel infrastructure, from power plants to home heat pumps, with a "carbon-free option." He clarified that he is not suggesting retiring projects early but rather making sure every new cycle of investments is carbon-free.
Rewiring America has estimated that shifting to almost full electrification of all energy systems and infrastructure could create 25 million jobs by 2035 and would save the average household $2,000 a year in energy costs. Of the 25 million new jobs, at least 5 million to 10 million would be new career positions, he said. Moreover, many of the new jobs will be local and well-paying that can't be done by a robot or sent overseas because they will involve things like replacing heaters and installing solar panels, he said.
Matt Schlobohm, executive director of the Maine AFL-CIO, noted that unions have largely been left out of the clean energy transition as well as nearly every large transformation the U.S. has gone through in the last 40 years.
As such, "people are skeptical for good reasons on whether this will pan out in the way we want it to," Schlobohm said. To get more buy-in from the labor movement, it has to see the green transition as both an opportunity for family-supporting jobs and a challenge to step up to, he added.
The labor movement needs the climate movement to take jobs and economics very seriously, Schlobohm said. "Outside of a couple of places, it has largely been lip-service."