Green Jobs Roundtable: Current Landscape Working Group
9/18/08
Attendees:
Lisa Locke
Christine Ricco
Katie Nosker
Jessica Lick
Lea Kilrane
Brandy Colander
Marta Nelson
Megan Shane
David Giles
Brian Hagan
Kate Zidar
Neil Tapel
Wendy Fleischer
Tom Hart
Notes
Want to uncover trends, and establish questions for future working groups.
Introductions
Name, org, why attended, accomplish, why this working group, what do you bring?
Christine Ricco, background in Workforce Development, works to create new training programs, working with employers on best practices, now working on green jobs and environmental issues. Working with the open space institute and Apollo. Thinks this group is important
Lisa Locke, Milano New School for MGT and public policy, interested in how organizations change and partner, how that connects to policy. She things it’s a fascinating process. Chose this group, because she was invited
Neil Tapel, former administrator in NYC, writes labor column, interested in future of jobs, wants to learn about where the trends are going
Wendy Fleischer, community development background, did some consulting, took interest in environmental issues. She is a sustainability project manager now, working to retrofit buildings
Jessica Luk, Mayor's Office, her office produced PlaNYC. She’s here to listen and learn. She wants to find the gap between supply and demand, and learn how we can address that with green jobs.
Lea Kilrane, NYC Workforce Investment Board, before that worked in international development. Wants a general scope of workforce development issues.
Brandy Colander, NRDC, works with community development, air and energy groups. Want to be partners with this
Marta Nelson, Center for Employment Opportunities, works with formerly incarcerated people to get them back into the workforce. Interested in green jobs and this group, wants her program to fit into this movement. Many clients like to work with their hands
Tom Hart, labor leader from local 94, involved with Apollo since beginning, hosted some meetings, now project going to take off. He maintains heating and ventilation systems in Manhattan. Lots of innovation has come out of this, new generation of folks coming along who prioritize green. Developers want to go green, they notice that you can reuse/recycle many pieces of equipment from buildings, people are starting to think this way. Chairs mount sini's group, worked on stuff after 9/11
Megan Shane, environmental science and policy, city politics, now director of million trees NYC. Have large parks across the city, develop volunteer agreements for cleanup. Partner in million trees nyc initiative. NYRP, invested in green collar jobs, going to launch green collar training program, 3 tracks, held at different agencies, teaming up with NY botanical gardens, have many disconnected youth – largely Americorp – going to fill roles in parks dept and in city. Wants to participate in many groups
Valarie Westfall, worked in field for years, Doe Fund provides resources to homeless and formerly incarcerated people. Have a little green business, and participating in sector practicum to develop training for energy efficiency/building maintenance. Wants to know what other training programs are going on. Wants to develop a career ladder from this. Pratt has lean and green class
David Giles, center for urban future, write policy reports, working there for 8 months, but wrote report on energy efficient businesses in city, wants to learn more about this issue.
Brian Hagen, theological seminary and desmond tutu center, Episcopal church, instituted urban geothermal program, one of largest, converting a whole block to geothermal energy. Opened conference center for nonprofits, wanted to make sure that neighbors had job opportunities, some folks needed skills, did some training, found real need. Started whole program of job training, doing conferences. Wants to connect faith world with the environmental world, wants to make sure environmentally disadvantaged neighborhoods don't take the brunt of this, wants people to save money as energy costs go up
Kate Zider, Hobana Works, project of restaurateur, outpost was an environmental project that began running green business, one lesson learned that is that it's profitable to be green. That collection of people involved in greening buildings, stormwater management, building green roofs that grow food, flush toilets with rainwater, was pushing the limits. Group of people who've dabbled in creating green gutters that absorb rainwater, these people want more. Business has built out! Its building can't collect more rainwater, but metalworkers want more! Collected environmental education programs, green design programs, urban agriculture work (have small green roof growing herbs, want to plant more productive gardens, incl bee keeping). They also have an outpost oasis (also beer garden) that has monarch butterflies, native plants, getting native organisms. Tomorrow is parking day, they’re going to be there. She is the first employee of this organization, but she doesn't know how to fund her efforts, and doesn’t want to replicate training efforts already in place. Green jobs tend to focus on teens or in-stream workers, critical moment is graduation. If a young person doesn’t have job when they graduate high school, s/he is often lost to McDonalds or other low-paid and low-skilled work. Manufacturing element, interested in demanufacturing, construction demolition waste issue. Want to repurpose old materials - “Break it down.” Urban Agriculture.
Katie Nosker, Regional Plan Association, is working on the Green Jobs component of the Trenton Sustainability plan. She is here to listen and learn.
Outline for Overview Section, Critical Questions and issues
Brandy: Could we talk about who the employees are? Who are the employers?
Kate: noticed that in literal greening (urban forestry) elderly have wealth of knowledge on greening. They also have a lot of time and understanding, could contribute too perhaps
Tom Hart: can't come up with points, come with open mind, be creative, throw out zany ideas. Metal workers go to city schools, city schools have green initiative, construction authority. Take it to the schools. Go back to schools – the young people are the seeds of community – we need to educate young people so when they come out at graduation they already have green mindset. Big task, must remain open, has to be an organic process. Energy management is a big issue. Now that energy is expensive, older people are now interested in being “green.”
Christine: we will have to do some research. Moderators will create Google group to share information. Can be as involved as you want. This helps to keep one contact list. 3 elements to each sub sector (employees, employers, training). Apollo identified 4 sectors as priorities, we should focus on these. She and Lisa are going to talk weekly. Want group to stay in touch on regular basis.
Valarie: this is going to take research, perhaps ask for volunteers. We should focus on these priorities. Energy efficiency, transportation, urban forestry, brownfields, manufacturing. (Some confusion as to what the priorities are)
Megan: Sectors are important, but we need to look at some foundation issues. National policies, for instance, might be an impediment.
Naomi: Look at what other groups are doing. Think about what kind of foundational info that will be useful to other groups. What is workforce development?
Marta: this could take years! Don't want to be too distracted by this.
Christine: We will need to craft recommendations cognizant of weaknesses.
Naomi: We need to remember our audience. Need to know what workforce is and what the impediments are. What are the major points that someone new coming to this would help to them develop plan this plan?
Wendy: What is our end goal? Is it our job to describe the needs?
Lisa: this is an iterative process. The goal is to find out what the trends and issues are, broadly, that need to be addressed. Especially w/in the identified sectors
Christine: we need to figure out the current state, and identify issues that will need further attention
Lisa: this is just roadmap, don't want to be too detailed
Tom: remember we need potential candidates to buy into this, we need everyone to buy into this so will contiue for generations. Think in terms of opportunities in terms of identified sectors. Need to lead this, must be innovative
Megan: we aren't charged with developing a solution, just a persuasive way of framing the problem
Tom: It’s easier to develop a position with these 5 sectors than to come up with different ones.
Christine: Energy efficient retrofits. Let's start there
Tom: There are many different ideas out there, NYSERDA makes funding available, developers and owners are starting to buy into this. Need greater awareness. There are opportunities available that people aren't using. Different buildings need to be tackled differently
Wendy: how are building retrofits financed? NYSERDA helps, we all pay for it in con ed bills. Ongoing financing is a new idea that utilities can estimate savings certain energy efficient strategies generate, and then lend consumers $ to implement the strategies, so the consumers can pay them off over time and aren’t scared away by the high initial price. Then there's Weatherization Assistance, which provides money for low income people to get retrofits.
Tom: to do an retrofit, people come in and do an evaluation to find out where the leakages and potential savings are. The can also do the same thing on the commercial level, auditors are a growing green job opportunity
Wendy: there are 11 contractors registered in NYC who can do these retrofits. This is not wide-spread knowledge.
Wendy: there is actually more funding for these retrofits than demand
Brian: Clinton foundation showing that there's a market.
Christine: there are different markets for commercial and residential retrofits..
Lisa: what are the opportunities? How are they financed? Are there Incentives? Can they be scaled up? What are the growth occupations? What market segments do they appeal to?
Brian: I worked to get geothermal energy working on one block. I found that the regulatory environment was very cloudy. This needs to be addressed. Even regulatory agencies don’t understand their rules – and they different agencies are not talking to each other.
Brandy: this process is fluid because the idea is you'd have federal policy. We don't have that yet. So cities are just trying to fill in the gaps. City and state need to be bully pulpit, get the federal government involved
Wendy: we're focusing on NYC, so still room for improvement!
Marta: what are the jobs? What are people doing? What is the expertise required? Is it a question of training? Is there a career path or ladder?
Wendy: where are the employers? Who are the employers? At this point, we're trying to grow both supply and demand. Some of this is that we need to retrain workers, but also need to convince companies that they want to hire buildings analysts, just as an example. Many solar companies don't exist right now, but they will.
David: energy auditors may become something that everyone does. For now it will remain a government program, but the energy auditors and other occupations will have to grow in relation to how big this government program is. If we require audits, there will be more jobs
Tom: An annual energy audit should become a requirement. If this happened, the retraining would be huge. Solar is a great example. Panels aren’t being manufactured fast enough to keep pace with demand. The governor of Michigan has brought in solar panel plant, and is creating new jobs for her residents.
Wendy: our aging infrastructure is an issue. The grid is a problem, in order to make solar power work on a large scale, we will need to update the grid – we need to be able to put energy into the grid as well as take it out. Right now, in many places, you can only take it out.
Christine: next steps: create a google group
Valarie: we need to focus on employer demand
Lisa: how do we want to focus on this?
Valarie: we will develop teams/committees to further examine each sector
Kate: I can work on doing further research for the manufacturing sector. Will work well with my day job
Wendy: the facilitators will post an outline, then all the members can post what they know. Then it will be more clear where expertise fits.
Megan: many efforts are not fully leveraged because there is a small pot of resources for green initiatives, need to coordinate to make bigger pot.
Christine: express interest in creating teams now? Yes
Megan: We should focus our time in the beginning on understanding the foundation of the green jobs issues, then move into the sectors in later discussions. All other groups would benefit from a solid knowledge of the foundations (market, demand, etc.)
Megan: what's going to be convincing to politicians? Bigger issues. We have to frame this discussion in general terms, they don't care about the sectors. I have worked for elected officials, even those who are open to this have many items on their agendas. We need to develop a proposal that weaves into broader fabric of issues they’re dealing with
Christine: Megan and I can form the big picture team, we will get these questions and issues into overview document. Maybe RPA can help too
Kate: brownfields grants are being implemented all over the city. We need to focus on this! Should be part of current landscape.
Wendy: others with more expertise not are necessarily in the room, we should make this available to more people
Energy: Tom, wendy, Brandy, David, Valarie (energy efficiency), jessica, Neil
urban forestry: marta, kate, megan
green prod development: brian, kate, christine
transportation: david, megan
Kate: waste industries are nowhere to be found in this discussion so far, they were also left out of PlaNYC, this is disturbing. Nobody wants to tackle this, and SWAMP recently passed. Huge amount of jobs. Want to flag that. Recycling as an industry needs to change, much just ends up as waste, tough nut to crack.
Lisa: how/ when do we want to work together? Focal points for subgroups?
Marta: lots of good questions. If we each had outline for group would help react to, the more explicit the outline the better
Christine: will post an outline for each sector, everyone try to improve upon it. We’ll have a conference call every 2 weeks to keep group moving.
Brian: Informal check ins would be helpful too
Oour group will help project succeed by....
-providing context
-generating research questions for other groups
-hope to provide recommendations
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