- Summary
- Green Economy Action Plan says green jobs in New York to nearly triple by 2040 to about 400,000
- Black, Latino and Asian workers often in low-wage roles, women underrepresented
- NYCHA, which houses nearly 1 in 16 residents, partnering with organizations to provide green job training
- Green City Force and Solar One working with community groups to create pipelines into green jobs
- Brooklyn Navy Yard serving as inclusive job training hub, hosting around 3,000 trainees annually
October 30 – Just over two years ago President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which was designed to boost the green economy through sustainable infrastructure projects across the country. The IRA’s Justice 40 provision set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits from the IRA flow to communities that “are marginalized and overburdened by pollution”.
Justice 40 has been a boon to U.S. cities such as Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia and New York. For New York city, the additional funding will help it meet statewide goals set by the ambitious 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, opens new tab. Aligning New York state’s emissions reduction goals with the Paris Agreement, it too mandates that 40% of the benefits go to disadvantaged and environmental justice communities.
This applies to the economic uplift from green jobs. But, as with its decarbonization goals, New York’s workforce equity goals remain a serious challenge. For New York city, this is nowhere more apparent than the building sector, which accounts for over 50% of the city’s current green jobs.
New York’s Green Economy Action Plan, released in February of 2024, is an extensive study of the city’s green workforce. Within the building trades, it finds that white workers are overrepresented in higher wage managerial jobs, while Black, Latino and Asian workers are overrepresented in jobs that don’t pay what it describes as a family sustaining wage.
Women in the building trades only make up 2% of electricians, plumbers and carpenters, and 4% of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) mechanics. The same underrepresentation applies when it comes to higher paid jobs such as facility manager and energy auditor, and is starkly lower than the city-wide average of 50% women across all occupations.
At a green skills workforce summit held in Brooklyn in September, Daphany Rose Sanchez, executive director of Kinetic Communities Consulting, summed up the problem, “It’s a super white, super male-dominated space” she said, recommending that employers get serious about addressing latent structural racism in their hiring.
The Green Economy Action Plan predicts that green jobs will nearly triple from 2021 levels to almost 400,000 jobs, or 7% of the 2040 workforce, boosting the city’s economy by nearly $89 billion annually by that time. The most growth will come from the building sector, which is responsible for 70% of the city’s emissions
The city has implemented strict regulations, such as Local Law 97, opens new tab, to drive emissions from large buildings down 40% by 2030 from a 2005 baseline, and to full carbon neutrality by 2050. Passed as the centrepiece of the city’s 2019 Climate Mobilization Act, opens new tab, the new regulations take effect this year, and violators face stiff fines.
Urban Green Council, opens new tab, the New York chapter of the US Green Building Council, estimates that the magnitude of retrofits needed to electrify building systems and increase energy efficiency extends to some 50,000 buildings, making New York city one of the largest retrofit markets in the world.
Andrew Karlovich, a senior project manager, is part of the growing sustainability consulting team at JLL, a publicly traded real estate services company. Not only is it responsible for ensuring buildings they manage comply with Local Law 97, but over 96% of JLL’s emissions are from energy consumption in the buildings it manages. He says there are huge challenges in converting fossil fuel energy systems in buildings to electric.
“Historic buildings built in the 1910s, 20s, 30s are not equipped to handle the types of electrical loads we need for electric heating,” he says. Another issue is district steam, a system of massive underground steam lines that rely on fossil fuels. “Those are notoriously difficult to convert to hydronic, meaning water-based systems, it’s a big engineering challenge.”
While New York conceded this summer it was three years behind on reaching its mandated goal of sourcing 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030, it is on track with solar power installations, opens new tab, and the city is trying to reach social inclusion goals by aiming to ensure that under-represented communities are able to fill the green jobs that will be created.
Abby Jo Sigal is executive director of the New York Mayor’s office of talent and workforce development, one of the agencies responsible for the Green Economy Action Plan. She says the city seeks to create strong talent pipelines and “on-ramps” to good jobs through partnership and collaboration with the private sector, community-based organisations, and schools and universities.
Effective job training programmes require “meeting people where they are,” says Tonya Gayle, who heads up Green City Force, an organization that mobilizes young talent from public housing to train in the skills needed to get family-sustaining jobs in the green economy. In February, Green City Force was one of four organizations to receive $1 million dollars each in grant money from Con Edison, opens new tab, the local electric utility, for workforce training in clean energy technology.
Gayle says New York city public housing, run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a “city within a city”, with a population the size of Atlanta’s.
Green City Force’s trainees have installed rooftop solar on NYCHA buildings as part of its commitment to host 30 megawatts (MW) of solar by 2026. And Gayle hopes they will soon install the innovative window heat pumps, opens new tab that NYCHA is piloting as part of the Clean Heat for All Challenge, opens new tab.
Tom Sahagian, a technical advisor at NYCHA, and the initiator of the window heat pump project, is enthusiastic about its potential to decarbonize a substantial amount of NYCHA’s real estate and drive adoption in market-rate housing as well.
Midea and Gradient, NYCHA’s two suppliers, provided heat pumps that run on the existing 120-volt power that feeds most apartments, eliminating costly electrical work. Sahagian says residents like the heat pumps much better than steam heat, which is very difficult to regulate, and that installation is much faster and simpler than for so-called split system heat pumps.
Solar One’s Green Workforce training program, opens new tab is another success story. A non-profit dedicated to fostering resiliency in diverse urban environments, Solar One’s program is run by training director James King, who was himself a student there.
King’s enthusiasm and engagement is palpable. The curriculum has expanded from just two weeks, when he was a student 14 years ago, to upwards of five weeks for certain courses. Students are referred by local community-based organizations, including Green City Force and the Fortune Society, which helps formerly incarcerated people.
Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) is another partner organization that prepares, trains and places women in careers in the skilled construction, utility and maintenance trades, helping them achieve economic independence.
King says the program design emphasises hands-on learning, with students working in teams. They learn everything from the basics of precise measuring and math skills, to building structures, installing solar panels, electrical wiring, repairing leaks and welding pipes.
It offers 10 well-regarded certifications, including one that certifies individuals in the handling of refrigerants. The program has trained nearly 400 students this year, awarding over 1,100 certifications. While the average success rate is 70%, King proudly pointed out the exception: “Only the ladies from NEW have a 100% success rate.”
Another asset the city seeks to leverage is the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The former ship-building site already serves about 3,000 people a year through its employment centre, internships and training, says Nikki Evans, senior vice president for workforce development and education at Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation.
She says the goal is to “create inclusive, living wage opportunities for communities of color, lower income folks, populations who are often left out of tech and innovation sectors due to structural racism”.
The yard is currently home to around 500 small- to medium-sized businesses, many in advanced manufacturing and fabrication, including innovative heat pumps, new types of building automation sensors and carbon capture devices.
Job training at the yard supports these businesses by teaching transferable skills that many of its small businesses need. It is also home to the Brooklyn Steam Center, opens new tab, an alternative high school, where students spend a portion of their week preparing for jobs in technology, manufacturing and media.
The city plans to increase its investment in the Navy Yard through the Harbor Climate Collaborative, a $725 million investment to build a climate innovation ecosystem in New York Harbor.
“Accessibility isn’t just saying, ‘hey, here’s a job’,” says Evans. It means connecting with communities in ways that expose people to new ideas and supports them to make a change.
This sentiment is echoed by Tonya Gayle. She says when she asks young trainees if they want to work in sustainability, few raise their hands. But when she asks, “how many of you live in the Bronx, where freight trucks come through with fumes and exhaust, and half your family has asthma? How many of you live in neighborhoods where it’s hard to get fresh groceries and many of your relatives have high blood pressure or diabetes?” Hands shoot up!
