LPDD Model Law: Federal Clean Energy Workforce Study

This model federal law would create a commission to oversee a comprehensive study of the workforce needs of the United States economy as it rapidly decarbonizes. A decarbonizing United States economy, whether at a pace consistent with net zero emissions by 2050, or consistent with currently-enacted federal, state or local policies, will require substantial investments in infrastructure, fuel-switching, retrofitting, natural resources management, and more. To effectuate this transition, the country will have to educate and train a large technical workforce.

While there have been several attempts to measure and prepare for the workforce needs of specific sectors of the clean energy economy (e.g., specifically for the installation of grid-scale batteries or offshore wind), there has to date been no comprehensive federal study of the workforce needs of the clean energy transition broadly, or recommendations that may inform an appropriately wide national education and training strategy. Many educational and training institutions are designed to provide their students with multi-sectoral skillsets, and a multi-sectoral analysis of labor needs in a decarbonizing economy would help inform how these institutions are prepared and resourced.

The model law aims to lay the analytical foundation for a scaling up of the United States’ technical workforce to meet the challenges of decarbonization under two decarbonization scenarios. Legislators adopting the model law can choose either scenario on which to base the study – or both. Under the first scenario, the legislature would empanel a commission to project the technical and economic pathways associated with a net zero economy, model the labor market demands of those pathways, assess obstacles to the United States’ workforce meeting that labor demand, and recommend new resources in the realm of education and job training to better prepare the workforce for the transition ahead, including recommendations at the federal, state, and local levels. Under the second decarbonization scenario, the commission would undertake a comparable analysis, based on a target that is less ambitious than a net zero target, projecting the technical and economic pathways associated with current climate policy, taking into account emissions projections associated with recent federal legislation, state legislation, Executive Orders, and actual or reasonably anticipated federal or state regulation. Under either scenario, the study would include a focus on minority, historically underserved, and economically disadvantaged populations. The model law also addresses, under the scenario chosen, the resulting displacement of the workforce in fossil-fuel related and other high-emissions technology industries, using the same approach of studying the expected displacement and addressing it through recommended mobilization of federal resources (including retraining).

A clean version of the model law is available below in both Word and PDF, as well as a version with contextual commentary in Word.