11 Green Workforce Development Lessons Learned November 30, 2010

2 Green Jobs Portfolio In early 2009, Living Cities’ Program Committee set aside $925,000 to help five cities, participants in the Fund for Workforce Solutions, build the capacity of their green workforce strategies and create viable career pathways for low-income people. Grantees included: –Partnership for New Communities – Chicago –Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board –Seattle Foundation –Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board – Pittsburgh –The San Francisco Foundation

3 Methodology Our analysis of our own green jobs portfolio has been ongoing. In addition to monitoring these efforts, we conducted multiple interviews with our five grantees to gain perspective of what is happening on the ground. To capture the broader work of the Living Cities network, we spoke with seven members representing local and national foundations as well as financial institutions. Certain trends emerged from these conversations, under the themes of demand, training, credentialing, and scaling jobs; these themes are detailed in the following slides.

4 Observations and Recommendations: Linking Demand Investing in green jobs training in geographic areas where there is no, or even only emerging, green jobs cluster or industry makes little sense. Training investments need to be balanced with and tied to enterprise development. Far too much training money is on the street absent corresponding job demand or the likelihood of jobs being created in the near term. The selection of which industries or careers to emphasize needs to be determined at the regional level and should be correlated to local demand. While investments will likely emphasize energy efficiency, federal efforts should focus on other green industries as well.

5 Observations and Recommendations: Credentialing and Community Colleges Dollars invested in training should be tied to credit bearing offerings that lead to industry recognized certification and/or community college credit Community colleges must develop a longer term, demand vision for their curricular strategy, rather than operating on a project by project basis. Progress has been made on creating “portable” training credentials that are recognized across state lines, but further work is need to establish standardized (recognized) credentials and competencies.

6 Observations and Recommendations: Training and Placement Some early green jobs efforts narrowed or simplified training delivery, resulting in significant disadvantages for the first generation of trainees who were in many cases unprepared for work settings. Trainees need core training (for example, with a base in manufacturing). While green components can be added, curricular “shortcuts” should not be encouraged. Jobs in maintenance or service, while not directly connected to solar or energy efficiency installation or other green industries, are important because they lead to work experience, a pay check, and the ability to transition into green jobs later. Because employers value work experience, apprenticeship programs increase trainees’ competitiveness. Use of public dollars to support subsidized internship placements in green jobs is promising.

7 Observations and Recommendations: Scaling Jobs One of the most significant barriers to expanding green jobs is the absence of jobs. Scaling green jobs will require coordination with efforts to increase demand. Some thoughts on this: –We need to figure out the combination of mechanisms (policy, financing, market demand, incentives, etc.) that create the tipping point for commercial property owners to move aggressively into energy retrofits, which will clearly create more jobs than simply focusing on residential. –Financial incentives (tax credits, low interest financing, etc.) are particularly important to unleashing private and government capital to make retrofit programs cost effective and viable at scale. –It would be ideal if DOL, Treasury, a GSE or another entity could coordinate the provision of guarantees or other support for financial markets development with guidelines/standards related to high-road and/or community benefits agreements, or – at a minimum – responsible contractor policies in order to create local hiring opportunities.

8 Observations and Recommendations: Scaling Jobs (con’t) Emerging energy efficiency retrofit programs tend to fall into two categories—the most commercially viable programs that are being built with a relatively single-minded focus on reducing energy consumption (e.g. a climate change and/or energy independence rationale) and smaller, more administratively cumbersome programs that contain a deliberate focus on issues of job quality. The ideal is of course to help these two converge, so that we can scale programs that have a deliberate focus on job quality and access. As ‘green jobs’ sectors professionalize and scale, specialized and networked organizations are needed to provide technical assistance to local programs, ensure standardization of program elements as appropriate, and facilitate the dissemination of best practices and replication of successful models as they emerge.