By April Elkjer
“I knew that my last name was going to pay off one day,” said Angela Greene, project manager with Solar Richmond. Greene belongs to a growing corps of green-collar workers — blue-collar or manual labor workers in green business whose services improve the quality of the environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to helping combat global warming, green-collar jobs can address the need for living wages and upward mobility for lower income people. Those who suffer significant barriers to employment — such as adults and at-risk youth with limited labor skills and no high school or college degree, as well as the formerly incarcerated — are afforded the opportunity to join growth industries.
According to a case study conducted in the City of Berkeley by urban studies professor Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes, 73 percent of the green business owners/managers she surveyed stated that there was a shortage of qualified green-collar workers for their sector, with the greatest needs in energy, green building, mechanics, and bike repair.
The Green Jobs Act of 2007 may accommodate such needs. Part of the broader Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, this groundbreaking piece of legislation authorizes $125 million annually for green-collar job training. Those funds should train more than 35,000 people a year for jobs in key trades, such as installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings, creating biofuels, and maintaining wind farms, to name a few.
Of that $125 million, $80 million will be focused on green job re-training; for example, teaching construction workers competency in green construction techniques. Twenty million dollars will be spent on renewable energy and energy efficiency research. And $25 million of this will be allocated for “green pathways out of poverty” — in other words, job training for low-income people in fields like solar power installation and green roofing, as offered through organizations such as Oakland’s Green Job Corps.
Green Job Corps is a collaboration between unions, private companies, community-based organizations, and the City of Oakland to provide local residents with job training and support. It is the result of an initiative by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, which creates opportunities in the green economy for low-income people and people of color through policy advocacy, public outreach, and an employment pipeline.
“Having movements where you have your city officials, your business owners, your education professionals, and community organizations all investing in a type or group of people who haven’t received that support before is empowering and enlightening,” said Nwamaka Agbo, campaign associate for the Ella Baker Center. “And there are efforts popping up all around the nation, like Florida, Massachusetts, and Maryland.”
California, though, is particularly ripe for innovation, as it will be needed in order to meet the goal of AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This legislation represents the first enforceable statewide program in the U.S. to cap all greenhouse gas emissions from major industries that includes penalties for non-compliance.
Locally, another coalition of three organizations — RichmondBUILDS, Solar Richmond, and Grid Alternatives — recently had low-income trainees install solar panels on a private residence. They were trained through RichmondBUILDS, which is the City of Richmond’s low-income residential assistance and construction training program — now with a solar installation training component added on.
Many graduates of the first class went on to find jobs that paid $20 to $30 an hour. Not bad for a city where the jobless rates range from about 4.1 percent for white non-Hispanic males to as high as 13.7 percent for black males and 20.2 percent for American Indian and Alaskan Natives (according to www.citydata.com).
They are also providing low cost and free solar system installation to low-income homeowners who are the most likely to struggle month to month. Solar panels can save these homeowners up to 70 percent on their utility bills. Solar Richmond has a goal of producing five megawatts of clean, renewable solar power in the city by 2010.
A common misconception about lower-income communities is that they do not care about the environment. Yet while the conversation in these communities might not be about polar bears and Priuses, something like environmental justice, for instance, gets plenty of attention.
Greene — the Solar Richmond project manager with the fitting name — graduated from the RichmondBUILD program and now teaches the skills she acquired to others in her community. Her passion and hope for these types of programs is very high, even as she notes the irony of working on solar installations while in the background an oil refinery releases toxins.
“I am able now to give something back to the community and the environment. It seems to really make a difference to see the passion in other people about saving our earth,” stated Greene. “So now hopefully my children will be able to have grandchildren, and so on and so forth, because we’re taking that initial step right now.”
“It’s not about charity. If we’re really going to turn our planet around, and turn global warming around…we need these guys,” said Michele McGeoy, founder of Solar Richmond. “We’re bringing our resources to the table and they’re bringing their sweat to the table. It’s very exciting.”