Mayors mull blueprint for clean-energy economy

Labor Secretary joins discussion about future of $600B ‘Marshall Plan’

A summit to kick off a $600 billion multiyear plan to transform Appalachia into a clean-energy economy wrapped up Tuesday with a call for “altruism” from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and other stakeholders who are looking to collaborate across cities and sectors.

The virtual event held over multiple days featured speakers from academia, industry and labor — including an appearance by U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh — who brought ideas and questions about the decadelong blueprint dubbed the “Marshall Plan for Middle America.”

The plan calls for $60 billion of public and private investment annually over 10 years in clean energy and projects the region — encompassing Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky — would see as a result 270,000 annual direct and indirect jobs in the renewable energy industries.

Another 140,000 annual “induced jobs” could come as a result of growth in those industries, according to the report initially unveiled in December 2020.

While the event was a platform for stakeholders to make connections across sectors, participants also joined in a rallying cry for President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” economic agenda that calls for trillions in infrastructure and social spending — and which is currently subject to a Democratic deadlock in Congress.

“Mayors have done some great things. The foundation and the groundwork is around the country for the president to be able to move forward. Quite honestly, President Biden’s creating a historic opportunity, and that’s what you have in the Marshall Plan is a vision that meets the moment,” Mr. Walsh said during his remarks Monday.

“I technically can’t lobby, but if I were a mayor, I’d be making calls

to get this [ federal] bill passed,” added Mr. Walsh, a former two-term mayor of Boston.

The regional economic plan — which invokes the name of Gen. George C. Marshall, of Uniontown, who led the post-World War II investment strategy to rebuild Europe and its economic and democratic institutions — envisions local leaders as the drivers. Mr. Peduto convened mayors from nine northern Appalachian and Ohio River Valley cities for the initial research supported by the University of Pittsburgh, the Enel Foundation and several others.

“As you look at the mayors that got together to agree [on] this plan, politics was never discussed in it. There was no question about the willingness to work together across state borders,” Mr. Peduto said during the event’s closing panel discussion.

The idea is to harness “great ideas” coming from entrepreneurs, identify public and private capital and coalesce around skilled workers seeking employment, he said.

“What that next critical step will be is having the capacity at that next level, having all of these different players being able to make sure the congressman is there, the governor is there, the senator is there, the county executive ... they have to put the politics and guns down and have to realize there will be two regions in this world: those that will lead and those that will be left behind,” he said.

Mr. Peduto said a “much stronger network has been built” over the last two weeks of the summit and that the local leaders will be working on a “parallel track” with the Biden administration’s commerce, energy and environmental goals.

Mr. Peduto, as well as several other involved mayors, will be ending their terms in January. He wants to see a shift of the plan “out of city halls.”

“I see next year as an opportunity to continue to work on this and find where the Marshall Plan can find a new home,” he said.