Fed stimulus dollars fund oh-so-timely education initiatives
Bill Leahy's voice sounds scratchy from hours on the phone and travel around the state, spreading the word about how to develop a workforce for a green economy. Requests began rising in February with the passage of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, and its promise of billions of stimulus dollars for energy initiatives, including green jobs training. "That's when the money became real," explains Leahy, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy at people going off and doing their own thing," says Thomas F. Burns, director of training for Northeast Utilities and chairman of the new Green Jobs Council. Burns is coordinating efforts to avoid conflict and overlap in grant applications to the federal Department of Labor, which will be awarding $500 million for five competitive grant programs for green jobs training."We've lost some grants in the past just by not being able to put a good enough case together," Burns says. But now, he adds, there is a "very good collaboration going on which I believe will yield good results."
Some state agencies and schools already have developed and are implementing "green collar" courses and curricula.
The Department of Social Services (DSS) has set up training for building envelope technicians and building analysts, using nationally recognized Building Performance Institute (BPI) standards, for its program for $63 million in stimulus funds for low-income weatherization. The first classes graduated in late July.
"We've been having conversations with DSS and the Office of Workforce Competitiveness," explains Bill Villano, executive director of the Workforce Alliance in New Haven. "There are going to be jobs for energy auditors and significant jobs for window replacement and door replacement and insulation workers. It's going to be pretty substantial work for a couple of years, and we want to make sure people from this region have an opportunity to compete for these jobs."
Over the past year Villano says he has seen a 50-percent increase in clients visiting the New Haven One-Stop Career Center, with numbers rising to around 10,000 by the end of 2009.
Along with clients who have a "marginal attachment to the workplace, deciding they need some specific training," are a growing number of dislocated, often highly educated, workers with diverse experience.
"We've been encouraging people to be retrained, educated and certified," Villano says. He adds that he also is "beginning to work" with area chambers of commerce "to identify" green jobs and potential employers.
More green jobs training soon will be available through the state community college system, which is creating eight "Sustainable Operations Certificate" credit programs under a three-year $2.1 million Sustainable Operations Alternative and Renewable
Energy Initiative (SOAR) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Five community colleges - Three Rivers, Naugatuck Valley, Norwalk, Manchester and New Haven's Gateway - will offer the programs in areas such as sustainable water treatment and sustainable building efficiency. Some 320 students will earn certificates during the duration of the grant, which began in February of this year and includes funding for professional development for college faculty and partnerships to promote career awareness.
After earning a certificate, students can "either get a job or continue their educational pathway," says Shelly Jewell, project director for the SOAR grant initiative.
The landscape ecology and conservation technician and sustainable facilities management certificate programs begin at Three Rivers Community College this fall; the other six programs are in development for spring 2010.
Leahy says other efforts are underway to create partnerships enabling community colleges to offer programs for working professionals, to enhance their credentials with certification in areas such as renewable energy or LEED design or building.
Gateway Community College "played a very significant role" in designing the programs in the SOAR grant proposal, says David N. Cooper, the school's dean of corporate and continuing education.
The school is setting up a "Center for a Sustainable Future," which will include courses in areas such as building performance and alternative transportation, working with the state's Department of Environmental Protection on a clean water course and collaborating with Xerox on a digital "green" printing course.
Gateway already offers a non-credit solar photovoltaic program, introduced in 2007, and a sustainable living course, launched in spring 2008, which focuses on the hazards of ordinary life.
The University of New Haven is working on a new "sustainability-based degree" program, according to Barry Farbrother, dean of UNH's Tagliatela College of Engineering.
"We're at the early stages," he says, "and may end up with a couple of options, one more focused on public policy and economic issues and criminal science; the other more on engineering aspects."
The first course, on global sustainability, will be offered this fall and is open to all undergraduate students.
Capital Community College in Hartford is creating a green building course with the help of Leahy, who recently spent a morning with students, asking them, "How do we get you interested in green careers?"
Stimulating such interest, he believes, could start even earlier.
"We just put 75 youths to work in Bridgeport in the Mayor's Conservation Corps," Leahy says, referring to a new city program funded by federal stimulus dollars. As its name suggests, the program is inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. "What we're trying to do is to create the early steps of a career ladder," explains Leahy.
The state's technical high schools are engaged in a similar process, and have revamped the curriculum so students in 11th and 12th grades in the construction cluster - taking architecture, electrical, plumbing and carpentry courses - will learn about green buildings, starting this autumn.
In another initiative, Leahy is helping workforce organization leaders in Bridgeport create an incubator to support green business start-ups aimed at encouraging minority entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the governor's executive order, the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) is gathering information from a new survey asking state companies involved in renewable, hybrid and energy efficiency to assess their needs and training requirements for green-collar workers over the next few years.
Preliminary data indicate "cautious optimism about hiring," according to Judy Resnick, CBIA's director of workforce development.
One trend appears to be an immediate need for entry-level energy-efficiency workers, with 33 percent of respondents so far planning to hire 20 or more in 2010, with many most likely for stimulus-money funded work.
Jobs include weatherization technicians, home energy technicians, installation and maintenance workers, HVAC workers, carpenters and building envelope specialists.
The demand for engineers "is huge," Resnick says, especially long-term, with companies expecting to hire more engineers in 2014 than in 2010. Architectural, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers are most desired.
Solar respondents so far indicate more of a need for workers in 2010 than 2014, and Resnick speculates this is because "solar depends on incentives."
Regarding training, Resnick says, "Based on the jobs most in demand, 57 percent of companies want hands-on technical experience and industry experience, while only 17 percent said education degree only."
Last December, CBIA helped to create the Connecticut Energy Workforce Development Consortium, with members from workforce investment boards, energy companies and schools.
"We have three committees, with one looking at more traditional careers and the other two looking at green/emerging technologies," Resnick says, adding the commission's goals are "to have a talent pipeline to develop students and workers of future," and "to ensure that cutting-edge education and training programs are in place."
In Executive Order No. 23, issued this February, Gov. Rell called for the state's Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD) and Department of Labor (DOL) to devise a plan for growing green jobs and green industries in Connecticut.
The new plan, drafted by DECD's chief economist, Stan McMillen, broadly defines green jobs as those that "protect wildlife or ecosystems, reduce pollution or waste or reduce energy usage and carbon emissions." The plan forecasts "robust growth in the energy-efficiency and renewable industry sectors over the next two decades.
Using DOL data, the report outlines green jobs by industry sector and educational and training required for those positions.
Public policy recommendations include establishing a "green energy advisory council," with company, utility and labor union leaders "to create a strategic venue for interaction and an ongoing feedback mechanizing that ensures training programs and curricula are defined by industry's priority workforce needs" and developing "green policy experts," who create partnerships with state environmental, energy and development experts to identify potential employers and "to understand policy developments and discern their likely effects on job growth in key areas of the energy economy."
McMillen believes the state should "lead by example," taking actions such as adopting a green building code, mandating that all state diesel-powered vehicles use biodiesel and installing fuel cells in new public buildings.
These kinds of changes are necessary because "The U.S. economy is in an unsustainable situation," McMillen asserts. "We have to find alternatives to oil and we're actively engaged in doing it.
"We're at the dawn of a new era, and I think the governor is heading in the right direction," adds McMillen. "We have a renewable portfolio standard that we are implementing, and her Executive Order 23 is being very aggressive to create green jobs and green industries and the supply-side chain that these green industries need."
Leahy also is encouraged by the growing momentum, sparked by stimulus dollars, for a green collar economy in Connecticut.
"I think it's great," he says. "My caution is I see a lot of people doing the same thing they've always done. This is a one-time opportunity to do things in a different or maybe more effective way. I keep chanting that we're trying to create career ladders, so people can advance from subsidized jobs to family supporting, career-sustaining jobs in the private sector.
"My concern is: when we look back did we change the workforce - or in two and a half years employ a lot of people and the jobs are gone?"
