Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Offshore wind jobs should be union jobs, energy chief says
NEW LONDON, Conn. — The growing offshore wind industry is often touted as a boon for job creation, but who will do the work?
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Danish wind developer Orsted say they want union workers to build offshore wind farms to dot the U.S. coastlines — the building trades workers who could otherwise be left out of a transition to renewable resources.
A majority of onshore wind and solar farms have been built either with non-union workers or without collective bargaining agreements, except for in California where unions are more involved in the industry, according to North America’s Building Trades Unions.
Orsted signed a project labor agreement this month with the national union representing 3 million people in the building trades to construct the company’s U.S. offshore wind farms with an American union workforce.
“Our recent experience in the last two decades with onshore wind and solar has been that the majority of those projects are not built with us,” NABTU Secretary-Treasurer Brent Booker said last week. “So this is groundbreaking in setting the standard for an emerging industry here.”
The Biden administration wants to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, generating enough electricity to power more than 10 million homes. Granholm visited the New London State Pier facility recently to see how Orsted, energy provider Eversource and the state of Connecticut are transforming it into a hub for the offshore wind industry.
Afterward at a news conference, the Democratic governor and Democratic congressmen spoke about creating jobs — messaging that will surely play into their reelection campaigns.
Gov. Ned Lamont said there are “hundreds of good paying jobs right here” and “we’re just getting started.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal thanked the unions, saying “this is the future of energy in the United States of America right here.” Rep. Joe Courtney said they’re maximizing every opportunity for the state to grow in a sustainable way.Flanked by building trades members, Granholm said the administration is committed to creating “union jobs in America in this clean energy economy.” She said she wants predominantly American union workers to build U.S. offshore wind farms and would like to see project labor agreements in all aspects of the energy transition, drawing cheers from workers at the pier.
“That’s what we’d like, all union,” she said.
Allison Ziogas, Orsted’s U.S. labor relations manager, said one of the reasons they sought the agreement with NABTU was to assure workers, particularly in the fossil fuel industry, that they can have good-paying jobs in offshore wind.
“There is not the same level or quality of jobs with the solar industry, so it’s kind of created a false narrative that you can have good jobs or a healthy climate but not both,” she said. “And we really recognized that if we didn’t have everyone on board, we knew how things would wind up. It would wind up in gridlock.”