The Clean Energy Workforce : REAP

The Clean Energy Workforce

Clean energy careers in Alaska

Alaska is a laboratory for clean energy innovation. Engineers, technicians, designers and dreamers are standing up microgrid systems that integrate wind, hydro, solar and other renewable resources that power homes, villages communities and cities. Cold climate construction workers and design experts are making our homes and buildings more energy efficient, comfortable and affordable than ever before. Where does an ambitious Alaskans begin their search for careers within the clean energy sector?

The Alaska Network for Energy Education and Employment (ANEEE) works to help identify the training pathways, educational opportunities and required skills that can lead Alaskans to rewarding careers in the clean energy sector.

What is a clean energy career?

A clean energy career can broadly be defined as an occupation affected by technology, materials, policies, information and innovations that maximize energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Where are Alaska’s clean energy careers?

Most clean energy jobs in Alaska today are within the efficiency sector. Alaska’s total workforce consists of approximately 330,000 Alaskans. Nearly 22,000 of these workers are employed within the energy sector.

The clean energy sector includes approximately 5,000 Alaskans, or less than 2% of the state’s total workforce, but this should not discourage one from seeking a career in clean energy. The sector is growing, and will likely grow even faster as drivers such as climate change and economic advantages of clean energy become more apparent. It’s also the case that many “clean energy” jobs may not be the ones that we imagine.

Renewable energy technologies and occupations hold an allure today that bears comparison to previous generations’ fascination with the aerospace industry. Few dreamers in the space age became astronauts, but the overarching spirit of innovation paved the way for new technologies and career paths that transformed the world.

Renewable energy occupations have the potential to play a similar outsized role in expanding the impact of clean energy, and preserving the climate for future generations. But today, less than 700 Alaskans work directly in renewables. By contrast, there are approximately 4,400 workers, or 1.3% of the state’s total workforce, employed in some way in energy efficiency. Heating and cooling technicians, advanced materials construction workers and lighting experts comprise the majority of the efficiency workforce in Alaska. Certified energy auditors, and degree holders such as architects, designers and energy managers are also part of a workforce striving to control the high cost of energy in Alaska by exploiting Alaska’s first fuel – energy efficiency.

In 2017, REAP launched The Alaska Network for Energy Education and Employment to ensure that individual Alaskans can find access to the best clean energy learning, training and earning opportunities possible.

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What is the forecast for Alaska’s clean energy workforce?

Greater energy literacy will allow tomorrow’s workers to transform the very nature of today’s jobs. New technologies and new ways of working will also lead to greater efficiencies and a stronger Alaskan economy.

Alaska’s future clean energy infrastructure will be built and maintained by the same broad categories of workers who can proudly claim to have built the state’s original infrastructure, and that clean energy transformation is already under way. Renewable energy generation has doubled in the United States over the last ten years and is now responsible for 17% of the nation’s power generation. Nationwide construction firms involved in the efficiency sector continue to experience an increase in the number of their workers who spend at least 50 percent of their time on energy efficiency-related work. The new clean energy economy is transforming the traditional legacy jobs of today.

There are currently nearly 12,000 Alaskans working in some capacity to maintain and heat some of the least efficient building stock in the country. There are approximately 15,000 Alaskan workers involved in raising, wiring and plumbing new buildings, installing boilers, insulating walls, fabricating heating and ventilation systems, programming building controls and performing various other jobs in the construction industry.

Among the Alaskans working in power generation, there are more than a 1,000 managers and clerks, 460 power plant operators, 366 linemen and 47 dispatchers working for rural, Railbelt and remote Alaska utilities to keep the lights on. There are hundreds of politicians, managers, public works directors and school principals in cities, boroughs and villages across the state that are charged with energy related projects and responsibilities. All of these Alaskan workers are poised to grow Alaska’s clean energy economy.