On the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) announced the creation of the Labor Energy Partnership (LEP), a joint effort to develop a framework for the 21st Century energy system that creates and preserves quality jobs while addressing the climate crisis.
The announcement comes at a critical time when over 30 million Americans have lost their jobs, and the energy sector is expected to lose at least 1.75 million jobs by the end of second quarter.
“The energy sector is a key driver of the American economy, providing good jobs across a wide range of technologies,” said Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO. “We can put a lot of people to work by ramping up energy investment and becoming the global leader in energy technologies across the board.”
The LEP, to be jointly staffed by EFI and the AFL-CIO, is based on a shared commitment to high-quality jobs, social equity, and workers’ rights. It will focus its work on a series of critical policy analyses that will provide practical solutions to overcoming the technological, social, and regional barriers to a 21st-century energy transition.
The organizations will kick off activities with a series of workshops on areas of analytic exploration, including the development of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration; policies needed to site and permit new electricity transmission projects; the economic challenges and cost benefits in developing hydrogen fuel alternatives for the transportation and industry; energy efficiency finance mechanisms; an analysis of the offshore wind supply chain; and an assessment of the domestic capacity of the United States to mine, process, and manufacture the critical minerals and materials necessary for the domestic production of low-carbon technologies, including rare earths.
You can read the LEP factsheet and press release here.
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