Federal legislation is projected to create 1.5 million new jobs in infrastructure and clean energy each year for the next ten years! Whether you want to decarbonize energy supply chains for hydrogen hubs, accelerate electric vehicle battery manufacturing or write grants to implement geothermal energy plants, there’s a role for you. Our guest, Betony Jones, directs the federal Office of Energy Jobs. A hallmark of her whole career has been finding climate solutions that boost the economy and provide good union jobs. In this episode, Betony Jones will guide you to where those jobs are and how to get one.
Betony Jones is a nationally recognized expert in labor-climate issues, with a focus on the intersection between climate jobs, clean energy, and unions. As the director of the Office of Energy Jobs, she oversees workforce development strategies and engages with organized labor and other stakeholders to ensure that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) policies and program implementation result in high-quality jobs and economic equity. Previously, Jones was a senior advisor on workforce for the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. She began her career working on climate science in the White House Office of Science and Technology policy in the Clinton Administration. From there, she spent 20 years researching the economic opportunities associated with climate action, including as associate director of the Green Economy program at the University of California Labor Center and as founder and CEO of Inclusive Economics, a national strategy firm working at the intersection of labor, workforce, and clean energy.
Resources from this episode - how to learn more and where to apply:
Clean energy fellowships, internships and other opportunities:
Must-reads on the impact of the legislation on climate jobs:
Related episodes:
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Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers is presented by Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Yesh Pavlik Slenk is our host. Amy Morse is EDF’s producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg produced this episode. Mia Lobel is our story editor. Ayo Oti is our researcher. Engineering by Andrew Parella and Daniel Chavez Crook. Editing assistance from executive producer Elaine Appleton Grant. Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame from Yesh’s favorite band, Lake Street Dive. Additional music from Epidemic Sound.
YESH PAVLIK SLENK:
Hey y’all, listen to this. There’s new government legislation in place RIGHT NOW, that will create 1.5 million new jobs each year for the next ten years. Millions are green jobs.
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Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
PAVLIK SLENK:
Let me say that again: 1.5 million new jobs, every year for 10 years!
BETONY JONES:
The clean energy transition is well underway. There are going to be so many job openings.
PAVLIK SLENK:
That’s today’s guest, Betony Jones, Director of the Office of Energy Jobs at the Department of Energy. She says that 1.5 million jobs is probably just the beginning.
JONES:
We're making and building a lot of clean energy infrastructure and materials in this country. And we need a lot of workers.
PAVLIK SLENK:
From new legislation, to apprenticeships, grants, and programs of all kinds, the government is stepping up to support green job-seekers like you. Today on the show, Betony Jones will guide you to where those jobs are and how you can get one.
THEME MUSIC
Change is coming, oh yeah
Ain’t no holding it back
Ain't no running
Change is coming, oh yeah!
PAVLIK SLENK:
This is Degrees: Real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund. This is Season 6: how to green your job. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk.
Today’s guest, Betony Jones, has been working in government for a long time - first with the Clinton Administration, and now with the Biden Administration. And in between, she spent 20 years doing research and policy work at the intersection of labor and clean energy. A hallmark of her whole career has been finding climate solutions that boost the economy and provide good union jobs. Today, as the Director of the Office of Energy Jobs in the Department of Energy, that is exactly what she’s doing.
JONES:
The Department of Energy is thinking really strategically about how to accelerate the clean energy transition, how to get to a totally clean carbon free grid by 2035, how to build a carbon neutral economy by 2050.
PAVLIK SLENK:
I asked Betony to lay out exactly how they plan to reach those ambitious milestones.
JONES:
Well, right now we have historic, historic, game changing investments in climate and the clean energy transition. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, where we're investing in all sorts of new energy infrastructure, from grid modernization to building new battery factories; to the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides massive, extremely generous tax credits to build out the clean energy system and to build those supply chains to support that here in the US. These massive investments will create jobs. And that's part of the goal, to really use the imperative of climate change as a driver for economic development.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Part of Betony’s job is to determine how all of this funding goes out the door. And to make sure the jobs that are created are good ones.
JONES:
Good quality jobs that people want to get and want to grow in and want to keep. And not just jobs, but careers. And so that requires making sure that employers are thinking up front about the quality of jobs that they're creating, about who will have access to those jobs, how will they recruit a skilled and diverse workforce to fill them? And so we're thinking and trying to encourage job quality, first and foremost, and then secondarily, look at the training and education pathways to help get workers into those good quality career track jobs.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Millions of jobs, training pathways, good quality careers. This all sounds incredible! But did you know this was happening?
After six seasons of Degrees, and over eight years of working for EDF’s Climate Corps, I’ve talked with countless people who’ve been looking for these exact opportunities in clean energy. But they seem to have fallen under the radar for a lot of job seekers. Especially in communities where they don’t eat, sleep, and breathe environmental causes.
JONES:
So there's tons of jobs. But the thing is that workers don't really know what these are, they don't know that these exist. And so part of the challenge is making sure that people understand: what does clean energy even mean? I think we all think about the iconic solar panel or wind turbine, but that's just a narrow set of what clean energy is.
What we're talking about now is things like carbon capture and storage, or hydrogen fuel to decarbonize heavy industry or transportation. We're talking about geothermal energy and how that can be used to produce electricity or for heat. We're talking about battery manufacturing. There's also the finance jobs, and the HR jobs, and the advertising and marketing jobs, and all of the supportive jobs to help these industries grow.
PAVLIK SLENK:
There are even opportunities for folks without a four-year degree, through something called the Registered Apprenticeship Program.
JONES:
Which is sort of an equivalent of a bachelor's degree for people who want to work with their hands. You work, and you go to class at night, and you earn a paycheck while you're acquiring this industry recognized credential that you can take anywhere in the country and work in your trade or craft, whether you've trained to be an electrician or operate heavy machinery to drill geothermal wells or prepare the ground for a solar farm.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Earning a paycheck while getting the training you need? Yes, please!
Another way to break into this field is through government internships and fellowships. Betony’s own Office of Energy Jobs has multiple openings in workforce and clean energy development through the ORISE program at the Department of Energy.
And there’s the newly announced American Climate Corps, which as you may have heard, aims to get 20,000 people into good-paying jobs that tackle the climate crisis.
JONES:
The American Climate Corp is also designed to give people that first toehold through pre-apprenticeship training that can expose you to a range of different potential jobs, and then help you connect to that more advanced career track training. So, it's really a good way to one, build awareness of what these jobs are, and then two, really facilitate access to them for young people across the country.
PAVLIK SLENK:
And these jobs aren’t just for young people.
JONES:
People interested in switching careers, or learning new skills or upskilling. Or if you - say you're an engineer, and you want to work in the battery space, but you didn't train for batteries specifically, how can you pivot and make that transition? So there's a lot of these clean energy jobs for people with advanced degrees, people without advanced degrees, people who don't have access to college and still want to get into a clean energy career. It kind of runs the whole gamut.
PAVLIK SLENK:
A lot of the details about the American Climate Corps are still being ironed out. But, one of the first programs to launch is called Forest Corps - which involves hands-on training by the US Forest Service in wildfire mitigation, environmental conservation, and reforestation. Applications open soon. You can find the link in our show notes.
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PAVLIK SLENK:
Okay, this all sounds amazing, right? But the clean energy transition is happening in real time. Behind all this legislation are people who are struggling. Individuals who lost their jobs during the pandemic. Entire industries who’ve taken a hit, leaving whole communities in dire straits, looking for what’s next.
JONES:
I was in Northwest Colorado recently meeting with a couple different communities, both of which are losing coal power plants - and both of which are developing very different economic redevelopment strategies.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act have billions set aside specifically to help coal communities transition to greener alternatives.
JONES:
One community is talking to a hydropower producer, others are looking at attracting advanced manufacturing, and developing like a green industrial park to really attract new employers to replace some of the job loss and tax base from the coal facility.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Even if they attract these employers, there’s still more work to be done.
JONES:
A lot of these energy communities, they might be fairly remote, have, you know, very small staffs to apply for grants or funding. And so we've developed these rapid response teams to provide even the capacity to think about federal resources and then go after some of the funding that is available to them.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Betony’s department is trying to think through all the barriers to job growth, but she’s quick to say there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
JONES:
Every community is unique. There's no single industry that could replace a large energy employer in a community. And that means that, say, a coal power plant facing closure might not be able to replace the jobs with just a single solar farm or hydro facility. That we're really looking at: how can we attract manufacturing employers to those communities? What are the assets that can be repurposed to diversify the economy? Maybe geothermal energy production or direct air capture or even advanced nuclear. Some of those are technologies that can use a lot of the same skills that are required in the fossil economy to transition to clean energy jobs without having to go through a bunch of retraining.
PAVLIK SLENK:
All this change is a little daunting - but it’s also so exciting. And it made me think about even more changes I’ve seen in this field, in just the last five years. I mean, back then, I was working with a company where I couldn’t even use the word, “sustainability.” That story, after the break.
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PAVLIK SLENK:
I’m Yesh Pavlik Slenk, and this is Degrees: real talk about planet-saving careers from Environmental Defense Fund.
I’m talking with Betony Jones, Director of the Office of Energy Jobs at the Department of Energy, about how clean energy jobs are taking off. Our conversation got me thinking about all the changes over the last decade. Not just the technology that has made all kinds of climate solutions possible but even the language we use to talk about these solutions.
As part of my job here at EDF, I help place fellows at various organizations around the world to drive a wide variety of sustainability and clean energy projects. Not too long ago, I was working with a company for the first time. And they were excited to work with us, but the catch was, we were not allowed to say the words, “climate change,” “sustainability,” or “green.” Like those were dirty words. Instead, we had to focus solely on the business case for renewable energy.
I was hesitant, maybe even a little offended by this rule, but we moved forward. And despite the challenges, the project was a success. Today, we still partner with that company. And - get this - they have a five person sustainability team now. I’d call that progress.
I told Betony this story and was curious if she’d ever experienced anything like this.
JONES:
That's such an interesting question. I think I've spent 20 years code switching.
You know, decades working on climate solutions, without ever talking about climate change. People didn’t need to agree that it was a problem or manmade or something we had to do something about if they could save money, or get a job, or see opportunity, then, you know, we’re able to achieve the same results
But the parallel in my work is really talking about unions. We're only now really just starting to be able to talk really explicitly about the role that unions can play in this space and what are the benefits of employers working with unions.
When I started my career in DC, working on climate science, I saw that the science was sort of marginalized, and what really persuaded policymakers was jobs and economic impacts. And so that is why I started approaching climate change through an economic lens: how can we address this crisis in a way that creates opportunity? Opportunity for workers, opportunity for businesses, opportunity for investors. Where progress is not premised on even a belief in climate change.
PAVLIK SLENK:
This idea is pretty crucial, right? I mean of course if you’re listening to this show, it goes without saying that you care about the environment. But even if that’s not your top priority, we can all get excited about stability and good-paying jobs. Period.
JONES:
How do we not just create opportunity as we address climate change, but really help organized labor and workers in the fossil economy see a future for themselves in a low carbon economy? And what that requires is that we're not just creating clean energy jobs or green jobs, that we're creating good union jobs that have real pathways to advancement, that allow people to support their family, to buy a house, to have the kind of life that they want to have, have weekends off, go camping, the things that people want to do in their lives.
PAVLIK SLENK:
Well, let's take a step deeper into that. You know, while we're recording this episode, the United Auto Workers are currently on strike. And one of the issues they raise is a concern that electric vehicles are easier and cheaper to make than gas powered vehicles. So as the push for more EVs grows, their jobs and their salaries might be at risk. How do you balance the push for a greener workforce, with the genuine concerns of laborers and labor unions?
JONES:
You know, industrial transition is hard. And it can, without care, lead to a displacement of jobs, it can lead to an erosion of job quality, it can lead to changes in those collective bargaining agreements or labor management dynamics in workplaces. And so the threat is real.
And so, we're not trying to pretend that this transition isn't - that it's all upside. Like, we have to look at: where are there risks, and who needs to be supported to transition to these clean energy jobs? A huge, huge part of that is on-shoring the supply chains for the clean energy economy.
PAVLIK SLENK:
On-shoring supply chain means moving electric vehicle manufacturing to the US, to secure those jobs. Betony says, incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are helping to do this.
Even so, support is still needed to make sure workers can transition from one job to the next. The thing is, making electric vehicles is, in some ways, simpler, than making gas-powered ones. Their electric motors and batteries use fewer parts than combustion engines. The worry is, fewer people are needed to build them.
JONES:
Like there’s still a need to make sure that traditional automotive supply chain workers have access to these new battery jobs, that they’re as stable and pay as well as jobs in the automotive manufacturing space. And a grant opportunity that we just put out is to really support the conversion of internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturing facilities to EV supply chain manufacturing facilities in a way that retains the high wages from the traditional auto industry to the green auto industry.
PAVLIK SLENK:
So Betony is well aware of the challenges faced by workers in a changing economy. I’ve been working in this green workforce development space for a long time. To see the federal government taking action to bolster this movement in a substantial way is incredible. It gives me goosebumps.
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JONES:
We have $62 billion to invest in clean energy deployment. And that is across 72 different programs - 60 of which are completely new programs, from supporting the hydrogen infrastructure, the production and use of hydrogen to decarbonize transportation, decarbonize industry, decarbonize the grid; to battery manufacturing to support the electric vehicle transition and grid energy storage. And lots and lots in between.
We're really looking at: how are those investments going to be made in a way that supports job growth in the US and good quality jobs that people really want.
PAVLIK SLENK:
We just talked about a lot of resources and it’s okay, if you didn’t write it all down. Information about all of these opportunities will be linked in our show notes.
But that’s not all! If politics is your thing, make sure you check your state, county, or local government for fellowship and grant opportunities.
And then, there’s programs like the one I run - EDF Climate Corps. Over the summer, our fellows get paid to work with all kinds of companies and public sector organizations on sustainability goals, while helping to grow a global climate leadership workforce.
I’ve been working on this program for over a decade and I can honestly tell you, it’s a win-win-win. A win for you, a win for the organization you work for, and a win for the planet.
We embed fellows in a wide variety of companies and organizations, from Walmart in China to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. as well as government agencies like the City of Atlanta, Chicago Public Schools, and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in India.
Our fellowships are not like internships where you spend your day getting coffee for everyone. Rather they make a real impact on things like portfolio scale energy efficiency, climate justice, and reducing supply chain emissions.
And the planet-saving work EDF Climate Corps alumni are doing is endless. For example, Jenny McColloch, who was a fellow in 2011, now leads sustainability at McDonald’s. To learn more about her impact, check out Season 4 of Degrees!
In case you need even more inspiration, here are just a few more EDF Climate Corps success stories.
We had a fellow help phase out coal from IKEA’s supply chains in China. Now, they are working to decarbonize other major industries across the country.
One fellow helped the City of Austin, Texas save money on electricity, by reducing energy usage. Now, they work for the City of Seattle - helping create racial equity in their emissions reduction planning.
And another fellow was placed at Adidas. They were later hired as Adidas’ Director of Energy and Environment. And today, they lead environmental policy advocacy at a non-profit in Massachusetts.
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PAVLIK SLENK:
That's it for this episode! Be sure to check out the rest of Season 6 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. And share this podcast with a friend!
Next time on Degrees - it’s our final episode of the season - and it’s a big one. An interview with The Nature Conservancy’s Chief Scientist, Katharine Hayhoe. You don’t want to miss it!
Don’t forget, check out our Green Jobs Hub to find all the resources to jumpstart your green job career search.
Degrees is presented by Environmental Defense Fund. Amy Morse is our producer. Podcast Allies is our production company. Tressa Versteeg produced this episode. Mia Lobel is our story editor. Ayo Oti is our researcher. Engineering by Andrew Parella and Daniel Chavez Crook.
Our music is Shame, Shame, Shame by Lake Street Dive, and additional music in this episode from Epidemic Sound. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. Stay fired up y’all.
THEME MUSIC
Change is coming, oh yeah
Ain’t no holding it back
Ain't no running
Change is coming, oh yeah!
PAVLIK SLENK:
Oh! [laughs] I forgot that line. And I’m your host, Yesh Pavlik Slenk. [laughs] Sorry, I can’t look at you right now. So embarrassing. Alright, I gotta do this.