Advanced Search
March 6, 2023
We know that the world needs to rapidly transition from burning fossil fuels towards renewable energy to address the climate crisis. This includes in our homes: switching to electric appliances instead of using natural gas or oil to heat our spaces and cook our food. David Smedick from RMI explains how we have great technology in heat pumps and induction stoves and a pathway of incentives and rebates from the big climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, to make this transition happen. But there’s a big missing piece—the people to actually do these electrification installations. Dan and Emma speak with Dr. Janell Hills from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and Vaughan Woodruff from ReVision Energy about the challenges and opportunities of equitably growing this critical workforce.
Show notes:
Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, for insight on the latest innovative climate solutions and environmental policy in action.
Follow us on social media @eesionline
About this Podcast:
With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.
Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello, everyone and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We're off to a roaring start of season five following our great episode two weeks ago with EESI’s newest Board Member, Barbara Martinez. And today, listeners are really in for a treat. Wouldn’t you agree, Emma?
Emma Johnson: I would really agree, Dan, I'm super excited about this episode. Our conversation with Barbara was about the interconnected nature of the climate and biodiversity crises, which was very global focused. But today, we are turning our gazes inward. We're talking about home electrification today!
Dan: Electrifying your home, as you can probably guess, is about more than having working lights, although working lights are a really nice thing. It's about switching to electric-run appliances that may even be powered by solar panels on your roof or from the electric grid that provides electricity to your house. This can include things like your oven, your heating system, as well as other tools you might have, like a lawnmower or even your car.
Emma: Making this switch is important because gas-powered products release pollutants that are hazardous to our health and the climate. The supply chain that transports natural gas to your home can leak methane, which is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a short period of time. A study from Stanford University found that the methane leaking from natural gas stoves in the United States is comparable to the carbon dioxide emissions from 500,000 gasoline powered cars. Dan, what's something that you've electrified around your home?
Dan: Well, I think you know where I'm going to go with this. We bought electric lawn equipment, and I love it. They work great. The batteries are awesome. I can't say enough about how much I like my electric lawn equipment. So much so that I think I'm going to write about it coming up because my town, Hyattsville, Maryland, which is in Prince George's County, just outside of D.C., is actually implementing a gas-powered blower ban and has a buyback program. And I think that's a great example of how a local government can take really concrete actions to reduce the carbon footprint of its community.
Emma: Something that I'm hoping to do is convince my parents to replace their old and super inefficient gas range with an induction stovetop. I've already mentioned how they're bad for the climate. And there's been plenty of research that shows that having an open gas flame in your home pollutes the air, there was a recent study in a peer reviewed scientific journal from December that found that one in eight cases of current childhood asthma in the United States can be attributed to gas stoves, which is a pretty mind-boggling number. And so, replacing these polluting appliances with electric ones will lead to cleaner air and a faster, safer cooking experience.
Dan: Our colleague, John-Michael, who manages our on-bill financing work, he recently switched to an electric induction stove in his house in Minnesota and wrote a really, really great article about his experience. And if you haven't read that already, listeners, I really encourage you to do so, I think you'll learn a lot about what that experience is like and some of the things that he had to overcome as he was making the switch.
Emma: And Dan, we've both mentioned about how going electric is good for the climate, it's good for our health. But it also makes for a more comfortable home, which I think is sometimes not always talked about, but a really important piece of going electric because more efficient appliances coupled with other improvements for energy efficiency, like better insulation, can make the places we live more pleasant to be in at a fraction of the cost, which is something pretty amazing. So to learn more about all of this, let's turn things over to David Smedick, the Federal International Policy Manager for the Carbon-Free Buildings team at RMI, a nonprofit working on accelerating the clean energy transition.
David Smedick: Climate pollution from U.S. buildings, it tracks relatively close with global numbers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, they put out data which suggests that onsite burning of fossil fuels and electricity related emissions from buildings in the U.S. in total are about 35% of energy related to climate pollution. Zeroing in a little bit more on residential buildings specifically, within that portion, it looks like they're responsible for almost 1 billion metric tons of energy related climate pollution each year. Those 1 billion tons are looking like about two thirds from electricity related emissions. So emissions associated with the power plants upstream on the electric grid related to the electricity that you use. And then about another third of that is from those on-site direct emissions related to burning fossil fuels inside your house for heating, for cooking, for heating your water. Another way to look at it that I really like is that in the U.S., we have over 120 million households. Nearly 75% of those burn fossil gas, oil or propane, or in a small number of cases, wood, for example, directly on site. So this is a really important sector when we look at the big issue of climate disruption, what we're choosing to buy for light bulbs, how we're heating our home. All of this adds up to a billion metric tons of climate pollution every year. It's a massive problem that we need to tackle.
There are four big household appliances that we like to focus on when you hear the term electrification. We're looking at your HVAC, your heating and ventilation system, your water heater, your clothes dryer, and then your cooking equipment. Looking at how we can move away from oil boilers, propane or gas furnaces, we have these really wonderful, highly efficient alternatives in the form of heat pumps. That's the main one you hear a lot about is how can we transition heating because it's such a big energy demand to efficient electric appliances, and the mighty heat pump is going to be such a huge player in that front moving forward. And then you'll see that same heat pump technology associated with meeting water heating demands as well as clothes drying demands. So a heat pump water heater or even just regular electric water heaters are really great alternatives to your regular fossil fuel products when it comes to water heating. And then the last one I'll highlight is the cooking equipment. So having electric or induction alternatives to your gas stoves is a really exciting opportunity for us moving forward.
All of these items are highly efficient. They provide really great targeted comfort and performance alternatives for households. And they don't pollute. That's the great thing about them, you don't have those on-site emissions. And so these provide alternatives to have really highly efficient electric options so that you don't have that pollution escaping into your home or your community from all of those residential spaces.
Dan: Last August, President Biden signed the biggest climate law in our nation's history, the Inflation Reduction Act. This historic legislation contains $369 billion for climate investments, including $4.5 billion for an initiative called the High-Efficiency Home Rebate Program. This program will provide funds to states and tribes to give residents income-qualified rebates for switching to electric appliances. While these are not expected to be available for a little while longer, keep an eye out because these will be rebates for heat pumps, water heaters, electric ranges, wiring, and more. And in addition to the High-Efficiency Home Rebate Program, the Inflation Reduction Act also included something called the Home Owner Managing Energy Savings Rebate Program, another $4.3 billion to state energy offices for residential energy efficiency retrofit projects. John-Michael also wrote an article breaking down these incentives which is linked to in the show notes.
Emma: And Dan, you mentioned a little bit earlier about how your neighborhood of Hyattsville, Maryland, is considering a gas blower ban. And there are a number of cities around the country local governments that are similarly leading this charge towards electrification. For example, New York City, New York, Los Angeles, California, and Montgomery County, Maryland, have laws that will take effect this decade requiring new buildings to be all electric. And on the rebate side, Denver, Colorado, for example, offers rebates to residents to purchase items like heat pumps. This is just a handful of examples. And we're going to be seeing a lot more programs similar to these come into effect in the coming months and years.
Dan: Absolutely, we are at the beginning of an enormous wave of investments into home electrification and home energy efficiency, and it's all very exciting. Let's dive into how these federal and local laws and incentives can spur home electrification by turning it back over to David from RMI.
David: So there are over $50 billion of investment opportunities for building decarbonization within the Inflation Reduction Act alone. And then you also have the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, that passed before the Inflation Reduction Act, but also has billions of dollars for building decarbonization work, or efficiency and electrification within it. So there's about a dozen different programs across the infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act to help with that process for decarbonizing our building sector. I'll highlight three, I think, in particular, across them. And the infrastructure act has three and a half billion dollars for the Weatherization Assistance Program to provide grants to low-income households to lower energy bills. It's historic investment into this program that's been around for decades. But this will allow state weatherization programs to provide a huge injection of funds into low-income households across the country to make sure that they can perform energy audits, invest in homes for insulation, for appliance upgrades, all that can reduce energy bills for low-income households. The other two areas that I'll highlight from the Inflation Reduction Act: the tax credits and then the rebate programs. So there's opportunities to receive a tax credit if you're building a new home, it's called the 45L tax credit, you can get up to $5,000 per household depending on if you meet an ENERGY STAR rating or the Department of Energy's Zero Energy Homes rating program. There are also residential tax credits for clean energy. So if you want to install rooftop solar to decrease the amount of energy that you're getting off the grid associated with fossil fuel power plants maybe, you can do rooftop solar through tax credit 25D, the clean energy residential tax credit, which would also let you install potentially a reduced-cost geothermal heat pump. So covering up to 30% of costs through that clean energy tax credit for homeowners is really exciting. And then one of my favorites is the residential energy efficiency tax credit. You'll hear some industry folks call it 25C. This is really exciting because it's got a new piece within it that can allow for up to $2,000 for an air source heat pump, like I mentioned earlier, that really great, efficient, all-electric technology to replace a gas furnace, for example, you can get this $2,000 tax credit for a heat pump. And you can also have up to $1,200 for other weatherization and efficiency upgrades like better doors or insulation. So those tax incentives are available this year. That was one of the great things about the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, is that it put out into the world these tax credits on a faster timeline.
The last one that I'll highlight is actually a two for one, some consumer rebate programs. So there are two consumer rebate programs for energy efficiency and electrification within the Inflation Reduction Act. So there's almost $9 billion that will be flowing to states to start these two rebate programs, one focused on energy efficiency and performance based rebates. So actually demonstrating energy or climate savings through an energy model or actual measurements of the savings in the home. And then the efficient electrification upgrade rebate program is really exciting. It is specifically for low- and moderate-income households. So it uses a measurement called the area median income, essentially, we're looking at low-income and some moderate-income households can get significant rebate coverage for different electrification upgrades.
We're going to see tremendous growth in this space over the next five years. We've already started to see heat pump sales increase tremendously across the country. And that's what's so exciting right now. So I think that we're going to see even more local jurisdictions moving to support electrification, and home energy efficiency upgrades, we're going to see statewide policies move in that direction as well. And then we do hope to see certainly additional federal support for this. We've got policy opportunity and then actually implementing these programs, there’s going to be a lot of work both at the federal government and the state government level. So there's going to need to be a huge focus in 2023, 24, and 25 on making sure that Inflation Reduction Act funds are maximized their fullest potential. We can have a decarbonized residential building stock in the U.S., it is possible. It's a really exciting opportunity. And it's something that I really think we're going to just hit the tip of the iceberg on this year and over the next 20, 25 years getting to those midcentury climate targets. This is such an opportunity for us to really hit the decarbonization practices with efficiency and electrification to get after those billion tons of climate pollution from the residential building stock in the U.S.
Emma: So you're on board now and you're ready to rip out your radiators and your gas range for a heat pump and induction stove. But how do you make that happen? Well, at the moment, it may be easier said than done.
Dan: That's right, Emma. In addition to the cost of making upgrades to electric appliances and equipment in your home, another big challenge can be finding contractors near you who know how to install the equipment. And that's not always straightforward, especially if your home needs extra wiring or other replacement or equipment or additional energy efficiency upgrades. In the coming years, tradespeople like electricians, plumbers and other technicians who are trained in replacing gas hookups with electric ones will be in higher and higher demand as federal incentives continue to come into effect.
Emma: So that's why we are thrilled to have two experts on the podcast today to discuss growing and training this critical workforce. Dr. Janell Hills is the director of workforce programs at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, or IREC, which is an organization that helps build the foundation for rapid adoption of clean energy and energy efficiency. Dr. Hills has 15 years of experience in higher education and 12 years of experience in grant administration. She oversees IREC’s growing program, the National Clean Energy Workforce Alliance, which is a cross-sector effort to improve clean energy education, training and job placement outcomes. We're also joined by Vaughan Woodruff, from ReVision Energy, an employee owned B Corp that builds solar battery, electrical vehicle charging and heat pump projects in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Vaughan leads ReVision’s efforts to develop the resilient workforce needed to build a just and equitable electric future in northern New England under Vaughan’s leadership, the ReVision Energy Training Center has expanded solar apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs in collaboration with others in the IREC network. Dr. Hills and Vaughan, welcome to the show.
Dr. Janell Hills: Thank you.
Vaughan Woodruff: Thanks for having us.
Emma: To start, I'd like to get a better picture of the situation at hand. Could you both provide some background about the breadth of jobs that exist out there related to electrifying buildings? And how did the number of active workers in these jobs compared to the current demand or what we might expect that demand to be in the near future. Let's start with you, Vaughan. And then we'll turn things over to Dr. Hills.
Vaughan: Great, thank you for that, Emma, it's pleasure to be here today. Obviously, electricians are a key piece to this. We have a dearth of electricians in the country that is becoming increasingly worse as the workforce ages. That's a key bottleneck that we need to resolve because there are ample opportunities for folks across this country to carve out a career in that profession. In addition to that, have everything from technical sales, to customer service, to finance, to servicing these systems after they've been installed. And on and on and on. If you think of a job that exists, it exists in our industry to kind of help make this thing move forward. And so that diversity of opportunities really provides a great opportunity for us to capitalize on the extensive expertise and passionate folks who are committed to this change.
Dr. Hills: I agree with Vaughan. Diversity is very important in order for us to meet the clean energy workforce goals that are before us. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of electrification is projected to grow 7% from 2021, which was a couple of years ago, right, to 2031. So diversity and inclusion is paramount in order for us to reach those goals.
Dan: From your perspectives, what are the challenges for hiring more contractors for electrification projects? How are programs like IREC’s National Clean Energy Workforce Alliance or ReVision’s Energy Training Center working to address these problems?
Dr. Hills: IREC’s National Clean Energy Workforce Alliance is attempting to dramatically scale the workforce. Clean energy will need to include people, new people and new populations. And we are spreading the word, bringing everyone out of their silos, all of the sectors, employers, training providers, funders, to discuss what needs to happen, to discuss the best practices, what's working and what's not working. But one thing that is consistent within the work the Alliance is doing is everyone has to be included. That’s BIPOC communities: Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, disabled individuals, veterans, even individuals with prior history in the justice system. So we have to find a way to allow these individuals to come into this industry, to 1) provide family sustaining wages so that they can earn a living and 2) have the opportunity for the industry to meet the goals and attract new employees.
Vaughan: Yeah, I concur with Dr. Hills on all of that. A key piece to this is while we have a dearth of technicians, the shortage that we're seeing in folks to train those technicians is even more problematic a we see folks aging out of the workforce and in training organizations looking to compete with a market that already has a shortage that has driven up prices and for wages, which is great for our trades, but also as a long-term workforce development issue, it's a challenge. And so at ReVision Energy, we have an employer-sponsored electrical apprenticeship program that we've had in place since 2018, in which we're doing the technical training in house as well as the on-the-job learning for aspiring renewable energy electricians to earn their license. And in addition to that, we're seeing a fundamental need for us to support the electricians that we have as formal trainers so that they can help contribute. And so, you know, I think the opportunity at this moment in time is amazing, like I got into the industry 15 years ago, when we were just excited to have an opportunity to work on a solar project. And now, we have more projects than we have people to build them, which is a great development over the course of a decade and a half and, you know, two to three decades for others. And we have the Inflation Reduction Act, which now gives us a runway: we have the money, we have the initiative, we have the targets. The thing that is the great assumption that coupled with that is that we're going to have the people to build it, which we are not. If you look at any of the data in terms of the construction trades, we do not have the people to do it. And so I think while technical solutions are great and looking at workforce is great, we also have a paradigm shift that needs to happen within the United States related to trades education. For many of us, we went through our K-12 schooling and the technical trades were a second-class educational pathway. We also have to look internally and say if my kid comes home and says that they want to be a plumber, I need to be in a space where I can celebrate that and we're not there yet. And we need to figure out a way to get there.
Dan: For someone who's thinking about their career path, how do we encourage those people, those young people in particular, to find their way into the jobs that we need for this transition? What's available to them in terms of training or apprenticeships, for people who want to enter this path? And what can we be doing better to help more people from more backgrounds, to Dr. Hills point, from more backgrounds to find their way into these jobs?
Vaughan: Yeah, thanks for that question, Daniel. It's a complicated one. I think there are two approaches to it. I think if we look at young people in middle school, for instance, there's a lot of formation of what is possible for folks at that age. When we look at the workforce and we see that for instance, less than 2% of electricians are women, we have to ask ourselves, how are we going to encourage more women to see this as a career pathway when it's hard for them to see themselves in it now. The same goes for a variety of folks who have been heavily underrepresented largely because there has been active disenfranchisement of folks from seeking these opportunities. And so I think our plan as a society needs to look at addressing in middle school, those career paths, and not just in certain schools, but across our communities. And then as we get into high school, we need to re-center this, that college track is not the preeminent track for folks to have, which means more investment in vocational education at the high school level so that folks can be coming out of high school with the skills that are necessary to jump right into apprenticeship programs, which you know, I think registered apprenticeship is an amazing model to help this as well. We're leaning in on apprenticeship and we have been fortunate through funding that has come down from ARPA, federal funds, to the state of Maine to be able to make investments in how do we reframe what middle schoolers are seeing is their possibilities in the future.
Dr. Hills: I would like to add to that. Recruitment campaigns are very important. And we need to feature clean energy workers as energy heroes in these recruitment campaigns, developing and promoting career pathways to Vaughan’s point. We need to start in middle school, to let them know that this is an option. This is a career path. And we are embracing an inclusive workforce because representation matters. I speak to my nephew about clean energy, no clue. He's in high school, going to be graduating in a couple of years. And this is not something they talk about. So we really need to develop those career pathways in order for students to see this as a viable option. And one thing the National Clean Energy Workforce Alliance is doing is embracing DEI and embedding that in these recruitment strategies, talking to the community-based organizations, talking to the employers and letting them know how important this work is. We're definitely working to provide equity. And everyone should be working towards that goal, not just a few organizations, but in order to meet the clean energy goals that we need so desperately, we have to focus on diversifying this workforce.
Vaughan: Dr. Hills, that is a great point, and it sparks just the emphasis on pre-apprenticeship that we're seeing here in Maine. So, you know, ReVision Energy, as we discussed at the top of the show, does work in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts. Demographically, Maine and New Hampshire are two of the oldest and two of the whitest states in the country, which for a company that's looking to be in business for decades, we can't look at the workforce of today and expect to be sustainable, we need to look at what it looks like moving forward. One of the untapped resources in our communities are largely new Americans who bring a significant amount of experience from their lives before being in the United States, yet when they get here, oftentimes, their credentials or their life experience and professional experience isn't valued to the level that we really need as a society to selfishly capitalize upon and for the individuals to provide a pathway towards prosperity. To Dr. Hills point, this isn't just going to happen. We need to dig in on this and we need to be intentional about it to make it work.
Dr. Hills: I was thinking the word intentional, Vaughan, and you said that. I'm a champion for pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs because I have seen those programs work firsthand to provide a livable wage for individuals to have family-sustaining jobs that is accompanied by equity and prosperity gains, right. Pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs afford those opportunities to those individuals.
Emma: You both have already been talking a lot about an inclusive workforce and the importance and necessity of that. Do you have any other thoughts about how this field can make space for people who have traditionally not been included and how this can expand to be applied throughout the rest of the country?
Dr. Hills: Sure, this is a systematic change. Representation matters as I stated before. Clean energy is growing, but the industry itself is fundamentally flawed. What's exciting is that we, all of us and others, are part of the driving change to improve inclusion, and remedy the current disconnect between training and educating workers, and the skills that are needed by the employers. I think it's very important to call out that in order to attract new individuals to our industry, they need to see themselves represented in the outreach campaigns, and in the conversations, in conferences, in panels, in Boards, that is the driving force. And that should include people of color, and women, like myself, and you, Emma.
Vaughan: Definitely. And employers, I mean, it's on us, right, there's a lot of this that's on us to make sure that we're intentional and that we're doing the work. I think is we see need in the workforce, the initial snap judgment is I need to recruit folks, and I need to lean into communities that maybe I haven't recruited from before, etc. But recruitment is a very small part of, it’s maybe even the smallest of the work that needs to be done. Because if you cannot retain folks, just from a pure business perspective, you're wasting your money on churn, right, from your workforce. And so, the investments that companies need to make and understanding how to allow everybody regardless of background to feel a sense of belonging, and inclusion, and be supported, and be able to have the hard conversations when they come up, because, you know, as Dr. Hills has mentioned, there's a reason for a need for representation, because it's not generally there now. And so, it's expecting a lot of people to be the firsts. And that comes with a lot. And so, you know, for our industry, we need to figure out how to create the spaces, which largely means looking internally and figuring out how we can be companies that are really committed to this work so that we can diversify. It's not just going to happen. And it's not just going to be from I'm going to hire more people that look like X, Y or Z. It's going to be I need my organization to fundamentally be able to support folks who look like X, Y, and Z and allow spaces that their passion and talents can further our mission as a company.
Emma: Wonderful. Thank you both very much for those answers. I'm wondering if you can talk about if educating contractors about the clean energy transition, and if they have responsibility to also be sharing that information with consumers or just this relationship between people who are not sure about why they should be ripping out a gas appliance in order to make this transition. Does this educational aspect and the way it fits into this larger electrification picture play a role into the way that you all are thinking about contractor training and workforce training and development?
Dr. Hills: Education and training can help address this hesitancy. For example, IREC is working on a U.S. Department of Energy project to create fact-based education and training for contractors, code officials who inspect the technologies, as well as building owners and managers who are choosing to install heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, solar energy storage, and electric vehicle chargers. We've even created a Clean Energy Clearinghouse so that multiple audiences can see and have the same information to reduce the skepticism. So, it's important to really embed education and training to remove the negative dialogue that's centered around these types of projects.
Dan: Well, here at EESI, we're always thinking about what needs to happen in terms of policy and federal policies, our focus, but of course, an awful lot of U.S. energy policy is state and local policy as well. So I'm curious as you're thinking about where we are as all of these workforce challenges that we're facing. Vaughan, you mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act. There's also the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, historic amounts of federal investment in energy efficiency, electrification, clean energy, renewable energy, it goes on and on and on and on. As policymakers start to think about how we prepare our workforce to meet the future challenges, what are one or two things that you would hope they keep in mind that they might not otherwise know about what this actually looks like for the people involved and for the communities that support these workers?
Dr. Hills: I think it's important to focus on the big picture of capacity building. We need to grow the workforce. We all know that, that's a requirement. But we need to grow the workforce in all of our trades that will support building and transportation efficiency and electrification. We need to think about the different pathways to provide all of the services we need. And that includes registered apprenticeship programs and to Vaughan’s point earlier, pre-apprenticeship programs. Better coordination between governmental entities can help scale the workforce programs and resources and reduce duplication of efforts. That's one reason why we started the National Clean Energy Workforce Alliance. So organizations across the nation won't duplicate the efforts of one another. Most clean energy workforce challenges are not unique. And cross-sector solutions should be encouraged and promulgated. This could happen at the national level. But it can also happen at the state and the municipal levels.
Vaughan: Yeah, to Dr. Hills point on apprenticeship, we're already seeing some of the federal investments utilized by states. For instance, here in Maine, we've seen the Governor's Energy Office through its clean energy partnership, we receive competitive funding there to help address some of the how do we create a larger workforce funnel by allowing folks to see themselves in the work that we do. One of the things that we haven't talked about yet, as it relates to electricians, is that our licensing across the country is very fragmented. Right, the ability to move a license across state lines is very dependent upon the state you're leaving and the state that you arrive in. And most of the programs that train electricians, the way that our licensing is set up is that we do not allow people to do work on these systems independently for four years. Just keep that in mind, think of any profession that we've had, that folks can't be left alone for four years to do a task, which, it's important that we have strict licensing laws, right, to be able to make sure that we're enforcing quality and public safety. And I think that our educational systems and our credentialing systems need to recognize that there are other ways in which we can determine whether someone's qualified to do this work. And I do think the federal government does have a role in that since we are such a mobile society now. And folks are, you know, moving from state to state or working across state lines, finding some way to incentivize states to harmonize those requirements, and find solutions that allow us to support high quality public safety in the trades that we do, while also making sure that we're not delaying folks who can be out there working independently and serving our communities based on arbitrary requirements.
Dan: Dr. Hills, and Vaughn, thank you so much for joining us. This is such an important topic, and congratulations on everything your groups have accomplished so far. And also, just wanted to say, really, really glad that you and your colleagues are sort of taking a leadership role in developing the workforce that we need to facilitate a transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy, we really literally couldn't be doing it without you. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Vaughan: I just want to add, I'm very thankful for the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and all the work that they're doing to help pull this together. Intention matters. And we're really pleased to have IREC out there bringing some intention to this work for us and for you all for magnifying their work. Thank you.
Dr. Hills: Thank you, Vaughn. Same to you. One thing I do want to add is to learn more about clean energy careers. IREC has interactive career maps and programs that are geared toward specific population, go to IREC’s website to learn a bit more about the clean energy careers with the interactive maps that we have available for you.
Emma: Thank you, Dr. Hills. And we'll have a lot of links to IREC’s resources and to ReVision Energy on our website. So be sure to head to our web page to learn more.
Dan: Well, this was a great episode. I love every opportunity we can tie the work that we do in federal policy, you know, covering the Inflation Reduction Act and covering the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, keeping an eye on everything that the administration is doing to get these incentives out to communities as Congress intended, and all the great work we're doing in the world of beneficial electrification to help households, especially in rural areas, make the switch. And a big part of that is the affordability issue. It's something we didn't talk as much about today, but it's an enormous challenge for a lot of folks, a lot of folks, especially in rural communities, have a difficult time managing that upfront cost of the transition and that's where the work that we do on inclusive financing, on-bill financing in particular, and working with USDA and the Rural Energy Savings Program. There's just a ton of linkages in this issue for us here at EESI. And it's super, super exciting to be a part of it even at this early stage with so much left to do.
Emma: You're right, Dan. And we talk a lot about how great these new appliances are, how important it is to go electric. But without that affordability piece that you just mentioned, without the work that Dr. Hills and Vaughan are doing to actually make sure that people are available to make this transition happen, it's just not going to happen. So I'm really grateful that Dr. Hills and Vaughan were able to share their expertise with us about the work that they're doing and how hopefully this work can continue to increase and spread and to grow across the country. So if you like the story, and you want to learn more about EESI’s work related to electrification, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media at @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
Top-Rated Climate Nonprofit – 4-Star Charity