U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Building Technologies Office
Energy Efficiency & Retrofit Jobs in the Buildings Industry — Workforce Overview Webinar (text version)
Below is the text version of the Webinar titled "Energy Efficiency & Retrofit Jobs in the Buildings Industry — Workforce Overview," originally presented on August 27, 2009. In addition to this text version of the audio, you can access a PDF of the slides, a resource document, and a recording of the webinar.
Operator:
Welcome and thank you for standing by. I would like to inform all participants that your lines have been placed on a listen-only mode for the duration of the conference call. If anyone needs operator assistance, you may press *0. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Michael McCabe. You may begin.
Michael McCabe:
Welcome. Thank you, Holly. I'm Michael McCabe. I'm with the Department of Energy, and I would like to welcome everybody for participating in today's webinar. A couple of housekeeping items to start off with – due to the high response and the number of registrants we've had for today's meeting, we have had to change the website for today's meeting. So I'm gonna ask everybody that if you would look at the slide on your screen, and if the slide talks about the high response and gives instructions for changing to the different website, would you please follow those directions on the slide now?
Today's webinar is cosponsored by the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor. It's regarding energy efficiency and retrofit jobs in the building industry. Before I get started, to repeat some of what Holly said, I would ask everybody to be on listen only. Today's call is being recorded, and also there will be a question and answer session at the end of all of the presentations. If you look at the top bar on your slide you will see a button for Q&A. If you have questions – which we encourage everybody to submit questions – we would ask you to submit your questions electronically.
At the end of today's session, answers will be provided verbally by the appropriate speaker. To submit the question you just simply go onto the Q&A button at the top of the bar, click on it, type in your question, and then click on the "ask" statement and the question will be submitted. You can download all the slides for today's presentation at the address that is on your screen. Also before we get started we're going to have two polling questions before the presentation begins in order to get some general information about you. We will have two questions at the end of the Q&A period to get some of your thoughts regarding today's webinar.
We will put the polling questions on the screen and ask you the participants to vote with your computer. We're gonna start with the first two questions now.
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The first question should be on your screen now. Please review the question and the answers and click the appropriate response. How many people at your site are participating in today's webinar? We're about to close this question, so please vote now.
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Now the next question: looking for information about what best describes you, your organization or affiliation. We're about to close this question, so please if you have not voted, vote now.
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Thank you very much for helping us. This will help us understand you and in turn guide some of the answers that we might have to your questions.
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As I mentioned, today's webinar is on energy efficiency and its relation, and the opportunities for retrofit jobs in the building industry. We have a number of speakers today, and they will provide an overview of the topic, discuss the opportunities for energy efficiency and retrofit jobs, job skills and training, some partnerships that are available, an overview of the training, some of the information on state and local workforce practices. And as I mentioned, there will be questions, opportunity for questions and answers at the end of all of the presentations.
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But if you have questions during the course of anybody's presentation, please submit the question then. They will be collected and then reviewed and then answered at the end of the presentation, so if you present questions as you have them that would help us immensely. Thank you. Today's webinar is cosponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Building and Technology program, which here at the Department of Energy our responsibility and expertise is research on improving the energy efficiency in the building sector.
It is cosponsored by the Department of Labor, who's working most closely with the workforce and employers, and I think that the partnership that we have today between the two organizations is unique as far as this program's concerned, and I think quite beneficial. And hopefully we'll be doing more of the same in the future.
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Today's presenters are myself – I'm a senior engineer with the Department of Energy. The co-host is Dr. Jennifer Troke, who is with the Department of Labor, their Office of Workforce Investment. She will be the last speaker today. In addition, Charles Segerstrom will be speaking; he is with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, one of the two major utilities in the state of California, and as the manager of the energy centers there for Pacific Gas & Electric he's had a great deal of experience working with individuals and organizations in job training.
We also have Dr. Debra Rowe, who is Professor of Sustainable Energies and Behavioral Sciences at the Oakland Community Colleges, and in her activities she is partnered with individuals and organizations across the country. Dr. Jerry Weber as President of the College of Lake County, Illinois, brings a perspective of the Midwest and has worked with many of the organizations that we think are on the phone today and others will benefit and appreciate his insight.
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The building industry is something that is often overlooked as far as opportunities with regards to energy and energy efficiency. But in fact the building industry is responsible for 39 percent of the energy that is consumed in this country; more than any other sector. Transportation sector consumes 28 percent. And it's pointed out here for the residential sector there are over 100 million homes. Most of them were built in '79 or before, and as they age there are going to be a lot of opportunities for retrofit as well as new construction given the projection for the population increases.
So that we at the Department of Energy see this as a major opportunity and a major need, particularly when you look at 2020 – that most of the stock that's out there today is still gonna be there, and it's gonna be responsible for over 70 percent of the energy that is consumed in residential buildings.
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I mentioned there are huge opportunities and benefits; simple investments in your homes return significant benefits. As presented here on the slide, there are both energy-related benefits that exceed the investment, but also the energy investment benefits have secondary benefits as well, because if the consumer is able to reduce their energy costs, those savings are reinvested in the economy, which will create jobs in other areas as well. The Department has estimated that some of these simple investments can save a typical home over $350.00 annually.
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Here at the Department we're managing a research program that we cooperate with a number of other agencies. One highlight of our program that deals with this topic area – retrofits – is a program that DOE, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cosponsor, and that's Home Performance with Energy Star. That program is geared to existing homes. We are looking to partner with utilities, with states, local governments in essentially identifying opportunities for the increase in energy efficiency of the homes.
And then part of the program provides energy audits, identifies measures, and we typically identify measures that could save the consumer 20 to 30 percent. And the final element for those who are participating in the program is actually for the partners, the sponsors, to go out and do a final testing and quality check.
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As you can see on the next slide, the program is making inroads across the country; we have not reached our goal yet of all 50 states, but as a 2-year-old program I think that we've made some significant tries in reaching our goal. The participants who are at the state and local level have been providing us feedback that we're constantly using to upgrade and improve the program and delivery.
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Quickly to go on some other DOE programs, the building technologies research program is its Zero Energy Buildings program. For residential buildings we hope to achieve portable technologies that can design a construction of affordable net zero energy homes by 2020. That is homes that during the course of the year, the energy savings will pay for the added cost of construction so that when you finance that increase in cost in construction, that increase will be less than the energy savings. The program also works in concert with the Department's Weatherization and Assistance Program.
Many of the technologies, many of the techniques that come out of our research are fed into the Weatherization Program.
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Quickly, to go into Zero Energy Buildings, we are both working on Zero Energy Buildings commercial buildings and those programs are working both on new construction and retrofit. We are looking to work with partners, such as Wal-Mart, McDonald's in the retail area and other partners so as to have a local dissemination of the results.
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Similarly, for the residential buildings, our Building America program has historically been focused on new construction. In the last year or so we have expanded it to include retrofit; given the size of the existing market, the opportunities, the needs for retrofit, we've been adding it. Our goal is to identify retrofit packages for existing homes that can improve the efficiency over 30 percent. These retrofits get into both shells, as far as walls, windows, roofs, and also the equipment that is inside the building.
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Going back to the weatherization program and the grants that are being issued by the Department under the Recovery Act,
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the current Recovery Investment Act, we see that there are significant grants that are going to all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
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The Department has begun awarding those grants. I don't have the schedule as to where we are and when they're gonna be completed, but the Department is committed to getting those awards out as quickly as possible. And finally again like to thank everybody for participating,
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and welcome you to submit your questions of the speakers. And the next speaker is Charles Segerstrom with the Pacific Gas & Electric Company. Charles?
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Good morning, or good afternoon, as the case may be. I'm sitting here in Stockton, California, at our Weatherization Training Center that was started in 1978 as a partnership with our state's Weatherization Office to provide green jobs training – although we didn't call it that back then – to provide training for the workforce responsible for weatherizing homes. We've been in continuous operation ever since 1978, and in fact today there are four classes going on with 68 people learning these new skills. I'd like to start my presentation off
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with a journalistic perspective – the who, what, when, where, how, why – and then go into the career pathways for these retrofit jobs, issues with regard to articulation, scaling up, the importance of needs assessments and transitions. But to start with, who are the people we're talking about training who will get involved in this? Well, immediately, retraining of out-of-work contractors, who are out of work as a result of the housing crisis and who have the majority of the skills to apply in terms of green job retrofits, would be a certain target audience. And many of the people who are in training today in Stockton represent that group.
But there's also a group that needs entry-level job skills to emerge from their areas, whether they are in disadvantaged communities or in need of a brand new opportunity.
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What – well, what are we talking about? What are the energy efficiency green jobs? Compared to solar, which is quite visible to many and in fact is the field where most college programs started development in advance of energy efficiency, energy efficiency is a little bit more invisible. But it includes careers and jobs such as these, as actually identified in California: home performance retrofit specialists, for Michael's Home Performance with Energy Star implementation, for instance. The energy auditors, the home raters who will figure out a diagnostic approach to determine the most cost-effective retrofits for housing stock.
There are also resource conservation energy efficiency managers, sometimes called sustainability managers; a brand new job function emerging, as well as the project managers, control technicians, etc. The HVAC industry; in many cases, the people involved in it – whether they're technicians or installers – don't think they're doing green job work. But essentially they are, and they need to understand how important their work is to the actual operation and efficiency of systems. Compliance analysts; here in California we have some of the most stringent building codes in the nation. We're pioneers in that respect.
We need to make sure that they're actually complied with – that we actually have people who are out in the field verifying code compliance. In addition, the culmination of many training programs should lead into a certification opportunity. You'll hear more about that later from Debra, but the ones that I would like to call out right now would be BPI, which is the Building Performance Institute for the building performance contractors. NATE, or North American Technician Excellence, rates the AC contractors. Or various home energy rating system certifications – for instance, RESNET, or in California it's HERS Phase II.
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When – when is this going to happen? The timing I think is absolutely critical because it would be a real waste of the opportunities we have if we're not ready with the job training. But it could also be a waste if we provide job training for people and there's no classified advertisement of the job availability to go after. So the timing with the stimulus funds and how they lead to incentives or carrots – but also what might be put in place with regards to sticks. And in some cases there are codes and standards, retrofit ordinances, audits on resale requirements, and hopefully in addition making it easier for consumers to participate with financing.
But these sort of programs that are emerging as we speak – and just a couple days ago in California we announced a brand new program that will dramatically increase home performance. So carrots and sticks need to align with the needs.
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Where does this training happen? Well, in my opinion it's been happening throughout the country, but it's a small niche operation, such as our organization here in Stockton that was formed as a unique partnership with our state Department of Community Services and Development that does the weatherization program for California. Over 31 years you can see that we've done hundreds of classes for thousands of people, but that pales in comparison to the projected needs. What we require for that training is certainly not just classroom space, but actually hands-on training.
It is actually a fact that if people learn from PowerPoint slides we wouldn't be in need of talking about laboratory activities. But this is largely hands-on training; we have a 3,000 square foot training house. We have HVAC labs and weatherization labs that are critical to our efforts.
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How can we do this? Well, we have the incredible opportunity of the Stimulus funding; the articulation of existing programs such as the one we operate here in Stockton with community colleges and workforce investment boards is tremendous. For instance, California is beginning a program through its state Energy Office that's aiming to be the largest in the nation, with over $70 million going into this arena.
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So why should we do this? Well, the urgency of our climate change action plans – whether they're state-wide, federal or international – is clear. The need from the standpoint of stewardship and sustainability is clear. And from a local perspective, the jobs that we're talking about training people to do can't be outsourced, create tremendous economic opportunities locally, and actually are more labor-intensive than traditional energy jobs. So the economic development opportunities in this green economy are incredible, and as was mentioned there are over 112 million homes that could potentially be upgraded.
In fact, in California by the year 2020 we're aiming to improve efficiency of all homes by 40 percent, which is actually even more aggressive than a Zero Net Energy Homes Program. And those homes have a more substantial carbon footprint responsibility than all of the automobiles in our country, so it's gonna be considered high-hanging fruit and difficult to get after, trying to build the ladders up to that high-hanging fruit with new programs.
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So let me talk about some career pathways. These career pathways need to be a bridge to somewhere. How can that happen? Well, it includes the steps of outreach, recruitment and assessment. It also includes re-engaging our students who have been dropping out of high school in droves who consider it to be irrelevant education; reaching out to them to prove to them that the basic skills of math, science and writing are critical to being able to implement this particular job. And then to move on into the green construction jobs, more advanced environmental careers, and even bridging into professional occupations – engineers, architects, designers.
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So from the standpoint of residential retrofits, here is one way we see it, with entry-level jobs being particularly appropriate for those coming in from disadvantaged communities and jobs training programs. But the weatherization specialists who are actually doing the hands-on work of insulating and air-sealing; the installers who are also responsible for more advanced diagnostics. You know we don't air-seal homes without doing gas safety tests. Duct testing and sealing – again, something based on scientific analysis of diagnostic tests. Quality assurance inspectors and HVAC installers, on up to owning one's own Home Performance contracting business.
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In more detail, we've got four stages that we talk about with regard to outreach, recruitment and assessment. Bridging the literacy and math issues on into green construction, solar, and associated functions.
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More specifically, the residential retrofit for energy efficiency job skills can be described as follows: we need to always remember to cover the workforce entry basics. People need to be prepared to just be a basic employee who shows up on time, who understands what is being required and functions appropriately. Energy efficiency fundamentals as a next step – getting people prepared for this emerging industry. Then going into weatherization that includes the competencies related to hands-on installation as well as critical safety issues.
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And then also in addition to retrofit there's new construction programs. So again, focusing in on home performance a bit, this is not the typical caulking and weather stripping-based weatherization program. This is one that's grounded in building science that uses a house as a system approach to comprehensively diagnostically testing and treating homes. The careers with regard to retrofit as mentioned go in and include raters, auditors, diagnosticians, etc.
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So this particular chart, if you start at the bottom and work your way up, the workforce entry skills – the basic skills that we assume are being covered in our education systems – but in many cases we're not getting what we need to prepare people for jobs, so they need to be covered. Energy fundamentals – prior to the job-specific skills get involved with the understanding of the anatomy lesson of house construction nomenclature, or basics of energy efficiency, tool use, etc. And then the job paths, whether retrofit or new construction, and the career options that are beginning to emerge.
They've emerged already with regard to renewables, but they are rapidly emerging with regard to energy efficiency and building performance. And of course going beyond these sort of tasks into the professions.
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Workforce entry fundamentals, to expand on that a little bit, what type of relevant modules would be developed? Well, I had one instructor say, "I only teach math if it's what is exactly what is needed for someone to make a dollar or propose a project or write up a scope of work; it's all applied." As would be the other basic skills.
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Energy fundamentals and pre-weatherization – here's a list with more detail in terms of what we mean by that. There's a substantial body of information that's been developed over the last 30 years. I guess one of my key messages and concerns is not to reinvent, not to be redundant with the rollout of these programs. Check around – you probably have a Stockton Training Center in your own state because the weatherization programs have been relying on them, and it would be great to partner.
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And as for the articulation piece, here in California we now have two centers similar to the one I'm sitting in and it's rather centralized, but the tipping point issue of when we decentralize these programs – when we build up more substantial educational facilities – is a critical one to judge. Because if we get too far ahead of it we might waste; if we're behind it we're not providing the right services. So there is something of a happy medium in terms of knowledge-based training versus hands-on training. Knowledge-based training can be conducted in any classroom or online; hands-on training is where it's more difficult.
And those of you involved with vocational education know how hard it can be to maintain an HVAC lab when the instructor retires, because instead of 20 students, maybe you can get 100 English students in and clear out all those furnaces. Well, we need to be careful about how we go about decentralizing so that the programs that are created are sustainable and not just a Stimulus flash in the pan.
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So here in Stockton, what our hands-on training looks like, you see that we have a house that's built rather unusually, with a nine foot crawl space under it so we can get to all the issues under a house as well as an attic with a solid floor so people don't step through it. But this diagnostic testing, the device on the left, the blower door, for instance, needs to be installed and used by people so that they can prepare for their jobs.
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The heating and air conditioning lab
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as well as the diagnostic testing facilities bring to life what is otherwise in a textbook.
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The energy centers throughout California have been operating since 1978, with over half a million people trained. Even that has been just treating the niche of the green jobs world, and we're anxious to figure out the best possible ways to create a transition to the traditional education system and enable the community colleges to scale up.
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But that scaling up process again needs to take into consideration long-term sustainability,
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and what that really means is that we need to be very careful about doing a detailed needs assessment. The chicken and egg issue of how many workers do we need? How many jobs will there be? Very, very important. We need to match the training to the expectation of non-subsidized job placements, and that means not just the weatherization program but the creation of a market-based Home Performance retrofitting world. One thing I really like about what California has done is California has set standards for placement, completion and certification, and the grant is based on people retaining employment after six months.
So if you run all these numbers together it's about a third of the people have to have had a job for six months after these job-training efforts. Makes good sense – connects the dots.
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There's great work being done for needs assessments. The California Community College Centers of Excellence has now completed studies – not just this one for the Bay area, but for the entire state – looking at the most important knowledge and skill areas. Back to the basics of communications as well as understanding of technology. Now what kind of programs are industry representatives interested in – whether it's internships, two-year programs, certificate programs, or customized training.
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And we now have an inventory of what the job occupations are and expected growth. This is just for the Bay area, so that's 13,000 new jobs, and it's about a third of the state-wide estimate of approximately 37,000 new jobs in these categories, with Building Performance retrofit specialists being the most substantial category.
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So we need to work on this transition from what has actually existed for over 30 years – but in a fringe way – to bring it to the core of our education system and bring it to the core of our green economy. Many thought it would take a lot longer, but the crisis we're in – whether it's the climate crisis, the jobs crisis, or the housing crisis – all of those areas can be assisted by this.
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So this then is something that's showing up in strategic plans such as California's, where we are beginning to create the incentives for Home Performance – a 130,000-unit program which just came out this week.
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So it makes it critically important, then, to combine the carrots and the sticks and the prediction of job openings based on needs assessment so we get this right.
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The time to act is now. Thank you for your interest. Let's move on to the next speaker.
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Debra Rowe:
Hi. My name is Debra Rowe, and I've been a Professor of Renewable Energy Technologies and Energy Management for 30 years at Oakland Community College. I'm also President of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development. We work with 16 national higher ed associations that includes the professional associations for college and university presidents, facility directors, business officers, student activities. Because part of this is about making all of the campus a model of sustainability, and also a living lab for sustainability and greening our economy.
We also work with 20 academic disciplinary associations and we help support the American College and University College Presidents' Climate Commitment; 650 college presidents have signed on to go carbon-neutral because they've read their own science and recognize we have to get off of fossil fuels. But also that we need to educate our students so they're literate about our sustainability challenges and able to engage in solutions. I want to today give a few additional comments on types of green jobs, examples of success stories in terms of partnership, information resources – which won't be totally comprehensive, but it'll give you places to start.
I'm gonna talk a bit about certifications and how to consider them; how to use them as you move along. But I wanna start out with saying congratulations to the Department of Energy, because setting the bar for buildings at net zero is exactly what we have to do. And I think it should be a new societal norm if we're going to truly address our independent energy challenges and our climate change challenges, and also to build a healthier economy. So let's get started.
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There are successful partnerships that can help create a green economy and real career pathways, and I work with colleges all over the country and I know there's a lot of people who are feeling overwhelmed with what do we do with all of this information, and which program do we offer, and where are the real jobs gonna be? So I thought I'd give you some thoughts on this. Many of our potential employers are not educated themselves about how they can grow their businesses and their profits by adding green products and processes into their work; into their identity as a business.
So one of the things we can do at colleges – and this is something we aren't necessarily used to doing, so we need to talk about it and make it an intention – is outreach to potential employers and educate them about the opportunities. And then education their existing workforce as well as let them know that we're training people and we can customize that training for their new employees. So we can partner with workforce agencies to anticipate and catalyze green business development. There are other business models to combine it with. Los Angeles Community College district – the energy manager there has gone 100 percent conservation and solar.
That's their planning intention; they have their financing for it. They set this up not only for themselves, but they have been sharing the information with the community so the whole community can move in that direction. Which them of course generates jobs for your graduates. They've also done something unique. When they went to buy the solar photovoltaic panels, they opened up the purchasing to community purchasing so the whole community could benefit from the volume pricing. That kind of collaboration on green purchasing can really help to drive the market and the jobs.
Our second idea is offer seminars to these potential employers on how to green and expand your business. I know California's has some great policies for a long time that are reflected in those needs assessments you saw that said, "Oh, look, there's all these jobs!" Some of you are in states where that hasn't happened yet; it's in the works. But if you did a needs assessment right now, you wouldn't necessarily get those numbers. But yet we have to expand our programs and be prepared for what will be ramping up in the next year or two. And in that gap in between we can outreach to our businesses and show them how to go green.
So for example at Oakland Community College at the end of September we have a cosponsored event with multiple Chambers of Commerce, with the Plumbers and Mechanical Contractors Association, the Electrical Contractors Association, with the Builders Association and the Remodelers Association, with the Engineering Society of Detroit. We're outside of Detroit, so we have lots of unemployed engineers right now. And others, all coming together to talk about how can you green and expand your business and expand your profits? What kind of training do you need for yourself, for your employees, and for the new employees you'll bring on as you expand it?
Another model – Solar Richmond in California is working with the city there – working to have the private investors come together to put solar onto city buildings. And along with that, designed into the contract are hiring commitments that they will hire the people trained in solar installation locally – that they won't bring in people from outside of the state. So that's a local economic development model. They are looking for other cities to work with in that. Also in the ‘70s we had all sorts of models that make the financing work for this; that make it convenient, highly credible, highly comfortable for homeowners and business owners to move to energy efficiency and renewable energies.
And we aren't necessarily using those models yet, so we need to learn from what we've done in building. Let me give you one example: the Tennessee Valley Authority used to have a program in the ‘70s where homeowners could put solar hot water heaters and the downstream energy efficient equipment for that into their homes, and it was free. In other words, the savings that they got from using solar energy to heat their hot water would be available to pay off that solar hot water heater. But instead of the homeowner having to go out and get their own loan to buy the whole system up front, it was put in and the utility just – the bill stayed the same.
But the utility paid off the system out of the bills, and then at some point the bills went down. This became a no-brainer for people to put in solar energy and energy conservation equipment in their homes.
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These are the kinds of financing programs that we need in partnerships to bust open the middle class and upper middle class market for installation of energy efficiency and renewables. So we'll get a real green economy, and we'll also get all those jobs that are sitting there ready for such a program and financing mechanism to make it available. So there are examples of these around the country, but we need to expand ones that are doing that. And that means the community colleges need to look at partnering with more than just the normal partners – I'll talk about that in a minute.
We have all sorts of educator resources for green technician education. In some ways it's confusing because it's not like Australia where you have one set national curricula, but in some ways it's wonderful because it's creating a lot of innovation. For those of you who are very interested in using the green economy to bring people out of poverty and to give them family-wage jobs, Green for All has been doing quite a good job with that. And there is a Word document that's available on the website where these presentations have been stored for you so you can use them afterwards.
That Word document has links to Green for All's Pathways Out of Poverty programs, including that Solar Richmond program. The states that are developing career pathways include California; Ohio has developed one; there's others as well. And these are changing too as these programs come in and generate new career tracks or solidify those career tracks. The American Association of Community Colleges has been one of the lead higher education associations to understand that all of our students need to be educated about our sustainability challenges and able to engage in solutions.
This is their web page, and there's also a link there to green resources.
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They recently received support that makes it even more robust over time, that site, so I recommend that you visit it now but also visit it later. If you wanna see examples of what colleges are doing around the country – this is also useful to nonprofits and to employers at workforce boards that are gonna be working with the colleges – I recommend this first document from the National Council for Workforce Education. If you're looking at the renewable energy training, you wanna see a map of who's doing what around the country, you wanna see documents on best practices and information on certification, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council is a good source.
They're also having a national conference soon. The Advanced Technology Environmental and Energy Center is a National Science Foundation-funded center. They are compiling and continuing to grow their list of resources that are available there. And then finally I'm part of the National Science Foundation project, the Consortium for Education in Renewable Energy Technology, where we've recognized that a lot of colleges and nonprofits and others want to do this kind of green education, but their faculty aren't necessarily up to speed on it. So we have courses available online that faculty can take for their own faculty development that remote students can take.
And of course it doesn't have all the hands-on piece, but there's hands-on components available. But remote students can take, when they can't access a local program; and also colleges who don't have the capacity to offer a whole degree but they wanna offer part of it, they can partner with CERET and then we can help them create a degree.
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Another word about green jobs: a lot of colleges that I visit with, and nonprofits and others, focus on the technician. These are what I call the obvious green jobs, but you know in the ‘70s we went through training all these people, and we had a bunch of technicians. And we didn't have the business owners and we didn't have the distributors and we didn't have the salespeople and we didn't have the policy people to make sure that it was a robust industry.
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So please don't stick with just those obvious choices, but also look at the upstream green jobs; the other jobs we need so the technicians get employed. These are just a few, but I could give you ten pages of these listings of green jobs.
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Also don't count on the SOC listings, because they are incomplete, and don't count on when you go in your career offices, the programs that say, "Oh, here's where the green jobs are," because those are incomplete in career offices at this point. They need to come up to speed. Recognizing that every job will have a green tinge to it since energy and natural resource waste is becoming ever more costly and just unacceptable in terms of constraints of resources and what it's doing to our health as well as to the planet. Many of these jobs on these pages of job titles – I don't have time to share all of them with you.
But one of the Word doc links that you have is to the webinar that we did earlier with AACC – it's American Association of Community Colleges, American Career and Tech Educators, and some others – has a fuller list. And also the American Solar Energy Society has a listing, and there are many national studies that have been done that you can look at. But many of those jobs will be available to community college graduates. To create the market demand, though, we have to educate all students as consumers and as investors, as well as some as workers,
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so that we have the market demand for these products and processes. One of the ways to do this isn't to make all students take technical courses, but instead to infuse sustainability into all degrees and into all disciplines, because each discipline has a unique and important role to play to help create a sustainable future. So we have an organization that we've been running for about four years called the Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability, and if you go to this website and then you click on the resources page, you'll see examples of how all of these disciplinary associations and more are working on how do we create a real green economy and
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what can each of these disciplines do to contribute to that, and looking at the bigger picture of the jobs. AASHE.org is also an excellent resource. It's got a free bulletin that often lists job opportunities in sustainability, and it's got a digest where you can search for the last year what they put out there. It's got a template called STARS that can help your campus become more sustainable, and an outstanding list of listservs that you can participate in. But membership in AASHE brings you all sorts of additional member resources.
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I've mentioned the President's Climate Commitment. They have an excellent document on educating for climate neutrality and sustainability showing how you can infuse it easily into your core curriculum for all degrees, and fun and creative ways of doing that. Through the U.S. partnership in collaboration with the American Association of Community Colleges we started an international sustainability and green resources page at the World Federation of Colleges and Polytechnics to help you see what's going on around the world. And don't forget K-12. We have model standards. We also have lots of resources and curriculum – many of which, by the way, is applicable to higher ed – at that K-12 resources page of the U.S. partnership.
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Before I talk about certifications I wanna mention to you that as you design your degrees you might want to create a flexible degree option where you have certain core courses and then students can take from a menu of courses. Because your students won't all be the same when they come in, as you in community colleges know. I'm regularly training in the same class engineers, architects, builders, interested consumers, salespeople – and so they come from a variety of backgrounds. Business owners, people who wanna start a business – they need different courses in order to get the skill sets that they need to be successful.
So a flexible degree option – as we've had for 30 years – we've found is very valuable. Also don't count on your needs assessments today, because whatever you collect today is old given this push-out of Stimulus money and the policy work to build a true green economy. So you're actually gonna have to anticipate what's coming, and that's something that we're not used to doing, but if we don't do that we're gonna miss the boat. Not only on what's coming, but on how we can contribute to really building the green economy, which we have to do if we want to avert some fairly massive human suffering, which will be the alternative.
There are a lot of different businesses that are on this call, so I just wanna say one thing to the businesses before we get into the certification. And what I wanna say is that you have a unique and important role to play as members of an advisory committee for a community college or other educational institution, where you can help them assess the whole field. And where you can help them with what should be in their curricula; what the desired outcomes should be for students. And most importantly – well, maybe not most, but also very importantly – help them create a robust internship and job placement system so that what's coming out of these programs is gonna match not only your needs but the needs for other businesses like yours.
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Certifications. So I'm gonna give you a taste of certifications. Thanks to Green for All for compiling these. We have entry level certifications: the DOL-funded work training programs, the OSHA Hazardous Waste Operations certificates, Site Safety certificates. EPA has a certificate in terms of refrigeration recovery in the HVAC area.
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The Home Builders Institute has a Residential Construction Academy Series, and they're in partnership with CENGAGE on that, and a lot of the pre-apprenticeship programs have been using this.
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You're not gonna be able to read all of this, so that's why this is available on the Word docs afterwards; I just wanted to introduce you to it. But I can't take up too much time with this. We have skilled labor and their certifications there. There's ETA refrigerant, as I mentioned. NABCEP is for renewables, and it's growing in what it covers. The Electrical Contractors, the Home Builders Association, and there's other trade and apprenticeship programs.
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There's Green Advantage, which is for construction people. There's an alternative to LEED, although the National Association of Home Builders. Our vision directs people to the net zero because that's where we need to go,
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and so that'll help get those up to date with the latest technologies if you're gonna do something to shoot for. But these other certifications could be helpful, and it might be helpful to your students to get them as well. I've talked about NABCEP.
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The remodeling industry has certification. Charles talked about the RESNET and the HERS rating system.
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And then I've also mentioned BPI. Well, realtors also have certifications,
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as you can see, with 7 and 8. Even the American Lung Association has certification that has to do with healthy indoor air quality, and the appraisers have certification. And then of course there's the certifications for the professional designer and the people familiar with LEED.
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But there are others as well. The energy management field is a good field – good jobs, nice benefits, high pay. Those are gonna last for a long time, and so the AEE Center is a great place to go to look at that and they have certifications there as well. Don't go for certification just because it exists. You really should question how accepted is it in the marketplace? Don't make your whole program around one certification, but perhaps look at the underlying principles that go across multiple certifications. And that way your students can pick the ones that match their career path, and they may have different career paths, even students within the same class.
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So to make the green economy real,
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just a couple things on that and then I'm done. There's only two things we need to do to make the green economy real. We need to change our habits, because we're using 30 percent of the world's resources on less than 5 percent of the world's population, and we need to change some of our regulations,
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our policies. So we definitely need policy people and all students engaged civically to help change policy. Remember in your partnerships to collaborate with the normal partners – high schools, community colleges, four-year colleges, nonprofits, workforce development, and continuing ed. Workforce development and continuing ed have a very important role to play in meeting the needs, and so they're gonna have to be willing to stick their necks out to give the offering so that we can scale this up nationally the way we need to.
And of course the workforce agencies, but remember to include the economic development agencies in this and civic organizations and the employers, of course, because this is not just offering training. This is offering training in the context of helping to establish policy to build the strong green economy. We need good internships, good professional development, and of course the needs assessments – but remember the outreach to those potential employers so we can build real career pathways. And also it's not just a one-time assessment but continuous assessment and improvement, of course.
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Policies are critical to have a real green economy; there is no green economy without a revision of our organizational and governmental policy efforts from all of us. Our markets are now modified to be skewed to fossil fuels. It's very important that we change that if we want a real green economy. Remind students and our staff that they all have a civic voice and can make a difference. I just came back from Washington, D.C., yesterday, where we met with two Senators to talk with them about how do we develop policies for a real green economy.
And share the success stories – you can make a difference. I had three students that changed a Senator's vote. We need regulations such as climate change cap and trade. Utility regulations have to be changed to be friendlier to renewables and efficiency. Feed-in tariffs we aren't really talking about here, but that's really helped it to grow in Europe and we need to look at that more. We've got to develop discussion – do you wanna tax income or do you wanna tax pollution? It might be a lot healthier for all of us to tax carbon, tax pollution. Renewable portfolio standards.
And finally we need financial regulatory policy like the Tennessee Valley Authority program that I just mentioned that makes it a no-brainer – a positive net cash flow for people that will move to renewable energies and efficiency so we have a green economy. Instead of an economy that supports dirtier fuels and more health problems and a weaker economic future, we have a green economy with a stronger economic future.
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And we all have a role to play in making that happen. That's all I have time for today. That's where you can reach me, and now we're gonna turn it over to Dr. Weber.
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Jerry Weber:
Thank you, Deb. Well, I'm gonna talk about green jobs, community colleges, and workforce development, and give you some definitions, strategies, resources. First I'm gonna talk about a few studies and then the role of community colleges. Them some collaborations for training, and finally mention a few resources.
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So let's go ahead and we'll get started with a few of the studies I said that I'd mention. One is the Green Pathways study done by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy – or as they are affectionately known, COWS, along with the Workforce Alliance and Apollo Alliance. And you know there are many, many studies out there; I've just picked several as examples of the kinds of studies so that you could go back later if you want, take a look at those, or maybe adapt them or use them in your own situations. But I picked this one because it starts to echo a theme that's in a lot of the studies that we've talked about already, the presenters, that green jobs are good jobs.
And it states that the green vision beckons: clean, vibrant cities, robust rural communities, and a revitalized industrial heartland.
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So the whole idea that green jobs are good jobs, and the idea of green-collar jobs are also middle-skills jobs, and you've heard some talk about that already. But middle-skills jobs meaning these jobs require more than high school but less than a four-year degree. Of course in the new energy economy there's going to be some jobs that require engineers and analysts and others, but the notion here is that a lot of these jobs
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are the type of jobs that community colleges have traditionally trained folks for – the middle-skills jobs. Second study I wanna give an example of is – because it's a local study – it's a green-collar job study by Pinderhughes, and it's a case study from Berkeley, California. And I think Charles also mentioned another study that was done in California in a local region. But this one talks again about the concept of blue-collar jobs in green businesses, and the manual labor jobs.
And there's this whole green-collar jobs versus green jobs in some of these studies, but it seems like the trend is to just drop the word collar and talk about green jobs in a broader sense. And it seems the federal government and others are going that way. Certainly in what Pinderhughes tried to do –
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and I'll say this: they identified 22 economic sectors. And this is just locally. And a couple of them that refer to our work today were the energy retrofits and the green building and landscaping and work with construction materials. So it shows you the number of jobs that are out there in these local sectors. We're doing the same thing I know in our own college local region here by taking a look at a model to identify green jobs for the future.
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Another study that I wanted to mention, because one of the things that's out there and we talked about it a little already is how many jobs are there really out there? And the U.S. Conference of Mayors did a study just identifying 750,000 – ¾ of a million – what they're calling green jobs. And of course I'll talk a little bit about green jobs versus green skills, but this same study identified their estimates that by 2018 there'd be 2.5 new – that's 2 ½ million new green jobs using their framework. And 20 years later by 2038, 4.2 million new jobs that'll be green jobs. So in a lot of these studies it stated – and a lot of us are saying – that we expect a tremendous growth in these areas.
And of course as some of your speakers already mentioned, some of that is dependent on policies that come forward of course
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to help create those jobs, and I'll show an example of that in a minute. Well, one other study I wanted to mention was the O*NET study because it works into the Department of Labor, and it's a comprehensive analysis of current and emerging green jobs with an analytical framework. And in fact the Workforce Board of Metropolitan Chicago and the community colleges, we've tried adapting this framework which looks at green increased demand occupations, green enhanced skills occupations, and green and new emerging occupations. So one example – I'm sure there's others out there and they'll be in your resources – that you could use for your own analysis in your own community or region.
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Let me talk just a bit for a minute or two about the role of community colleges, and there is a study that's out called Going Green, and it was done by the National Council for Workforce Education and the Academy for Economic Development. And it's really not a green jobs study; it talks more about the role of community colleges in general in going green. But it does make the case – which I think a lot of us would recognize, and some of your other speakers have said – that the connection to local and regional labor markets, the flexibility to change and the ability to offer the necessary level of education. These are all strengths that the community colleges can bring to the table
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in working on going green. I'm gonna also mention, as Deb and others may have mentioned, that Green for All. But I wanna mention this concept just for one minute, because the green jobs as a Pathway from Poverty – or some people refer to it as the Van Jones concepts or model that he's written about and spoken about. You know, his point, Van Jones' point and the point of Green for All is that past revolutions have left the poor behind. So when there was all the computer revolution, it really didn't lift folks out of poverty.
And so the idea now is to take this revolution, because of the nature of it, the change that's coming with then new energy economy, and use it as an opportunity to move people and to make both environmental and social change. You know if green jobs are family-supporting, career-track jobs, open to people without high levels of education, well, historically community colleges have moved the working poor to middle-skills jobs with sustaining wages. We can think about of course our health careers and some of these other areas as pertinent examples of that, but I like to think this.
You know in the 1980s, the community colleges trained everybody on computers, and in the 1990s on networking, and now on digital media. So we've done the training, and this is simply a workforce movement at its heart. We really are talking about when the context is right and as the jobs appear and as the forces move in place, we're really talking about workforce training for middle-skills jobs, and that's what community colleges do best, really.
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Well, Deb and others mentioned the key collaborators here. I'll add like Deb did to this group the economic development groups, and I want to though focus on community colleges collaborating with other community colleges, actually.
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And I wanna mention an approach we're taking in Illinois. All of us at colleges and universities, we seem to sometimes develop what we're doing – even though we might be right next to each other, we develop things in isolation. And then we come to a conference and kind of share what we're doing with each other, and we're trying to take a little bit different approach in Illinois in creating a network right now of the colleges to work together for sustainability
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so that we can share from the beginning all our resources. And so we've actually got all 39 districts covering the entire state of Illinois signed into a network. Some of us are seeking ARRA funding through this initiative. We're partnering with universities, workforce boards, labor, community-based organizations. In face we've completed a pilot last year of this in sharing resources, and now this year our intent is to make it fully operational throughout the state. And some of the – we wanna bring the power of networking and sharing resources in an immediate sense. In fact, part of being a member in this is the commitment to share those resources.
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This is just in our pilot – some of the certificates and information that were developed and shared with each other. And you know we have other university partners and CBOs, as I mentioned – the University of Illinois, their Smart Energy Design Assistance Center, for instance, is a partner in this arrangement.
[New Slide]
Well, I wanna just take a minute and mention collaboration, because I think it shows, as some of the other presenters have shown, kind of a link between policy and green jobs. In Chicago, there's the Chicago Climate Action Plan, which is the city's plan to reduce their carbon emissions from 1990 levels by 80 percent in 2050. Well then that plan spawned a Climate Action Plan Green Jobs for All Report. And in the Green Jobs for All Report they mention various efforts for green jobs training around the city of Chicago and the Chicago area. And I'm just going to talk about one; it's the Green Collar Jobs Initiative.
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And the Green Collar Jobs Initiative is a group of organizations that have come together to focus on that; labor, CBOs, community colleges, and others all coming together.
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And their goal is of course to promote the green-collar workforce. Again, all of this starts really with policy, and it's that chicken and egg thing you mentioned earlier. You have to have the policies that drive and move us towards this
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that make the changes necessary. And this is just an example of a couple of the initial efforts of this group that they've created just to map out the different skills and the levels. So this is their career maps moving through the different skill levels, the different groups, and actually the educational groups that would handle that at different levels.
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And this is one for weatherization, laborer, and energy auditor. So these are a couple examples of the career maps that the group's been creating, and they're still working on these
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and refining them, but that's their initial start. Well, let me shift. In closing I just wanted to talk about some national resources, and some of these have been mentioned already so I'll go through them quite quickly. But AASHE has already been mentioned, and the President's Climate Commitment – great websites for resources
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for anyone to use, really. The other one is the websites of course for the federal agencies that are out there, particularly Energy and Labor. The other website I wanna mention that Deb mentioned also is Green for All, because they do have a lot of practical policies definition guides that you can use and adapt to assisting you. And again it's that idea of resource-sharing over the web and networking and
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saving everyone time. The final one I really wanna mention here is just as Deb mentioned the American Association of Community Colleges, which now has a task force that's working on gathering resources on community college green jobs and promoting the role of community colleges in training for green jobs, so there's that website.
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And I wanna thank you, and I'll move on to our next presenter, Jennifer.
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Jennifer Troke:
Hi. Thanks. This is Jenn Troke; I'm from the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, and it's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. I'm just gonna take about five minutes to talk a little bit about
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our work around green here at the Department of Labor. We are very excited to have our new Secretary Solis and her leadership here at our agency, and certainly her California roots have given her a passion for green, which is very exciting for all of us. This is simply a quote that was taken from her recent testimony on the Hill where the Secretary emphasized the importance of green jobs to our economy and the future of the American workforce.
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A number of states have taken a lead role in promoting green jobs and environmental action, and specifically state workforce agencies along with state and local workforce investment boards and one-stop career centers are taking a leadership role in promoting a green economy by encouraging partnerships across government, education, employers, and others. In addition, they're supporting education and training programs that prepare workers for green economy jobs, and they're collaborating with federal partners to understand regional capacity around green industries.
We are just beginning to integrate green principles and practices into our own industry-validated competency models, which are all available online at our Competency Model Clearinghouse, and the link is actually buried a bit. It is in that third bullet, and I would encourage each of you to take a peek at these models as a starting place or a framework for understanding the knowledge, skills, and abilities that green workers will need to do their jobs well. I also wanna note that we are working hard at the federal level to walk our talk and share information across federal agencies.
We are thrilled by our partnership with the Department of Energy, and we're in discussions with EPA, Education, and others around maximizing our resources. We have even dubbed ourselves "the federal family" so there's a lot of promise for the
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national relationships happening here in D.C. I think Jerry just actually referred to the O*NET report in his presentation, so I'll just put a quick plug in for you to go – here's the actual link to the O*NET Center where you get the report. And it simply shows that there are many shades of green, and O*NET has developed a framework for how to frame those jobs, and specifically the types of industries and occupations that we're considering to be greenish. So I won't say more about that so we can get to some questions here.
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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by President Obama on February 17th was designed to channel $787 billion into the American economy. And of that $787 billion, the Department of Labor actually received nearly $4.5 billion.
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This slide shows several solicitations that we have related to green jobs; net total, 500 million. There are five SGAs, or Solicitations for Green Applications, that were released in June 2009. Two of the five SGAs have closed, including the State Labor Market Information Improvement Grants and the Green Capacity Building Grants. The next SGA closes on September 4th, and that's the Energy Training Partnership Grant. And then finally the Pathways Out of Poverty Grants close on September 29th – oh, excuse me, and then our last grants initiated closes on October 20, 2009, with the State Energy Sector Partnership and Training Grant.
All of the materials for these funding opportunities are available online at the links on your screen. Two notes on these solicitations: first, I wanna thank all of you in advance for all of the hard work for those people who are putting together applications, and the excellent thought that's going into those applications – so thank you, thank you! Second, I wanna put a plug in – we are actually looking for industry experts to assist us in paneling the applications that we're receiving. And I would encourage you if you're interested to take a look at the link above, if you're interested in becoming a federal panelist. It's actually an exciting process to participate in.
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This is simply an illustration of the five green SGAs and who's eligible to apply for these. Of note, a portion of the resources will be reserved for communities or regions undergoing auto industry-related restructuring in two of the SGAs. If you have questions about any of the SGAs I encourage you to get in touch with the grant specialist who's listed within each solicitation, and I unfortunately am unable to answer questions about these solicitations today.
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We have a slew of resources available on the web at workforce3one.org. One additional note of interest is the development of a green jobs Community Practice – or COP as we like to call it – that will help us share resources and serve as a forum to exchange ideas and lessons learned around green workforce development. We are also continuing to develop webinars on renewable industries and other green technologies, so keep your eyes posted for those events. If you register on our website you will receive those email notifications about upcoming webinars.
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And finally if you're not familiar with the Department's resources, here are some tools for connecting to local workforce investment boards and one-stop career centers. I would encourage you to go to our servicelocator.org website. Also our toll-free help line is quite helpful for answering all kinds of DOL questions, even beyond green. I thank you for your time and interest, and special thanks to my fellow presenters who have been incredibly valuable resources. Now I'll turn it back to Michael for some polling questions and Q&A.
Michael McCabe:
Thank you, Jennifer. As we mentioned, we have two additional polling questions.
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Then we'll go into the Qs and As. And the first question is up now, looking at whether or not your goals and objectives were met in this webinar. So if you would please help us and give us your answer now, we'd appreciate it. About to close and go to the second question, so if you are going to vote on the first one, please vote now. Thank you.
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Going to the last question regarding today's training. Thank you.
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Now we'll get into the Qs and As. As we mentioned, we asked everybody to submit their Qs online. We received quite a few, and probably more than what we can handle today. And with the five speakers it's gonna be somewhat round-robin, but I'll start it with one of the areas where I was asked questions, and that was regarding solar systems. And that I would suggest individuals contact the DOE's Solar Program office to get some questions regarding the cost and performance of the systems and their website is ww1.eere.energy.gov/solar/, and that should be viewed as a resource.
What I wanna do is pass it onto some of the others on the team to answer some of the other questions, and we'll just kind of go around.
Jerry Weber:
You know, this is Jerry Weber, and one of the questions that I had was to provide specific sources of information for conducting a community needs assessment. And I'll just tell you that in Lake County we used a model really that's called EMSI. And what I'll do – and I think there's three or four other questions that I had here. What I'll do is in the materials that we have attached I'll try – maybe people could come back and pull that down later, and I will give specific sources to answer some of these questions. We don't have time now to list those. But I think the EMI source is the one we've been using for a community assessment. The Economic Modeling Specialists Incorporated, so.
Michael McCabe:
Thank you, Jerry. Charles?
Charles Segerstrom:
Yes. I was asked a question about what carrots and/or sticks work best for market-based programs, and I guess one would have to say that this is a very key question because we haven't seen a lot of success over the last 30 years with regard to deep energy-saving retrofits. Of the carrots that have been tried that have been fairly successful in some arenas have been financing, although energy efficient mortgages have been available for 30 years and there hasn't been much uptake.
What I'm very hopeful about, though, is that new versions of financing, such as the property tax-based where you create an assessment district over your own house and get 20-year financing at very low interest to make it potentially possible for the energy savings to cover the loan payments. So that's something that is about to emerge. With regard to additional codes and standards, as communities deal with the opportunities with their Stimulus funds they are developing city goals and retrofit on resale projects, for instance. And so we really haven't seen the sweet spot of a combination of carrots and sticks that will move the market-based programs yet.
Home Performance with Energy Star is getting a start, but we need a quantum leap, and I think it will take a combination of financing and city initiatives.
Michael McCabe:
Thank you, Charles. Debra?
Debra Rowe:
Yeah, I would also add to what Charles just say to say that it can also be done with state-level policy and also national policy. But right now it's very easy for most people in this country to just hook into the local power plant and pay a monthly bill, and it's convenient and it's reliable. And when we have the programs that allow us to hook into the wind and the solar and the conservation just as easily as we now hook into the dirtier coal climate-change-producing fossil fuel, then we'll have policies in the right place. And remind people that there's a role for all of us to play in getting involved in that – those hearings.
Getting our students involved so that they can practice democracy so that we can really make this green economy fall in. I had a question: do you offer internet-based training? Are you willing to share curricula with other training institutions? And is there types of partnership programs available to pool resources? So the CERET – C-E-R-E-T.US – was set up so that some of those courses do have proprietary information. But for example my entry-level renewable energies course, energy national course, the reason we leveraged those into the national consortium is so that people can take it and then utilize it to create their own curricula.
So that is all internet-based. And then the other piece, we can also customize it and bring it to you if that's better. We're doing a lot of work with professional development out of the U.S. Partnership for Colleges and for Universities for staff and for faculty so that everybody can engage in these sustainability solutions, whether it's in their daily decisions or in their curricula development or in their facilities or purchasing or operations or community outreach. Educational institutions have a really large role to play in that consumer ed piece. You asked if there's a way to pool resources.
U.S. Partnership and the American Association of Community Colleges have worked together to offer a once-a-month national conference call that anybody is welcome to join. It's geared for community colleges, and it's focused on sustainability and green curricula. So that is available to you. And then of course that website we talked about at AACC. The Green Schools listserv is another way that people are pooling resources, so I've got a longer answer, but that gives you some.
Charles Segerstrom:
Yeah, I'll just add to what Deb said in that that AACC site, we're doing a study right now of programs across the country, and within a few months we'll post all those with links. And then you can go in there and find other colleges and folks to see if you can get them to share.
Michael McCabe:
And a general comment is that we will try to get answers to all the questions and get them up on the website, and as we have the participants' email addresses, email them when that material is available.
Debra Rowe:
I have a question I'd like to throw to Charles, actually. I have a question that says is there a sample plan available for a training house? And you know we're compiling information on labs, etc., with this AACC site that's going up, but I just wondered – and the ATECH site has the stuff. But Charles, do you have a plan for your training house that you're able to share?
Charles Segerstrom:
We do have an online tour on our website at PGE.com/Stockton that gives a general idea and pictures of how we've assembled the training house laboratories.
Michael McCabe:
I had a couple of very specific questions. One was whether or not the weatherization grants were in addition to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation block grant funding that the Department is issuing, and the answer to the question is "yes." The weatherization grants are going to the states, and then through the states they will disseminate the funds. And the EECBG grants are going both to states, they're going to counties, cities that meet the requirements – small cities, small towns will get grants through the states. And they're also going to Indian tribes.
And another very specific question which was asked was regarding building codes and whether or not the building codes are gonna incorporate new energy systems – solar, water recovery, and the like. One thing I can say in answer to that is that we are working with the two model code organizations, one dealing with residential building codes and the other dealing with commercial building codes. And working with them to support the update of those codes to achieve levels that are half the energy use of the current code requirement.
And in order to achieve that, that's certainly some of the new systems are going to have to be included in there. I was gonna go to Jerry to see if he had any – kind of go around the table.
Jerry Weber:
Well, sure. There's the question out there that what is the role of organized labor in this program, and I have to say just speaking of Illinois with the community colleges, it varies from college to college and from labor group to labor group. But organized labor, of course, there's always a seat at the table there at the workforce boards. And I think it would be a good idea, though, to have more discussion and have some model programs, and I know we have some in Illinois, for instance. But it might be an interesting webinar or something in the future to communicate models of these.
And maybe some of the other presenters also have some models of places where organized labor has worked with workforce boards and community colleges and others to present programs. And again lift people into the apprenticeship and onward.
Debra Rowe:
Yeah. Let me just add to that that sometimes really organized labor can do certain things well and not other things. You can create partnerships. So here in Detroit, they can teach the electricians in the IBEW how to install the solar electric systems, but we've been strong in being able to teach the sales end of it. How do you present, how do you close the deal so that these systems actually can go in, and the businesses can grow?
Michael McCabe:
Not to overlook Dr. Troke, since we're going around the table. And since she was the last speaker, I wanna give her some time in case of any questions to her. I don't know if she has any questions; if she does, give her an opportunity to raise them and answer them, any that she might have received.
Jennifer Troke:
I have several that I've just received, actually, but most of them are looking for information in links, so I'll be happy to share that in the notes that go up after the webinar.
Michael McCabe:
Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. Charles, anything else that you have that you'd like to add?
Charles Segerstrom:
There's a question about training for a disadvantaged communities. I would just reinforce the discussion that's taken place with regard to for instance Van Jones and his work in the east ___ of the Bay area. Ella Baker Center, Green for All, Solar Richmond, Apollo Alliance, Rising Sun are some programs that you can access through the links page. But I'm sure there's some additional comments other panelists may have on the links to disadvantaged communities.
Michael McCabe:
Debra?
Debra Rowe:
Also on Green for All's page there's a document on how to – a couple of documents on how to get engaged with policies so that our policies make sense, because now they're a bottleneck area. Also even how to start a large-scale city retrofit program, for example. I also wanna mention, somebody asked me, "What's the realistic cost of a million BTUs generated from a solar collection system at a temperature of 120 degrees" – very specific. And I'm not gonna give you the full answer because it would take too long. But let me just tell you that for instance it sounds like solar-thermal you're asking about.
We can show you how to make a solar hot water heater out of recycled materials that any decent do-it-yourselfer can make that's gonna provide 40 to 50 percent of the hot water heating needs, and has an extremely low cost. Or we can talk about the systems that they're manufacturing and putting on people's houses, and they're turn-key operations and they make up to 7,500 for solar hot water heaters – or more, depending on the number of participants in the house.
So part of the role of the educational institutions, and the reason I left running a solar company to come work at the college 30 years ago, is because certain information on the do-it-yourselfer and consumer education and sustainable living side, that comes from the college because it is a neutral highly credible source. And your continuing ed offerings can end up being a feeder into your credit courses, but also have a stand-alone purpose. Consider using your labs not only as labs, but also as energy solutions or demonstration or sustainable solutions center for your community.
And take advantage of the free media that's available to not only market your program but to educate people at the same time. And if you google "media strategies for sustainability" it gives you information. We've had national conference calls on that, and we have resources listed for you.
Charles Segerstrom:
Yeah, and I'll comment on what Debra said there in just a slightly different way. And that's just to say that you know the cost of all of this is going down, and we talked a lot about policy and how policy can drive green jobs and that. But actually a few good innovations in some research that's going on, and a few technology breakthroughs, and things are gonna take off even faster. Once solar drops below the price of coal – once some of these other events take place – once batteries for cars become efficient in a way that they can be used readily and those systems are worked out, the smart energy grid – it's really gonna accelerate. And there's gonna be more and more jobs happening.
Michael McCabe:
Thank you. I had –
Debra Rowe:
So the solutions are there today and more solutions tomorrow. So don't wait for technology to save us, though. Let's get these programs going now, because we have to shift off of the fossil fuels into the green economy. Actually, we needed to do it over ten years ago, but we'd better catch up and do it now.
Michael McCabe:
I had a couple of questions as far as paying for some of the investments, paying for energy audits. And the Department of Energy does not have programs to fund, to pay for homeowners or businesses to fund investments or audits. Though there are, however, federal tax credits that would pay for the investments and many utilities offer programs that would cover the cost of energy audits. There are a number of other programs that are out there that we are encouraging parties to take advantage of; such things as loan guarantees, energy saving performance contracts.
The energy savings performance contracts, for example, is one that the federal government is using; we're partnering with many of the private sector where they are covering the investment, the first cost for some of the improvements, and we are, the government is, paying for it back through its energy savings over the period of the contract. So there are a lot of opportunities out there, options to cover that cost, the investment costs. I think we'll just continue to go around. Charles, if you've got anything else?
Charles Segerstrom:
I did get one question on the status of enforcing audits on resale, as the United Kingdom is doing. I would see the RESNET website that is in our notes. It's starting in states like California with a disclosure of the existence of energy audits and ratings at the time of sale and migrating toward a U.K. model. But the RESNET site is an excellent source for updates on this topic of time of sale requirements to get an audit, get a rating, and at some point down the road some jurisdictions may require some level of energy efficiency improvement as a result of that analysis.
Michael McCabe:
And on the same topic, the Department of Energy is working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, working with the funding entities – Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac – and also working with the National Association of Realtors to encourage their promotion or adoption of those programs as well. I don't think there's a lot of activity, but we're beginning to see some small progress there. Debra, Jerry?
Jerry Weber:
Well, you know related to – I'm more familiar with this from the college setting than anything. But we're going to groups of us get together, and of course you have those energy service groups that'll come in. But on the home front also we're looking at ways that our own HVAC students and others can go out into the community and kind of offer this. So we're exploring that for the future; ways we can get out to the homes through our HVAC program and put the blower door on and have our students do some research and help we'll help out some low-income homes. But I don't have anything more to say.
Michael McCabe:
Okay. Are there any other questions that you'd like answered?
[New Slide]
We started five minutes late, and we've gone to 1:36. There are probably a few more questions, and maybe even some more that'll come in. We would like to thank everybody for their participation; hope that they got a lot out of this. We will be taking the questions and answering them, and we'll be posting some additional material on our site, and we'll be sending emails to the participants to let them know when additional material goes up on the site. But again, on behalf of all the speakers and the Department of Energy, and I'll take a little bit of leeway on the Department of Labor as well for Jennifer, and thank everybody for participating and wish them a good rest of the day. Thank you.
Debra Rowe:
Thank you.
Jennifer Troke:
Thank you.
Charles Segerstrom:
Thanks.
Operator:
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time.
[End of Audio]
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