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Brooke Canova was nervous after she and her husband bought their Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of the enormous, classic pickup truck.
She wasn’t worried about running out of charge and being stranded on the road, or whether the truck would have enough oomph to merge onto a speeding highway. Canova, a health and physical education teacher and mother of a preteen son in Charlottesville, Virginia, fretted about the vehicle’s size.
“I’m not going to be able to drive this!” she recalled thinking. “It’s too big. How will I park it?”
The purchase was a sort of compromise: Her husband had long wanted a truck, and she finally agreed to go along if it was electric.
As it turns out, the vehicle has enough cameras to help Canova manage its girth. It can parallel park itself in self-driving mode. What’s more, she can drive to Richmond, Virginia, and back on one 320-mile charge. And since her rooftop is equipped with 27 solar panels, it costs her family less than $6 a month to charge the truck at home.
“It has been a lot of fun,” Canova said, especially as a woman driving a big truck that’s electric to boot. “It’s sort of a conversation piece. People are like, ‘Wow, look at you in that thing!’”
That’s just the reaction Generation180 is hoping to provoke. Headquartered in Charlottesville, the nonprofit has recruited Canova and some 7,000 other “EV ambassadors” nationwide to spread the word about their experiences online and in person.
While the group supports policies to speed the clean energy transition, its core mission is to “inspire and equip” people to adopt clean energy in their own lives, said Executive Director Stuart Gardner. EV ownership, he said, is a vital “stepping stone” to other clean energy actions.
Gardner’s team has long encouraged people to drive electric. But last year, their research found remarkable gender disparities among the “EV curious” in Virginia. Women said helping the environment was a top reason to drive electric, tied with saving money. Yet just a quarter of women had heard “a lot” about EVs, compared to nearly half of men.
The Virginia survey was backed up by other studies, which showed just 30% of women had some familiarity with EVs, compared to over half of men. In all, more than 70% of EV owners are men.
“There was an obvious disconnect, Gardner said. The “I’ll Drive What She’s Driving” campaign, now in its second year, was born.
The initiative is focused on reaching women in the suburbs — auto-dependent areas where electric vehicles are ideal for short trips and where many new-car buyers live, said Gardner. Suburbs also “tend to be evenly split Democrat and Republican,” he said, “So, they [offer] a great opportunity to say, ‘Hey, EVs are for everyone.’”
At the crux of the effort is the belief that people in general and women in particular are skeptical of the increasingly polarized information landscape and are looking for reliable messengers.
The women EV owners Generation180 has identified did a lot of research first, said Shakaya Cooper, program manager with the group. Much of that homework involved talking to friends and colleagues, she said. “They’re intentional in their research, and they are going to people that are trusted sources, for sure.”
That’s where volunteer ambassadors like Canova come in. Last fall, she brought her F-150 Lightning to a car show tied to a downtown Charlottesville event, where various EV makes and models were on display. A graduate of the University of Virginia, she’s also attended college basketball games with a suite of other women to talk about going electric.
“It was just a really nice vibe — talking to people about their cars, what they like, what they don’t like,” she said, having “those really approachable conversations between moms.”
Beyond official functions organized by Generation180, Canova and her family undoubtedly pique EV curiosity in their community by milking all the Lightning’s bells and whistles in their daily lives.
One popular feature is the “frunk,” a trunk in the front where a combustion engine would normally go. With a drainage hole and light insulation, it can act as a cooler. Plus, the entire vehicle is equipped with outlets — making it perfect for tailgating.
“One of our favorite things to do with the truck is tailgate because we plug in an [electric] pellet grill and a griddle and a TV — all into the truck bed, which has been a lot of fun,” she said. “We tailgated for a Little League game the other day; the whole team was there.”
After a year with the Lightning, Canova and her husband were so sold on driving electric that when her treasured Ford Escape perished last summer, she replaced it with a used Tesla. “We haven’t really encountered any moments where we’ve been desperate to have a gas vehicle,” she said. “We’re all in.”
Some 340 miles south of Charlottesville in Bostic, a tiny town in the North Carolina foothills between Charlotte and Asheville, Terri Watts and her husband are equally thrilled with their EV but for very different reasons.
As the owners of a high-end chauffeur service, they use their fleet of 17 premium vehicles to transport customers to wine and beer tours, weddings, and scenic vistas in this tourist-heavy corner of the state. One of their most popular rides is a Rivian, especially among clients who have their own EV at home and are committed to a low-carbon lifestyle.
“It’s another offering that fits what some people are looking for,” said Watts, who is also a Generation180 EV ambassador. “I think it allows us to maybe get more business. There are people who, unless [they can get] an electric vehicle, they’re not interested.”
From a financial perspective, the Rivian is a no-brainer. The couple paid tens of thousands of dollars less for it than their other luxury vans, and its operating costs are much lower. There are no oil changes, and they can fully charge it overnight at their house for $15. If a driver needs to use a public fast charger, the price might run as high as $45. By contrast, filling up one of their conventional SUVs with premium fuel runs between $55 and $75.
The Rivian’s style and performance has also won converts. “It’s really nice. It’s very roomy on the inside,” Watts said. “It’s got the speed that you can’t beat.”
One recent weekend, she added, a pair of women had wanted a sedan for their sightseeing tour, but it was booked. They rented the Rivian instead and enjoyed it so much they reserved it again for the next day of their trip. “They were super impressed,” Watts said.
In addition to having person-to-person conversations about their EVs, scores of women including Watts and Canova have blogged about their experiences for Generation180. The group has also identified social media influencers who’ve rented EVs and posted about activities ranging from the novel to the mundane, like charging at the shopping center while buying groceries.
“The individuals have been moms, families, single women,” Cooper said, “just sharing, ‘I could go hiking in the rural part of North Carolina or in a rural part of Virginia and still be able to charge.’”
Cooper and other advocates acknowledge that long road trips in EVs still require more planning than those in conventional gas-powered vehicles. And the price of entry to drive electric, while falling, is still too high for many.
Lawmakers in both Richmond and Washington, D.C., have sought in recent years to alleviate these barriers to EV adoption. Biden-era tax credits for new and used electric vehicles lower upfront costs. A nationwide commitment to charging infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is critical for peace of mind on long road trips.
In Virginia, state lawmakers created an electric vehicle rebate program four years ago but have yet to fund it. In a move most observers say is illegal, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin last year announced Virginia won’t follow a 2021 state law that commits it to standards set by California’s Clean Cars program — which requires automakers to sell more electric cars in the coming years.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars for states to build charging stations, also likely in violation of the law. Just before the Memorial Day weekend, House Republicans muscled through a massive tax bill that, in addition to dealing other blows to clean energy, would end the electric vehicle tax credits and charge EV drivers new fees. The legislation is now in the hands of the Senate, which could make changes.
“It’s really unfortunate. It really hurts the more rapid adoption of electric vehicles,” said Gardner, who says the credits and rebates should be preserved. But, he added, the turbulence in Washington reinforces the value of his group’s “I’ll Drive What She’s Driving” campaign.
“We’re seeing now that policy can be very fragile,” he said. “But trusted messengers and the clean energy constituencies that we’re building — those have real staying power.”
A correction was made on May 27, 2025: The caption for the first image in this story originally misidentified Brooke Canova as the person on the right. Canova is on the left.
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes, and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments, and education systems are training this growing workforce.
The sputtered drone of a vacuum pump filled the former milking barn that now houses Kennebec Valley Community College’s heat pump lab. Instructor Dave Whittemore, who held the yellow vacuum in one hand and displayed an app tracking atmospheric pressure on his phone in the other, explained in a raised voice how to do an “evacuation,” ridding the heat pump of air and moisture to avoid malfunctions down the road.
“The longevity of the equipment is important,” said Whittemore, who teaches students how to install the increasingly popular electric heating and cooling units. “If it’s not done right, then it’s going to fail prematurely. And that’s the biggest reason that I personally try to keep up with industry best standards and I pass that on to my students.”
Six years ago, Gov. Janet Mills traveled to the college to sign a bill aimed at transforming Maine’s market for heat pumps, an environmentally friendly alternative to oil furnaces and gas boilers, and set a goal of installing 100,000 units by 2025.
The state, now a national leader for heat pump adoption, met that goal two years ahead of schedule, and Mills once again traveled to the rural Somerset County campus to announce a new target: another 175,000 heat pumps by 2027.
Maine needs skilled workers to reach this goal, demanding training initiatives from all corners of the state to build HVAC, refrigerant, and electrical knowledge in the clean energy workforce. Without a strong pipeline, the state risks delays in reaching its heat pump target, putting its climate goals at risk.
So far, rural counties have seen some of the fastest rates of clean energy worker growth, according to state data. In Somerset County, where KVCC is located, the number of clean energy workers has grown by 44% since 2020.
As part of this push, the community college launched a high-tech heat pump training lab in 2021 and has trained over 300 students. The initiative is one of many clean energy programs the school offers as part of a broader, state-supported effort to meet Maine’s goal of reaching 30,000 clean energy jobs by 2030.
Efficiency Maine, a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the state’s energy efficiency programs, has invested more than $400,000 in installation and weatherization training programs at KVCC and supports 29 similar programs at other institutions each year.
Another key piece of state support comes through the Governor’s Energy Office’s Clean Energy Partnership, which has awarded nearly $5 million in grants for clean energy training and apprenticeship programs across the state since 2022 and has seen over 3,500 participants. Businesses have also developed their own on-the-job training programs to help meet demand.
But the state still faces a daunting challenge: It must employ more than 14,000 new workers to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs by the end of the decade. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of workers in the field grew by less than a thousand.
While the state says it remains dedicated to this goal, some in the industry worry federal funding cuts and tariffs could create challenges for the workforce development pipeline.
Heat pumps have emerged as a pillar of Maine’s clean energy strategy: The units can reduce carbon dioxide emissions between 38% and 53% compared to a gas furnace, according to a 2022 study in the academic journal Energy Policy, and have been touted as a way to reduce energy costs.
Rural areas have historically spent more on energy bills and participated less in residential energy and efficiency financing and rebate programs to lower costs, according to a state report from 2023. To help rural Mainers overcome geographic barriers in accessing cost-lowering energy initiatives, the state must bolster its rural workforce, according to a 2018 study the Island Institute produced in partnership with the Governor’s Energy Office.
The demand for cleaner energy has grown not only in response to the state’s climate goals, but also as Maine’s electricity costs rise. A Maine Monitor analysis showed that electricity costs increased at the third-highest rate in the U.S. between 2014 and 2024.
A Maine Monitor analysis of 2023 U.S. Department of Energy and Bureau of Labor Statistics data prepared for E2 shows that two-thirds of the state’s clean energy jobs were in the energy-efficiency sector, while about a fifth of jobs were in renewables.
Workforce development has become a priority for the state as the clean energy industry grows, said Tagwongo Obomsawin, the program manager for the state’s Clean Energy Partnership, noting that it can provide good paying jobs for Mainers and reduce energy costs.
“Employers are definitely a really important part of the picture, but we don’t want to leave out anyone,” Obomsawin said. “We recognize that training providers, academia, state government, organized labor, and industry all have a role to play in making sure that we have a robust system that supports people in finding job opportunities, getting access to training, and localizing the benefits of the energy transition.”
Heat pump training is just one of several clean energy programs offered through the Maine Community College System, which includes KVCC. The system works with industry and state leaders to grow the workforce. The network of schools also trains students in electric vehicle maintenance, fiber optics, aquaculture, and more.
Dan Belyea, the system’s chief workforce development officer, said short-term training and scholarship funding are centered on needs that arise in the industry, which the schools gauge by looking at labor market data and talking to employers. Programs that are highest in demand tend to include electrical and heat pump training, Belyea said.
In 2022, KVCC hoped to use a nearly $250,000 grant from the Clean Energy Partnership to offer programs on electric vehicles and NABCEP solar photovoltaic installation. But trouble finding instructors and low interest among students made it difficult to launch.
Other clean energy workforce initiatives have popped up across the state. Some employers run their own heat pump or solar installation training labs, and several adult education programs and nonprofits also offer classes designed to help people move into the industry.
PassivhausMAINE, a Freeport-based organization, received $180,000 in Clean Energy Partnership money in 2022 to host training programs on the state’s energy code. The company ran 29 trainings across the state, from Portland to Presque Isle.
Naomi Beal, executive director of passivhausMAINE, noted that getting enough students to attend the training was easier in areas like Portland but trickier in more rural areas.
“I always feel like it’s very important to consider when going into Greenfield or Machiasport or wherever that there are just not that many people. … So if we get five people showing up, that’s probably statistically way more interest than [a larger number of attendees] down in Portland,” Beal said. “We just try to be patient and persistent with the smaller towns and the smaller attendance.”
In Freeport, Scott Libby, the owner of Royal River Heat Pumps, walked through his training center as he explained that all his workers go through heat pump training that starts with the basics, regardless of experience, to ensure each worker is equipped to handle the job.
“A lot of these heat pumps have 12-year warranties,” Libby said. “That’s 4,380 days. The most important day is Day 1. It needs to be installed properly.”
Libby, who has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy on workforce development and sits on a new energy-efficiency workforce subcommittee being developed by the Governor’s Energy Office, said he’s aware of a number of different workforce development initiatives but that it’s difficult to comprehend how they all work together.
He said some forms of programming aren’t sufficient for what’s actually needed in the field: Students who sit through a six-week or six-month program that teaches the basics of how heat pumps work may come out with little to no hands-on experience with a power tool or climbing a ladder.
Libby emphasized the need for more collaboration between different workforce development efforts and a more systematic approach, with quality checks in place. He suggested putting more thought into designing industrial arts and home economics programs in middle and high schools to introduce students to different career pathways early on.
He also said more stringent licensing requirements could help with the quality of workers moving into the field. As it stands, there is no specific licensing required to install heat pumps in Maine, though workers need an Environmental Protection Agency Section 608 license to deal with the refrigerant used inside the unit, and an electrical license to complete the wiring.
He acknowledged that new regulation could “cripple” workforce development efforts but said the move is imperative to control the level of training workers receive and make sure everyone is qualified to install heat pumps. There are hundreds of contractors listed as qualified heat pump installers on Efficiency Maine’s website, a list he said in his opinion should be much shorter.
At KVCC’s heat pump lab, Whittemore gestured at eight heat pumps mounted on prop walls used for training, listing the types of new units he hopes to get soon — ideally through donations from companies who have given units in the past.
Regulatory changes to refrigerants that went into effect this year mean the school needs to replace the heat pumps it uses to train students.
“Most of the procedures with the new refrigerants are the same. It’s just that we can’t put this new refrigerant in these existing heat pumps,” he said. “So I’ve got to get eight new heat pumps.”
The broader challenge he sees for the industry is tariffs, which he fears could lead to higher equipment prices and lower demand. This, in turn, could mean a lower need for workers.
“I think that’s going to slow this down,” he said.
Maine has two years to reach its goal of installing 275,000 heat pumps and five years to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs. But uncertainties in building Maine’s workforce lie ahead.
The Clean Energy Partnership Project, which has funded many of the state’s clean energy workforce development programs, typically announces new grants in the summer, but the Governor’s Energy Office stopped short of committing to another round of funding this year.
“We can’t predict the future, but the existing programs that we have will continue on for at least another couple of years,” Obomsawin said.
She said a partnership the Energy Office has with the Department of Labor to provide career navigation services will continue into 2026, as will workforce development programs that received funding and are already operational. But she cautioned that it is still too early to know what impact policy changes at the federal level will have on the clean energy sector.
Efficiency Maine said that the state is still on track to achieve its heat pump goals — at least for now. Executive Director Michael Stoddard said that the heat pump rebate program has funding from the Electric Utility Conservation Program and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for at least the next three years.
However, some smaller initiatives, such as a revolving loan to help Mainers buy new heat pump systems, face uncertainty as the federal grants funding the project are in flux.
Libby, of Royal River Heat Pumps, has 40 years of HVAC industry experience and said funding uncertainty will make it a challenge to reach the state’s heat pump goal.
“I think it’s definitely going to be harder,” Libby said. “I mean, I’m not ready to give up on it yet. I don’t think anybody is ready to give up on it.”
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
A correction was made on May 27: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Freeport-based organization that received Clean Energy Partnership money. It is passivhausMAINE, not PassivHaus.
Despite challenges in key markets like the U.S., the global shift to battery-powered vehicles is moving along.
Last year, more than one in five new cars sold worldwide were either fully electric or a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV), per a new International Energy Agency report. This year, EVs and PHEVs will make up more than one-quarter of new car sales, IEA forecasts.
China, the world leader in EV and battery manufacturing, continues to also lead the way on EV adoption. A total of over 17 million fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold around the world last year — and more than 11 million of those were in China alone. PHEVs are growing particularly fast in China. The country saw nearly double the number of PHEVs hit the road in 2024 as it did in 2023. Almost half of all cars sold in China last year were EVs or PHEVs.
Europe is the next-biggest region for electric vehicle adoption, but it stagnated a bit last year. Roughly the same number of EVs and PHEVs were sold across the continent as in 2023. Growth has tapered off in large part because large European countries like France and Germany have phased out EV subsidies in recent years. Still, sales grew last year in over half of the European Union’s 27 member states — and they climbed significantly in the United Kingdom, the second-largest auto market in Europe.
The U.S. electric vehicle market saw modest growth in 2024. About 10% more EVs and PHEVs took to the road in the U.S. than in the year before, a marked slowdown from 2023’s growth rate but not a bad outcome given some of the apocalyptic forecasts from analysts. It’s notable that the sector saw growth despite Tesla, the dominant player in the U.S. EV landscape, recording a decline in sales.
EV sales in 2024 were also bolstered by emerging markets, where over 60% more EVs and PHEVs were sold than in 2023. India and Thailand are among the largest markets in this category, though they were far from the fastest growing — meanwhile, Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia all saw a rapid rise in EV sales.
The outlook for this year is solid. The IEA expects more than 20 million EVs and PHEVs to be sold worldwide as China keeps expanding its massive EV fleet. Sales in Europe could rebound a bit as new policies incentivizing EVs go into effect. EV adoption in emerging markets will continue to grow on the strength of increasingly affordable Chinese models.
The biggest question mark is the U.S., where tariffs, policy rollbacks, and the likely repeal of the consumer EV tax credit — and possibly manufacturing incentives, too — could seriously dampen adoption of electrified models. But even if the worst case for EV adoption unfolds in the U.S., it’s just one country. The rest of the world, meanwhile, will keep on moving toward EVs.
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes, and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments, and education systems are training this growing workforce.
A plan to nearly double the amount of electricity drawn from naturally occurring heat deep below Mendocino and Sonoma counties could create thousands of new jobs in the region.
The Sonoma-Mendocino GeoZone project still faces a long list of legal, regulatory, and financial hurdles before construction, but the developer is already thinking ahead to hiring.
Sonoma Clean Power CEO Geof Syphers said the not-for-profit power producer is committed to hiring local workers for at least 30% of the jobs it creates. Meeting that goal, he said, will depend on building partnerships with local education and workforce development programs, along with a long-term commitment from California to streamline geothermal energy.
“We’ve been building partnerships with schools and trades and landowners and public officials, permitting agencies,” Syphers said. “But what really needs to happen before the permitting phase begins is we have to change state laws.”
Clean energy makes up a small but growing slice of Mendocino County’s employment, accounting for just under 600 jobs in 2023, according to an analysis of federal data by the nonprofit Environmental Entrepreneurs, which advocates for state and local policies benefiting the environment and economic interests.
Mendocino County workforce and education officials are taking note, gradually ramping up programs to train students to weatherize buildings, install and maintain solar projects, and take on other related construction roles.
Noel Woodhouse, an instructor who runs Mendocino College’s sustainable construction and energy technology program, said the program has already evolved since launching in 2011 and will continue to do so. He’s confident that his students’ skills in cleantech, solar, and sustainable building would easily transfer to geothermal construction — especially since the non-credit certificate program could rapidly train a large number of students in a short time.
“Our students come out of our program with experience in heavy equipment machinery and ready workers for that type of project,” Woodhouse said.
Clean energy jobs pull in a wide range of professional skills, from plumbing and electrical work to pouring concrete and operating equipment.
“What I love is the people who work in oil and gas know exactly how to operate 100% of the equipment on a geothermal job site, and it’s the same wages,” Syphers said.
Geothermal energy is harnessed by drilling deep below the earth’s surface to access naturally occurring heat. The steam flows to a turbine to drive a generator that in turn produces electricity — a process that can occur 24 hours a day.
Mendocino County, along with neighboring Sonoma and Lake counties, sits on one of the country’s prime geothermal zones. The world’s largest complex of commercial geothermal power plants, known as The Geysers, is located in the Mayacamas Mountains near where the three counties connect. Owning the majority of the units there, Calpine Corporation generates about 725 megawatts of electricity using geothermal energy. Sonoma Clean Power’s GeoZone proposal aims to build another 600 megawatt geothermal power plant.
The labor needed to develop 600 megawatts of new geothermal energy capacity will require hundreds of white-collar workers and thousands of construction workers during the building phase, and the project will create about 1,000 permanent jobs, Syphers said.
“Today, about 400 people from Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino work at The Geysers,” Syphers said. “If we can roughly double that for permanent jobs, that’s very exciting to me.”
As director of employer partnerships for Mendocino College, Pamela Heston-Bechtol’s job is making connections between students and employers. She combs through job postings at least once or twice a week and distributes opportunities to respective departments.
“It’s giving our students as much exposure as possible to be able to see themselves in those jobs by inviting industry to our advisory committees and inviting our students to job shadowing,” Heston-Bechtol said.
The Mendocino County Office of Education also offers career technical education programs with various pathways for youth. Eric Crawford, the office’s director of career and college programs, and Natalie Spackman, a workforce development coordinator with North Bay Construction Corps, together work with high school seniors interested in construction trades to complete a 14-week program.
“At the end of the instruction, they get a tool belt, and then they go out for boot camp for two weeks, and they work with contractors for 80 hours on a live build site and find out what it’s really like to do the work,” Crawford said, noting that this helps students determine which type of work interests them most.
At the completion of camp, the contractors are invited to interview students and potentially offer them jobs.
The newest career technical education program set for Ukiah High School, called Roots of Success, will train high school students specifically for green energy fields. However, Spackman said that basic training in construction gives students skills that transfer to a variety of work, especially given the state’s regulations for the trades to go green.
“No matter where they go, contractors ultimately work for their customers — what’s in demand?” she said. “The skills that they’re learning, that’s going to translate.”
Leaders from both the high school and college workforce development programs agree that while there’s plenty of work for their students and a growing demand for clean energy workers, trades training is hindered by a severe shortage of teachers.
Crawford said anyone with three years of experience in a specific field can get a designated subject teaching credential and become qualified by the state of California. Woodhouse said that Mendocino College’s minimum qualifications include an associate degree and experience in the field.
Other challenges, Woodhouse said, are those stacked against the students in a county with high rates of substance abuse and poverty. To address those, he highlighted support systems at the college that include a food pantry, mental health services, and transportation, among others.
Kevin Vasquez says participating in the Mendocino College program changed the course of his life.
When he was 11 years old, Vasquez received a message at school that his father wouldn’t be able to pick him up. He had been deported.
“I felt violated that they took my dad from me,” he said. “I started drinking alcohol, trying to escape.”
The quiet habit morphed into an addiction that left him aimless and jobless in his 20s. Yet he remembered his father, an immigrant from Mexico who had worked tirelessly in stone masonry to give him a better life. He knew he needed to make something of that life, but he needed help first.
He went through rehabilitation, where a counselor suggested he check out Mendocino College’s construction program. For Vasquez, that program sparked light in the darkness.
“It got me back out there, doing what I love, which is building with my hands,” said Vasquez, who now offers help to other students as a lab tech.
For Vasquez, the prospect of GeoZone tapping into more renewable energy within the county brings an exciting opportunity to put his skills to use at a potential union job.
Mendocino County’s hiring contractors are small, and while they offer great one-on-one experiences, Woodhouse said, they’re not unionized.
Syphers shared that Mendocino County workers won’t need to be union members to work on the GeoZone project.
“You don’t have to be a union signatory to get hired through a union and then work on these projects,” he said. “That gives you an option to decide later if you want to become a signatory and be part of the union.”
The construction phase for GeoZone is projected to be six or seven years out, but Syphers said those years will be spent cultivating relationships with local schools, unions, and smaller contractors.
Ultimately, he hopes the state will streamline permitting and make long-term commitments to invest in geothermal work.
“That’s how we actually get unions to open apprenticeship centers in Mendocino County,” Syphers said.
While the Biden administration helped streamline the geothermal process nationally, most of California’s geothermal opportunities are not on federal land, he pointed out. Sonoma Clean Power has worked with California Assemblymembers Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, and Chris Rogers, D-Santa Rosa, to introduce assembly bills 526, 527, and 531, which all aim to advance geothermal energy development.
“Everyone universally agrees California is the best place in the United States to do this if the permitting changes,” he said, noting that the state requires a full environmental review that can take anywhere from two to eight years. “This region has enough geothermal potential to support areas beyond Sonoma and Mendocino. That’s really, really valuable for the state.”
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
The Trump administration appears poised to cancel billions of dollars of federal funding meant to help U.S. industries convert to cleaner alternatives to burning fossil fuels.
States can’t match the federal government’s spending power, but there are steps they can take to reduce industry’s emissions, support jobs and economic growth in places burdened by industrial pollution, and help prepare U.S. companies for global markets increasingly demanding lower-carbon commodities and products.
So says a March report from think tank RMI and environmental advocacy organization Evergreen Action that examined the industrial decarbonization plans of 25 states and Puerto Rico. The authors came up with a list of recommendations — and warnings — for states aiming to keep up the momentum on industrial decarbonization.
To be clear, “states can’t just look at what other states are doing and copy it,” said Molly Freed, RMI senior associate and co-author of the report. “What works in a steel and cement state is not going to be effective somewhere that’s canning and bottling stuff.”
But some common lessons can be drawn, she said. The first is not to try and recreate the federal government’s “massive capital grants,” namely, the $6 billion awarded to sites from steel mills to snack factories under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Industrial Demonstrations Program, which is now potentially on the Trump administration’s chopping block.
“States don’t have the initial funding to do that — and they have to balance their budgets every year, so it’s fundamentally not a good format for them,” Freed said.
That’s too bad, because many industrial companies rely on “first mover” public financing to lower the risk of making big investments, said Melissa Hulting, director of industrial decarbonization at the think tank Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “Early adopters want help with these initial capital costs.” That’s particularly true of certain heavy industries like steel and cement, which have massive capital assets like blast furnaces and cement kilns that will need to be replaced or significantly retrofitted to cut emissions.
But other strategies represent lower-hanging fruit — in particular, replacing fossil-fueled boilers with industrial heat pumps and electric boilers, said Jeffrey Rissman, industry program director at the think tank Energy Innovation.
These technologies are well-suited to electrifying steam heating for food and beverage processing, chemicals production, pulp and paper mills, and other low-temperature processes that make up roughly 30% of U.S. industrial thermal energy demands.
Heat pumps, especially, are far more efficient at converting energy into heat than fossil-fueled boilers, Rissman said. These technologies are already being deployed today and can save companies money compared to fossil-fueled systems in some applications.
“It’s not like we need to solve fundamental engineering challenges here,” he said.
Putting some public money into the up-front costs of electrification could certainly help move things forward, Rissman said. And in some cases, states may still have access to federal dollars to make that happen.
Take the $4.3 billion issued to 25 state, local, and tribal governments through the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program. That’s one of many Inflation Reduction Act initiatives that had funding frozen in the early weeks of the Trump administration but which have since seen dollars begin flowing again after court orders demanded a restart.
The largest of the industrial decarbonization projects funded by those grants is Pennsylvania’s $396 million Reducing Industrial Sector Emissions program, which is currently accepting applications for everything from electrification, energy efficiency, and process-emissions reductions to on-site renewable energy, low-carbon fuels, and efforts to cut fugitive methane emissions.
Industry is Pennsylvania’s top-emitting sector, responsible for about 30% of statewide emissions, Louie Krak, infrastructure implementation coordinator at the state Department of Environmental Protection, said at a January webinar hosted by the policy institute Center for American Progress.
About 60% of that industrial climate pollution comes from the iron and steel industry, which is a much tougher sector to cut emissions from than lower-heat industrial processes, RMI and Evergreen Action’s report notes. “My advice is, take advantage of federal resources while they’re still around,” Krak said.
That includes smaller-scale federal funding sources, he added. For example, the Department of Energy’s Industrial Training and Assessment Centers program provides grants of up to $300,000 to help small and medium-sized manufacturers implement energy-efficiency projects. That’s ”not an insignificant amount,” Krak said.
A handful of states are looking at spending their own money to boost industrial decarbonization. One way to do that is to tap into state and regional programs that collect fees from polluting industries, such as California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative encompassing 11 Northeastern states, and Washington state’s cap-and-invest program, RMI and Evergreen Action’s report notes.
In California, lawmakers are considering the state’s greenhouse gas reduction fund as a source of money for AB 1280, a bill that proposes expanding programs that support factory electrification and thermal energy storage. One existing initiative that the bill would extend has already directed about $90 million to such projects over the last few years, said Teresa Cheng, California director at Industrious Labs, an advocacy group that supports the legislation.
“This is even more necessary now that federal support has backslid,” Cheng said. Roughly 35,000 polluting industrial facilities now pay into the greenhouse gas fund, and “that money should go back into cleaning up those facilities, commensurate with their polluting profile,” she said.
Another funding avenue proposed by AB 1280 is low-interest loans from the state’s Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, Cheng said. RMI and Evergreen Action’s report highlights the role that state-backed “green banks” — entities tasked with lending to projects that reduce carbon emissions and air pollution — could play in reducing capital costs for industrial decarbonization.
That could eventually include part of the $20 billion in green bank funding created by the Inflation Reduction Act that has been frozen by the Trump administration and is now being fought over in court. Regardless of the outcome of that dispute, state green banks still have their own money to lend, Rissman noted.
“Buy clean” mandates now in place in nine states, which require state agencies to purchase concrete, steel, and other industrial outputs that are made via lower-carbon processes and using lower-carbon inputs, can further incentivize industries to invest in decarbonization, Rissman said.
Those programs can also provide reporting and compliance structures that companies will need to meet demands for lower-carbon products from corporate buyers, he said. And U.S. firms that export to Europe will be looking to avoid the looming Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism fees on high-carbon imports, set to go into effect in the coming years.
States have regulatory “sticks” they can use to back up the “carrots” of grants, loans, and other incentives for industrial decarbonization. Cap-and-trade or cap-and-invest programs impose costs on polluting industries, for example. Or states can implement rules like the ones passed by Southern California air regulators, which require industrial and commercial customers to replace fossil-fueled water heaters, boilers, and process heating with electric systems within the next decade, Cheng said.
Colorado has both carrots and sticks in place, Wil Mannes, senior program manager of industrial decarbonization initiatives for the Colorado Energy Office, said during January’s webinar. The state passed a climate law in 2021 that set emissions limits on industrial facilities, with rules mandating a 20% reduction in those emissions by 2030 compared to 2015 levels. But it has also opened a $168 million competitive tax credit program and a $25 million grant program for industrial facilities to install improvements that reduce greenhouse gases, which means Colorado is “not heavily dependent on federal support for what we already have in the works,” Mannes said.
“Future of gas” proceedings are another way to spur industrial electrification, said Yong Kwon, senior policy advisor for the Sierra Club’s Living Economy program. California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York are among the states that have launched these discussions to craft long-term plans for reducing customers’ reliance on fossil gas delivered through utility pipelines.
In Illinois, state regulators and other stakeholders are considering proposals for industrial pilot projects that try out different rate structures for companies that switch from gas to electricity, Kwon said. “What if we selected a demonstration site and funded the facility to adopt the technologies, and also worked with utilities to provide them with preferential rates based on studies we’ve done? What would be the result of that, both on public health and on the cost to the industrial user?”
Regulations and up-front financing are both important policy levers. But widespread industrial decarbonization won’t take off unless companies are confident that the investments they’re making will eventually pencil out financially.
“The operational costs are really key,” Hulting said. “If we can get those down, I think we’ll see a lot of implementation happening because these electrified technologies are largely more efficient. It’s an energy-efficiency boost.”
Electric industrial heating faces a core challenge in the U.S. — the spark gap, or the cost difference between fossil gas and electricity. Cheap domestic gas supplies have undercut the economics of industrial electrification over the past two decades, and while gas prices have been rising over recent months, so have electricity costs.
Underneath these broad averages lie significant regional differences, however. Low spark gaps have spurred electric industrial heating investments in certain parts of the country, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which tracks such projects across the U.S. And most utilities offer industrial rates and pricing structures that can shift the balance toward electrification.
Narrowing the spark gap down to where it encourages industrial electrification relies on two important variables, Kwon said — “making electricity cheaper and making gas more expensive.” Policies that drive up gas costs aren’t exactly a political winner, however. So industrial electrification advocates have focused on making electricity cheaper.
One way to do that is to “give industry access to wholesale electricity rates,” he said. Over the long run, increasingly cheaper renewable energy will drive down electricity costs at large, he explained. But power generated by solar and wind is already quite cheap when it exceeds grid demand. In fact, grid operators are being forced to curtail excess renewable energy at certain times of the year in sun- and wind-rich parts of the country, which sometimes see wholesale electricity prices drop into negative territory.
That’s why industrial electrification proponents are eager for states to create routes for industrial customers to access these cheap wholesale prices, rather than remaining on the retail utility rates that shield customers from these price swings. Access to bulk electricity price differentials is particularly essential for making the business case for thermal-energy storage technologies, which convert electricity to heat and store it for long durations.
In return, big industrial customers can act similarly to utility-scale batteries on the grid, Kwon said — storing excess power when prices are low and using it to reduce their grid demands when power is scarce. That’s already happening in Northern European countries such as Denmark, where variable electricity rates that offer inexpensive off-peak pricing encourage industries to use and store ample wind power, he said. “That’s essential — and that’s a place where we hope states will pick up.”
Just how this concept can be applied depends on what kind of utility rates and energy market structures different states have, Rissman said. For decades, utilities have negotiated special rate structures with particularly large and power-hungry facilities, such as steel furnaces and aluminum smelters. And competitive energy markets like those in Texas, or across some Northeastern and Midwestern states, allow large customers to contract with retail energy providers in ways that let them access wholesale energy market prices, he said.
But these arrangements are largely kept private since they constitute a competitive advantage for the industries that are getting them, he noted. What’s more, rate programs still need to protect factories or facilities from being exposed to the enormous price spikes that can occur at times of power shortage or grid emergency — at least, for all but the handful of industrial players willing to take the risks involved. At the same time, wholesale pricing structures shouldn’t allow industrial customers to avoid paying their fair share of power grid investments or other costs that are bundled into retail rates.
In California, advocates have proposed regulations to allow industrial decarbonization projects to access low-cost renewable energy through some kind of exposure to or pass-through of the state’s wholesale energy market, Cheng said. Last year, state regulators launched a proceeding to explore the potential for such “flexible” rate structures for large industrial companies, she noted. But “it’s pretty early on — we don’t have the answers yet.”
The United States hasn’t built a new coal-burning steel mill in nearly half a century. Stricter environmental regulations shifted some of that production overseas, while the latest steel plants adopted newer and cleaner technologies. But seven factories with blast furnaces remain, and they are contributing to poor air quality in the cities where they are located.
Those cities rank among the top 25 with the worst air in the U.S. for at least one of the two most widespread types of pollution, according to new data from the American Lung Association.
The research measured ozone and particulate matter, and when analyzed alongside data on emissions from the blast furnaces, reveal a strong correlation.
“These facilities are some of the biggest emitters of the pollution the American Lung Association’s report is measuring,” said Hilary Lewis, the steel director at the climate research group Industrious Labs, who recently compared the American Lung Association data with her group’s prior research on pollution from steel factories.
“Transitioning these coal-burning furnaces to cleaner alternatives reduces those emissions,” she added. “This is a key step that these communities can take toward getting off the worst-25 list and moving toward cleaner air.”
Last fall, Industrious Labs published the first facility-by-facility breakdown of emissions from every coal-based U.S. steelmaking plant, measuring output of ozone-causing nitrogen oxides (NOx) and PM2.5, the tiny particulate matter increasingly linked to everything from asthma, cancer, and heart disease to ailments afflicting the entire human life cycle: erectile dysfunction, newborns’ congenital heart defects, and dementia.
The analysis ranks the pollution from each steel factory against the emissions from other high-polluting facilities in a given state. Northwest Indiana’s three coal-based steel plants all ranked in the top 10 for NOx and the top five for PM2.5 compared to over 300 other major emitters in the state. The tristate Chicago metropolitan area where those facilities are located ranked 15th for ozone and 13th for year-round particulate matter on the American Lung Association’s list of more than 200 U.S. cities.
Among more than 600 major emitters in Ohio, Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Works plant ranked ninth on Industrious Labs’ list for NOx and sixth for PM2.5. The Cincinnati region where it’s located ranked 14th out of 208 U.S. metropolitan areas for annual particle pollution. The company’s plant in Cleveland fell in 15th place for NOx and seventh for PM2.5, potentially helping drive its home city to ninth place on the American Lung Association’s nationwide list of 208 metropolitan areas with the worst annual particle pollution.
While Cleveland-Cliffs’ other location in Dearborn, Michigan, was only the 42nd-worst emitter of NOx in that state, compared with more than 600 other major polluters, the plant came in sixth for PM2.5 on Industrious Labs’ list — directly mirroring its spot in sixth place on the American Lung Association’s list of U.S. locations with the worst annual particle pollution.
In Pennsylvania, ranked against more than 700 of the state’s biggest polluters, U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works facility similarly took 40th place on Industrious Labs’ list for NOx, but 21st for PM2.5. On the American Lung Association’s list, the Pittsburgh area where it’s located came in 12th for the worst annual particle pollution nationwide.
“It just points to the fact that coal-based steelmaking is harmful to our health, and we need to be taking more action today to clean up these mills,” Lewis said.
The Trump administration is considering slashing federal programs designed to help steel giants such as Cleveland-Cliffs and Nucor Corp. clean up operations by investing in new equipment like electric arc furnaces to replace the old coal-fired units, the newest of which was built in 1980.
“The transition is at risk,” Lewis said. “All the threats to federal funding for things like modernizing American manufacturing do put the future of clean steel at risk.”
Worse yet, the American Lung Association data doesn’t even capture the full extent of the pollution, said Jack Weinberg, the steel adviser for Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, a nonprofit that advocates for upgrading the equipment at northwest Indiana’s mills.
“The monitoring data seems to understate the problem,” he said.
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules aimed at requiring steelmakers to clean up “unmeasured fugitive emissions” — air pollution emitted when opening valves, or from leaks, that companies had not previously counted in reports to regulators. In March, however, the Trump administration invited companies to apply for full presidential exemptions from the rule for two years. Earlier this month, U.S. Steel became the first major American steelmaker to announce in a regulatory filing that it took President Donald Trump up on his offer. Cleveland-Cliffs and Nucor did not respond to emails asking whether they would join U.S. Steel.
Emissions from U.S. Steel’s Gary Works plant in Indiana are likely linked to as many as 114 premature deaths, 48 emergency room visits, and almost 32,000 asthma attacks each year, according to Industrious Labs’ October analysis, which uses the EPA’s CO-Benefits Risk Assessment model.
“Anecdotally, and I think more accurately,” Weinberg said, “people believe the pollution is affecting their health.”
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes, and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments, and education systems are training this growing workforce.
When Mason Taylor was getting ready to graduate from high school in 2022, he thought he would have to take an entry-level technician job with a company in Tennessee.
Taylor grew up in the town of Dryden in rural Lee County, in the westernmost sliver of Virginia between Kentucky and Tennessee. He had come to love the electrical courses he took in high school because there was always something new to learn, always a new way to challenge himself.
Driving to Tennessee for work would likely mean two hours commuting each day.
Taylor, now 21, just wanted to work close to home.
A summer apprenticeship learning how to install solar arrays helped him get on-the-job training and opened up connections to local work.
A regional partnership working to add solar panels to commercial buildings in the region aims to train young people as they go, developing workforce skills in anticipation of increasing demand for renewable energy-focused jobs in the heart of coal country, where skill sets and energy options are both changing.
Virginia ranks eighth in the nation for installed solar capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, but so far, major renewable energy projects have been clustered in the eastern and southern regions of the state. Increasing the popularity of solar power in the far southwestern corner of the state depends in part on the availability of trained workers like Taylor.
Andy Hershberger, director of Virginia operations for Got Electric, said the electrical contractor firm has had an apprenticeship program nearly since the company’s founding.
The company, which has about 100 employees total, with 40 in Virginia and an office in Maryland, has worked with Staunton-based Secure Solar Futures, a commercial and public-sector solar developer, as far back as 2012.
More recently, the two companies began working to set up a training program that was more focused on solar. The catalyst was the former superintendent of Wise County schools, a school division that had signed up to put solar panels on its facilities. The superintendent saw the installation as an opportunity to get his students hands-on work on a renewable energy project.
Approximately three dozen apprentices have signed up for the program since 2022, including about 13 who are currently involved, Hershberger said. They work on a variety of solar projects, including on rooftops, carports, and ground-mounted installations.
“We have been utilizing this program to train students coming out of high school and basically growing the workforce side of this thing, so we have the necessary personnel to build these solar projects long term,” Hershberger said.
On top of hourly pay, apprentices get free equipment and a transportation subsidy, along with nine community college credits at Mountain Empire Community College, which provides classroom training before students step onto the job site.
“I mean, pretty much everything you need to know to go out and do any electrical job, you pretty much learned in that apprenticeship program,” Taylor said.
He was in the first cohort of 10 students who installed solar panels on public schools in Lee and Wise counties in 2022. A grant from a regional economic development authority paid the students’ wages while they earned credit at Mountain Empire Community College, which serves residents of Dickenson, Lee, Scott, and Wise counties, plus the city of Norton.
He got a job offer from Got Electric at the end of that summer.
This summer, Secure Solar Futures and Got Electric will join forces again to install more than 1,600 solar panels on the community college’s classroom buildings. The project was originally slated for 2024 but was delayed due in part to a separate project upgrading fire safety equipment in one of the buildings.
The 777-kilowatt solar power system will be connected to the electric grid, and Mountain Empire will receive credit for the power it generates.
Hershberger said he sees interest in solar growing.
“I think there’s always been folks that have adopted renewable projects, different types of energy sources. There’s always the standard interest in trying to save money for facilities and campuses and things like that,” he said.
Mountain Empire Community College offers solar training as a standalone career studies certificate or as part of its larger energy technology associate degree program.
In Southwest Virginia, a solar installation project is more likely to consist of adding panels to homes and businesses rather than building the large, utility-scale ground-based facilities more commonly seen in Southside Virginia, said Matt Rose, the college’s dean of industrial technology.
On a larger project, a single worker might have a specialized role, performing the same task across a large number of panels. On a smaller project, a worker is more likely to be involved in more aspects of the job.
“Our students need to have that comprehensive understanding and ability to be able to do it all,” he said.
Last year, 10 students graduated Mountain Empire with the solar installer certification. Many students who earn the certification perform solar installation work as one part of a more comprehensive job, such as being an electrician.
Rose said the college’s students typically start out making $17 or $18 an hour but can earn more as they become journeymen and master electricians.
Nationwide, the median salary for electricians is about $61,000.
In Lee County, population 22,000, the median household income is about $42,000.
The number of solar installers in Southwest Virginia is unclear. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t collect data on employment by technology, so residential solar installation companies are labeled as electrical contractors, along with all other electrical businesses, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Tony Smith, founder and CEO of Secure Solar Futures, measures the success of the company’s apprenticeship program person by person. At an April event to celebrate the completion of the first phase of solar panel installation for Roanoke schools, Smith asked about several of the students from the 2022 cohort from Lee and Wise counties by name.
Smith said it’s tough to replicate the apprenticeship program at various school divisions. Doing so requires the work of individual school systems and the regional community colleges, instead of being able to pick up the curriculum from one area and apply it at the next project site.
And all the partners — Smith’s company, participating schools and installation firms — face some uncertainty for each project. It’s challenging to pinpoint the timing of projects so that students have the time to participate during the summer months, he said.
“The things I learned in the apprenticeship program I’m still doing day to day,” Anthony Hamilton, 21, said. He completed the eight-week apprenticeship in Lee and Wise counties in 2022 alongside Taylor. He didn’t think it would turn into a full-time job. He doubted anyone really wanted to hire a kid just starting college.
He’s been with Got Electric ever since, working as an electrician primarily on commercial jobs. Hamilton’s solar experience has come in handy on recent installation projects at a poultry farm and at a YMCA facility.
Hamilton continued going to school at Mountain Empire and graduates this month with two associate degrees in energy technology and electrical. He’s also earned a handful of certificates in solar installation, air conditioning and refrigeration, and electrical fabrication, among others. With the nine credits he earned in the summer apprenticeship, he “already had a head start on everybody in the program.”
It wasn’t an easy journey, though.
He said he usually started his day around 6 a.m. and went to night classes after work that stretched until 9:30 p.m. Hamilton lives in Coeburn in Wise County, a 45-minute drive to the college campus. He’d get home late, then get up early and do it all over again. But his college was free through a local scholarship program that pays for up to three years of classes at Mountain Empire.
He’d like to stay with Got Electric and start preparing to take his journeyman’s license, which requires at least four years of practical experience on top of vocational training, plus an exam. From there, he’s got designs on moving up in the company and eventually becoming a master electrician.
On April 14, he was in the town of Abingdon, a few weeks into a three-month project installing a solar array at a large poultry farm that says it produces more than 650,000 eggs a day. The work so far entailed digging trenches and laying PVC pipe for the ground-mount solar system that will span one section of the farm’s expansive fields.
Taylor uses similar skills at work each day. But his work site looks a lot different from Hamilton’s.
It has taken Taylor some time to figure out how to stick close to home while working in his trade. He spent a year working with Got Electric immediately after finishing his summer apprenticeship, then left the company to work as an electrician in a local school system. He eventually returned to Got Electric for a few months, working at Virginia Tech putting solar on three buildings on campus in Blacksburg, three hours from home.
He discovered he didn’t like traveling for installation jobs that meant night after night in a motel room.
“That was the only complaint I had with it, about being away from home,” he said.
Now he’s an electrician at a state prison in Big Stone Gap. He has the same shift every day, in the same place, and drives 10 minutes home from work at the end of the day.
Taylor has also taken additional classes at Mountain Empire and wants to go back this fall to finish his associate degrees in HVAC and electrical. He eventually wants to open his own business as an electrician working locally. He’d like to be able to do small solar installation jobs. Solar hasn’t really caught on in far Southwest Virginia, he said — at least, not yet.
Rose, the dean at Mountain Empire, noted that once major solar projects are done, maintenance doesn’t require ongoing jobs, and most students who receive training in solar installation typically make it part of another job, such as being an electrician.
“We’re starting to see a lot more homeowners interested in [solar] locally as a way to offset increasing energy costs, but overall most of it is just a component of the job because there’s not enough demand,” Rose said.
Rose predicts interest in solar will grow as more homeowners and business owners look for ways to offset rising electric bills.
“As we all look at increasing energy costs, it’s going to make a lot more economic sense,” he said.
Energy independence, he added, fits with the character of Southwest Virginia.
“We’ve always been resilient people,” Rose said. “We’ve always been adapt-and-overcome people, and what better way than to basically control a little bit of your own power?”
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
American manufacturing has already surged in the clean energy sector, bringing with it significant economic rewards.
That’s the main takeaway from a census of U.S. clean energy factories, published today by the American Clean Power Association trade group. The report identifies 200 operating across 38 states as of early 2025. The production of solar panels leads the count with at least 90 facilities. About 65 factories are making batteries, while a smaller number produce equipment for onshore and offshore wind. A broader population of over 800 facilities plays a supporting role in the clean energy supply chain, manufacturing materials and subcomponents that turn the solar panels and batteries into full-fledged power plants.
Those facilities already contribute 122,000 jobs and create $33 billion of economic activity annually, which includes earnings, goods and services produced, and payments to supporting industries, ACP found. Notably, 73% of these factories operate in what the report describes as “Republican states” (as determined by presidential vote). That economic impact could grow to $164 billion by 2030 if the currently planned and announced factories come to fruition.
The report came out as ACP met for its annual conference in Phoenix, but the intended audience includes the Republican members of Congress who will soon vote on cuts to the slew of tax credits underpinning this factory buildout. The report asserts that the burgeoning cleantech factory sector could “be the foundation for American energy dominance that is built by Americans for Americans.”
“We have seen a tremendous amount of momentum over just even the past couple of years in clean energy manufacturing growth,” MJ Shiao, ACP’s vice president of supply chain and manufacturing, said on a press call Friday. “With stable tax and stable trade policy, we can really continue to amplify, grow that momentum.”
Clean energy leaders have spent the months since the November election hoping that the sheer economic dynamism their factories inject into Republican congressional districts could overcome President Donald Trump’s desire to unravel Joe Biden’s legacies. It didn’t help that the Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act, with its many highly targeted tax credits for clean energy deployment and manufacturing, on a party-line vote.
But enough Republican representatives publicly argued against a wholesale repeal of the credits to give cleantech insiders hope. Indeed, the House Ways and Means Committee declined to eradicate the credits entirely in its budget proposal from last week. But the proposed tweaks to many of the individual programs narrow their scope and could render them wholly unworkable nonetheless.
“If they are implemented as currently drafted, which we certainly hope they are not, we will see factories shutting down,” Shiao said. “We will see these American manufacturers have to lay people off, and we will see them having to tell their local business partners that they no longer have the opportunity to work with them.”
In that light, the ACP report reads as a tabulation of what the country could miss out on if policy changes underway in Washington bring the onshoring trend to a staggering halt.
The manufacturing job count could grow to 579,000 by 2030 if the other announced factory projects get built and come online. Total job count doesn’t confirm how desirable the work is, but these jobs happen to pay quite well, especially solar manufacturing salaries, which averaged $134,000 in 2024.
A Canary Media visit to the enormous QCells solar factory in Dalton, Georgia, last year showed why this work pays more than traditional manufacturing. The brand-new factories leverage considerable automation and robotic assistance for the heavy lifting and repetitive, high-precision tasks. Workers patrolled the lines and intervened when the machinery needed help. That greater output of an in-demand, high-tech product supported considerably higher pay than the carpet factories down the road.
“This is not our parents’ generation’s manufacturing,” Shiao said. “There is automation, there is robotics, there is AI in these facilities. And that’s a good thing, because these are high-tech, high-skill opportunities that are being brought into some of these communities that are really eager to find ways to keep their best, keep their brightest in the places that they grow up in.”
Across cleantech factories, annual earnings from clean energy manufacturing averaged $118,000, the study found, well above the average U.S. worker’s pay of $76,000.
It’s not just immediate employees who benefit, though. First comes the intensive but temporary construction phase. Once complete, the factories create additional work for support services in the region, such as shipping and delivery companies, food vendors, hotels for visiting customers, and waste disposal. Domestic manufacturing also relies on other component suppliers: Utility-scale solar panels sit on American steel trackers, covered in U.S.-made solar glass. The authors calculate that each job in a clean energy factory leads to three more in supporting industries.
This reality sounds a lot like the vision that Trump campaigned on last year, of growing jobs at home by restoring U.S. manufacturing from the ravages of globalization. He also repeatedly emphasizes a desire to secure more critical minerals for the U.S.; clean energy technologies provide much of the expected demand growth for those minerals.
“This administration talks a lot about an all-of-the-above energy strategy that facilitates American energy dominance,” Shiao said. “I think there needs to continue to be that recognition that solar, wind, energy storage are key pieces and critical pieces to realizing that growth, certainly in terms of the speed at which those projects can be deployed.”
The Ways and Means budget proposal dealt a blow to the cleantech industry’s hopes for a predictable investment landscape. It was also the opening volley of a weekslong negotiating process that will soon involve the Senate as well. Amid all that uncertainty, ACP has at least provided some fresh numbers on the value clean energy factories have created in their short moment of ascendancy, as well as helped clarify what’s at stake.
“We think we’ve got a winning message, one that is bringing positivity, and of course, economic growth to the country,” said John Hensley, ACP’s senior vice president of markets and policy analysis. “We’re going to continue to tell that story, and hopefully it lands on ears that are willing to listen.”
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes, and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments, and education systems are training this growing workforce.
MITCHELL, S.D. — Matthew Pearson found a successful career in the wind energy industry purely by chance.
After graduating from high school in Vermillion, Pearson knew he didn’t want to pursue a four-year degree and instead scrolled through the list of majors offered at Mitchell Tech, one of the state’s four technical colleges.
“When I came to the wind energy program, I thought, ‘Well, that sounds kind of cool,’” Pearson, 28, recalled during a recent interview at Mitchell Tech, the only South Dakota college with a designated wind energy major.
He didn’t know it at the time, but he had stumbled into one of the fastest-growing, highest-paying trade fields in the state and nation.
While workforce shortages plague many industries and employers in the Rushmore State, great opportunities abound for skilled workers to build, operate, and maintain renewable energy facilities, including at wind farms. Meanwhile, strong partnerships between technical colleges, employers, and the Build Dakota scholarship program have forged a ready pathway to quickly and effectively fill the need for energy workers.
Pearson obtained a Build Dakota scholarship that paid all tuition for a two-year wind technology degree, then spent about $15,000 to complete another two-year major in electrical construction.
After graduation, he quickly landed a job wiring wind towers at locations around the country. He was initially paid about $80,000 a year, and after six years was making $127,000 plus a daily living fee of $140.
But now, with a fiancee and two children, Pearson is completing a circle by leaving fieldwork and returning to Mitchell Tech to become its only wind energy program instructor.
Pearson said that in addition to teaching the skills needed to thrive in the renewable energy field, he’ll also share the good news about their job prospects.
“There’s been a steady uptick in the need for workforce,” he said. “When I would get to a jobsite, there would be three or four companies there, and they’d always come over and ask, ‘Hey, you want to come work for us instead?’”
South Dakota is among the top three states nationally in percentage of energy generated from renewable sources, leaving it well positioned to provide both jobs in the field and trainers like Pearson who will help meet demand for workers.
About 77% of the power used in the state comes from non-fossil-fuel sources, largely from water and wind, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The state has three solar farms but no plans filed for more.
Since the mid-1950s, South Dakota has generated significant energy from its four hydroelectric power plants on the Missouri River.
And over roughly the past 15 years, the state has seen a tenfold increase in wind energy production, according to the state Public Utilities Commission. That growth has created a healthy number of construction and maintenance jobs.
In 2009, the state had 190 turbines capable of producing about 350 megawatts of electricity. At the end of 2024, South Dakota was home to 1,417 turbines able to generate about 3,600 MW of energy. The PUC also approved a 68-turbine project with a capacity of 260 MW and a $621 million price tag near Clear Lake in March.
“We’ve had just a tremendous expansion of wind energy in South Dakota,” said Chris Nelson, a PUC commissioner. “Today, though, we’re in a little bit of a lull.”
The expected slowdown is due to a lack of transmission lines capable of carrying more power, most of which heads east out of the state, Nelson said.
Despite the infrastructure challenges, renewable energy still has a bright future, he said. Two nonprofit energy consortiums that manage the power grid in the upper Midwest plan to spend a combined $37 billion to expand transmission capacity, including in South Dakota, over roughly the next decade.
At Lake Area Technical College in Watertown, students are offered two energy-related degree tracks, said President Tiffany Sanderson.
The energy technology major provides training in development and maintenance of energy systems, and the energy operations degree is aimed at managing an energy facility.
“In our energy programs, those are students interested in working with their hands and solving engineering or process-oriented problems,” she said. “They’re very mechanically minded and can figure out how to make sure power is produced reliably so people don’t have delays in service.”
During a recent tour of the technology labs, students used 3D printers, developed and analyzed system efficiency, and worked on unique projects like a solar-powered ice fishing shanty.
The two programs have about two dozen students combined, Sanderson said. In the 2023 graduating class, 100% of all graduates were employed within six months, with average salaries of $65,000 a year in the technology major and $69,000 a year in operations.
“That is for their first jobs in the industry, so those are tremendous opportunities for a brand-new graduate with two years of college education,” she said.
In May, Nathaniel Bekaert will become one of those new graduates from Lake Area Tech.
Bekaert, 28, grew up on a farm and came to the college after six years in the U.S. Army, which paid for almost all of his tuition, fees, and equipment costs.
After touring the Gavins Point Dam hydroelectric plant in Yankton on the Nebraska border and interning at the Big Stone Power Plant near the Minnesota border, Bekaert was sold on the idea of working as a mechanic in the energy field.
“The more you learn, the more you want to dive into it,” he said.
With his anticipated degree and work experience, Bekaert said he was recruited extensively by energy companies.
“The amount of energy companies coming in looking for workers is crazy, and you can’t really grasp how many companies are looking for energy students,” he said. “There are a dozen or more companies within 45 minutes from here that are actively looking for technicians and operators or people with some type of energy degree.”
As a native of the Watertown area, Bekaert has accepted a job close to home as a wind technician at the Crowned Ridge wind farm northeast of the city, where he will make $29 an hour plus a $5,000 signing bonus and a $200 annual stipend for work boots.
Crowned Ridge is operated by NextEra Energy, a Florida-based company that runs wind farms across the country. A recent check of NextEra’s website revealed 396 job openings, with 185 related specifically to wind energy.
“No matter what happens with fossil fuels, we can keep going [with renewable energy] and live off that, and it will benefit everybody in the world. And we won’t have to rely on another country,” Bekaert said of his career choice.
The South Dakota technical school system, which also includes campuses in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, has developed a close working relationship with the energy industry to ensure students learn the right skills and employers can tap into a pipeline of well-trained workers.
Lake Area Tech officials go into local public schools to promote energy and other trade jobs starting in elementary grades, Sanderson said.
At Mitchell Tech, Clayton Deuter, the vice president for enrollment services, said the college now offers a one-year wind energy degree instead of a two-year program, a change made after energy companies said some skills taught in the longer program could be obtained on the job instead.
Deuter said the energy programs at Mitchell Tech are an easy sell to students and their parents due to the low cost compared to a four-year college and the availability of Build Dakota scholarships in which students get tuition paid if they work in South Dakota for three years after graduation.
Mitchell Tech also offers a dual-enrollment program to high school students so they can have a wind energy degree from the college in hand by the time they graduate.
“You think about return on investment, and here you can take one year in the wind turbine program and you can graduate and make $80,000 to $100,000 a year,” Deuter said. “With student loan debt being so crazy, you don’t have to bankrupt yourself financially and be tethered to a student loan payment when you’re trying to buy a house and start a family.”
One of the state’s biggest renewable energy employers is Marmen Energy in Brandon. The Canadian-owned company has 285 employees who build wind towers up to 300 feet tall that are shipped to wind farms nationwide.
Aimee Miritello, human resources manager, said the company’s relationships with high schools and technical colleges form a pillar of its worker recruitment strategy to overcome a nagging lack of workers in the trade fields.
“Historically for us that has been one of our best ways of getting qualified employees,” she said.
Marmen has expanded its South Dakota plant to accommodate what Miritello said has been a steady increase in demand for wind towers across the country.
Marmen workers, who include welders, painters, and other construction tradespeople, make a good wage, are offered one of the best benefit packages in the region, and have strong opportunities for internal advancement, she said.
“Plus, they’re a part of making huge wind towers, so their pride in that is pretty big,” she said.
This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
Federal regulators have rejected a controversial plan to fast-track new gas-fired power plants onto the grid that spans 15 states from Louisiana to North Dakota, handing a victory to critics who feared it could derail the region’s clean energy buildout and worsen the reliability problems it was meant to address.
Friday’s 2-1 decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that the Expedited Resource Addition Study (ERAS) plan put forward by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator failed to meet the standards for a “just and reasonable” way to solve MISO’s forecast grid shortfall of 4.7 gigawatts by 2028.
Like grid operators across the country, MISO suffers from a clogged interconnection process, preventing it from building enough new power-generation capacity to replace closing coal plants, meet fast-growing demand for electricity, and keep the grid up and running during winter cold snaps and summer heat waves.
MISO filed the ERAS proposal as an emergency measure meant to alleviate this problem — but only for fossil-gas power plants. The plan allowed utilities to receive interconnection agreements for “shovel-ready” gas power plants in less than 90 days. For the most part, the only projects eligible for this treatment would have been those built by vertically integrated utilities, a further point of criticism from energy experts who viewed the plan as circumventing the region’s competitive energy market.
Meanwhile, yearslong wait times would still be in store for the hundreds of gigawatts’ worth of projects in MISO’s existing queue, the majority of which are solar, wind, and battery installations.
But FERC’s decision found some key deficiencies in the ERAS plan. First, it “places no limit on the number of projects that could be entered in the ERAS process,” the commission’s opinion states, which “could result in an ERAS queue with processing times for interconnection requests that are too lengthy to meet MISO’s stated resource adequacy and reliability needs.” That could also cause the ERAS queue to become just as backed up as MISO’s existing queue for competitively proposed generation and energy storage projects.
These factors differentiated MISO’s ERAS plan from other fast-track interconnection proposals recently approved by FERC, such as one from grid operator PJM Interconnection that set a one-time window for up to 50 projects to apply for fast-track consideration, the decision notes. That process “reasonably balanced the need to address PJM’s resource adequacy challenges with the need to avoid an influx of projects that could overwhelm PJM’s interconnection process and lead to further delays.”
FERC’s decision dismissed MISO’s proposal “without prejudice,” meaning the grid operator may resubmit a revised emergency fast-track plan in the future. MISO spokesperson Brandon Morris said the grid operator “worked closely and collaboratively with stakeholders to develop ERAS as a temporary process that will enable urgent generation projects to be built more quickly. We will continue to engage with stakeholders as we evaluate options.”
Many utilities and state utility regulators in MISO’s territory backed ERAS, but a handful of state regulators, consumer advocacy groups, clean energy industry groups, and eight former FERC commissioners opposed it.
FERC commissioners David Rosner, a Democrat, and Lindsay See, a Republican, voted for Friday’s decision. Republican Chair Mark Christie voted against the rejection, and Commissioner Judy Chang, a Democrat, did not participate.
Christie noted in a separate dissent that he did not disagree with the majority’s critique but that he had been willing “to extend to both the states and MISO a trust that they would implement the ERAS proposal in a manner that would promote the construction of badly needed generation capacity that serves resource adequacy and reliability.”
Clean energy groups praised the decision.
“FERC’s role as an independent agency is to protect consumers, and ensure reliable affordable energy,” Christine Powell, deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice’s clean energy program, wrote in a statement. “The best way to do that is to let clean energy compete fairly and openly.”
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