Building a pipeline to energy sector careers through service years

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are launching new investments to advance the nation’s climate resilience and clean energy goals. One key to achieving these goals is developing new strategies to recruit, train, and hire people to carry out the work. Service year programs—including service and conservation corps programs funded through AmeriCorps and other federal agencies—have long played a role in environmental resilience efforts in local communities. These local service year programs, state energy agencies, and state service commissions can work in partnership to develop a talent pipeline to fill new clean energy infrastructure positions.

On Thursday, December 1, Brookings Metro and Service Year Alliance hosted an event to explore this infrastructure workforce opportunity, with an emphasis on clean energy workers. The event examined how current service year programs are undertaking energy transition work and have established strong relationships with state partners. It dove deeper into what is working well and how programs, state energy agencies, and state service commissions can better work together to accomplish shared goals around infrastructure investment, clean energy transitions, and workforce development. Speakers from the local, state, and federal levels provided more context on the clean energy talent pipeline in light of the current wave of investments and explored steps toward greater collaboration.

Viewers submitted questions by emailing events@brookings.edu or tweeting to @BrookingsMetro using #NationalService.