The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is providing capital for a Dorchester organization to lead clean energy workforce training.
This week, Action for Equity announced the launch of the Green Equity Partnership, an incumbent worker training and advancement project. The goal of the program is to develop the clean energy workforce, starting with training individuals from environmental justice neighborhoods.
MassCEC provided a $1.2 million investment in Action for Equity and its Green Equity Partnership.
“Funding incumbent worker training to upskill individuals from environmental justice neighborhoods interested in the important work of building decarbonization is one of our central workforce strategies and benefits everyone in the Commonwealth,” said Jennifer Applebaum, CEO of MassCEC.
A workforce needs assessment released earlier this year by the MassCEC showed that the state's clean energy workforce will need to grow by nearly 30,000 full-time equivalent workers in order for Massachusetts to meet its target of a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Action for Equity is a coalition of community-based and social justice organizations that focuses on three areas, according to jobs director Tarshia Green-Williams: housing, transit and jobs equity.
Green-Williams said the program will focus on training people already in the clean energy workforce in its first year, and then expand to bring more people into the industry. The investment from MassCEC is meant to fund the Green Equity Partnership for three years.
The Green Equity Partnership program will expand access for BIPOC residents of Boston to train in HERS rater, heat pump installation, green project lead and electricians’ skills. Green-Williams said green project leads are jobs they coined to coordinate work in the clean energy field. These initial roles are focused on decarbonization positions in the workforce, rather than areas like geothermal or wind energy.
Action for Equity will hire people to lead training in technical foundation skills like blueprint reading, algebra and online test taking for certifications. Green-Williams said the training will also cover best practices for workforce development for BIPOC workers in predominantly white spaces.
Green-Williams said the Green Equity Partnership still has spaces for employers in the program and is looking for Massachusetts Minority Business Enterprises (MBE).
“As a BIPOC person in a BIPOC community, I feel like this is an opportunity for some of our folks to advance, to do some career changing and to actually get into industries where they can actually create some wealth and we can lessen the wealth gap in the state,” Green-Williams said.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green. See past examples here.
