Former coal towns get money for cleanenergy factories

$1 trillion plan aims to reduce fossil fuel use

In Weirton, in the heart of West Virginia coal country, a company started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists plans to build a plant that will produce a metal and alloy critical for clean energy, fuel cells, and cleaner steel.

In Vernon, Texas, also a former coal town, a third-generation wind entrepreneur plans to manufacture turbines suitable for remote, rural locations.

And in Vandergrift, Pa., and Louisville, Colo., a window maker plans to retrofit aging factories to produce thin, insulated units that help make buildings more energy efficient.

They’re all projects getting federal funding designed to help small- and medium-sized manufacturers bring clean-energy jobs to former coal communities, part of a $1 trillion infrastructure package signed by President Biden in 2021. The Energy Department announced the projects on Monday.

The program is an effort by the Biden administration to win support for its agenda to reduce American dependence on coal, oil, and gas, the main drivers of global warming. But it also points to the broad realization that as the world transitions toward cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar, workers in fossil-fuel industries — as well as regions that depend on them — risk getting left behind.

Coal mining jobs have declined precipitously over the past decades, with fewer than 50,000 miners left in the United States in 2022, half the number 10 years ago, according to the latest figures from the Energy Information Agency.

And these energy workers haven’t been finding clean-energy jobs, despite the rapid growth in industries such as solar and wind. A recent study that examined 130 million online work profiles found that in 2021, fewer than 1 percent of all workers who left jobs such as coal, mining, and oil and gas transitioned to “green” jobs in renewables.

Coal workers, in particular, have struggled in the transition, the study found. Less than one-quarter of a percent of workers who left a fossil fuel job in West Virginia moved onto a job in renewable energy, said E. Mark Curtis, an economist at Wake Forest University who led the study. Education was another factor: Fossil fuel workers without a college degree were significantly less likely to find clean energy jobs.

“In places like Texas or in the middle of the country where there’s a lot of solar and wind, fossil fuel communities are relatively well positioned to take advantage of renewables,” Curtis said. “Coal communities generally don’t have that, especially when you think about Appalachia.”