Going green isn’t just good for the planet – it can also put some green in your pocket.
The United States added 142,000 clean energy jobs last year, with employment in the emerging sector growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the energy industry and the economy overall, the Department of Energy said Wednesday in an annual report. Of the more than 250,000 jobs added in the energy sector last year, 56% involved clean energy, the agency found.
“The data clearly shows that clean energy means jobs — good jobs, union jobs and jobs preserved — in communities across the country as we race to dominate the global clean energy economy,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
The sectors experiencing significant job growth include zero-emission vehicles and renewable energy, as well as transmission and storage — growth the Biden administration sees as critical to reaching its goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.
In addition to 90,000 traditional energy construction jobs, the agency found that 28,000 more by 2023 involved building new battery and solar module factories, ports for offshore wind and warehouses to store and transport clean energy products.
President Biden announced in November a federal job training program — called the American Climate Corps — to employ more than 20,000 young adults to build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to increase conservation while helping prevent catastrophic wildfires.
Local officials are also increasingly looking to employ clean energy. For example, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker last month announced a $30 million investment to build a clean energy workforce on Chicago’s historically poor South and West Sides, with the goal of creating more than 1,000 jobs in solar energy energy over the next three years. In Brooklyn, New York, workshops train electricians for projects dealing with climate resilience and sustainability.
Globally, job postings requiring at least one green skill increased more than 22% in 2023 from the previous year, while the share of workers who had clean energy experience increased by just 12.3%, according to findings published by LinkedIn.