The California Green Economy Public Funding Tracker provides information on open funding opportunities focused on clean energy, manufacturing, climate change, and workforce training from California state agencies.
Testimony of Josh Sonnenfeld before the California State Environmental Quality Committee at a hearing on Environmental Impacts of and Considerations for Refinery Closures.
This guide provides an overview of economic and workforce development public funding resources in California. It is designed to support potential applicants in two key areas: identifying relevant funding and integrating “high-road” strategies that prioritize community and worker benefits.
States can act to preserve and advance President Biden’s most important accomplishment: a set of policies aimed at growing jobs in strategic clean energy sectors across the U.S. while supporting fair wages and equal access to employment.
In this report, we discuss the challenges and opportunities facing Contra Costa as it prepares for the cascading effects of an energy transition that is already unfolding. We propose a just transition framework to guide an economic development strategy capable of addressing the specific challenges facing Contra Costa and setting the county on a path toward a more resilient, healthy, and equitable local economy.
California’s economy is growing, but millions of workers are being left behind. The state can do more to ensure every Californian has access to a family-sustaining career by incorporating workforce standards into public spending and regulations. This factsheet describes workforce standards and how policymakers can apply them in this critical moment for climate and infrastructure spending.
Labor Center 2023 Practitioner in Residence Sam Appel is urgently looking at how the transition to a sustainable and green economy can be anchored in equity for workers and communities in California.
This report presents a current snapshot of the state’s progress in implementing several of the strategies outlined in our 2020 report A Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030. Specifically, we review existing high road standard policies in California, and assess the reach of high road standards across the state’s proposed climate investments in California’s 2022-23 state budget.
On October 30, 2020, the Marathon oil refinery in Contra Costa County, California, was permanently shut down and 345 unionized workers laid off. The findings in this report focus on these workers’ post-layoff job search, employment status, wages, and financial security. The Marathon refinery’s closure sheds light on the employment and economic impacts of climate change policies and a shrinking fossil fuel industry on fossil fuel workers in the region and more broadly.
After decades of inaction and failed attempts, the U.S. has finally passed federal legislation addressing climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is groundbreaking not only in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also in how it demonstrates that we don’t have to choose between good jobs and action on the climate. By including strong labor standards in incentives for clean energy and energy efficiency work, the IRA will help build a high-road green economy, creating good jobs and clear pathways into them.
Final Report for UC Berkeley Contract with the Contractor State License Board for contract CSLB-20-01, entitled “Energy Storage Systems Consultant Services”
A series of briefs summarizing the recommendations for some of the critical climate sectors addressed in the Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030: electricity generation, energy efficiency, electric vehicle manufacturing and charging infrastructure, public transit and infill development, trucking, and waste.
Experience has shown that prevailing wage actually accelerates solar development. In California, the predominate use of union labor on utility-scale solar projects has fortified political support from organized labor for legislation and regulatory policy that continues to accelerate in-state solar development.
Jobs v. environment is a false choice. And with the pandemic-induced economic downturn and the fires hurting Californians around the state, it’s clearer than ever that we must make meaningful progress on both fronts simultaneously, crafting an economic recovery that advances equity, climate resilience, and job quality.
California’s ambitious path towards a carbon-neutral economy is complex, involves and affects different industries and occupations in multiple ways, and holds both promise and challenges for the state’s working families. The analysis and recommendations here present actions that show a high road to climate policy is both valuable and feasible.
Our study addresses two separate but complementary questions for California in the years and decades ahead: 1) what benefits would the emergence of a major offshore wind power sector create for California workers and communities, and what policies might optimize these impacts; and 2) would offshore wind power be a competitive source of renewable energy in comparison to other clean energy sources?
This report analyzes a major barrier to successful implementation of new clean truck standards: the common trucking industry practice of classifying (and often misclassifying) truck drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.
2019 Update: This update to the February 2017 jobs report estimates job creation based on K-12 clean energy projects that have been approved by the California Energy Commission (CEC) from the start of the program through the final approved energy expenditures at the end of June 2018.
Third in the Guest Blogger Series: Voices of Labor and Allies from Labor in the Climate Transition Conference. “Freight and delivery companies are finding ways to pass on the responsibility of cleaning up fleets to individual drivers, while minimizing their own investments. This is what corporations do when we don’t have policies that protect workers or incentivize companies to do the right thing.”
Guest Blogger Series: Voices of Labor and Allies from Labor in the Climate Transition Conference. “Workers and communities can become central players, not roadkill, in the clean energy transition.”
