The BlueGreen Alliance released Making Clean Deliver: Improving Clean Energy Job Quality and Growing the Clean Energy Manufacturing Supply Chain in the United States today, which outlines the necessity to ensure a strong domestic supply chain of materials and technologies that will power the transition to a clean economy, as well as create good, union jobs for the workers who will build the clean economy.

“We need to build up our domestic supply chain and manufacturing systems so that the United States can independently create our own clean energy future,” said Jason Walsh, Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance. “We can deliver good jobs for the workers and communities that will build and manufacture the clean economy and significantly reduce emissions to tackle the climate crisis. But, we have to make the policy choices and investments to make that happen.”

The report highlights research that shows increasing wages and growing domestic content in the clean energy sector would not dramatically impact costs or deployment. Job-quality concerns can be addressed and improved through the enactment of strong policy mechanisms, such as labor standards to ensure that jobs being created are high-quality jobs; procurement standards to ensure that investments being made in the clean economy are benefiting workers here in the United States; and manufacturing policies to help ensure we lead in building the next generation of clean technology in America.

“Job quality in the nation’s clean energy sector is not where it should be, but with the right policies it can get there and the U.S. can build a clean, thriving, and equitable economy,” said Walsh. “To build back better, we need strategic investments in clean energy projects that will address the climate crisis, create good jobs, and deliver gains for American manufacturing, for workers, and for communities—particularly disadvantaged communities and workers. We need to act now.”

The report was released during a webinar. The full video is available here: https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/site/making-clean-deliver/.