As the nation begins to get back to work after largely shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one energy workforce expert said there’s an opportunity for energy jobs to be at the forefront of the economic recovery.
“The energy sector is important to driving everything else in the economy. It’s what makes the economy hum. Whether you are in hospitality, retail, or healthcare – you need energy,” said David Foster, distinguished associate with the Energy Futures Initiative and lead author of the 2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER). Foster recently participated in a webinar hosted by the National Energy Technology Laboratory to discuss the annual report as well as the impact of the pandemic on energy jobs.
“In March and April, we’ve lost construction jobs related to energy, but it’s only at 14 percent, which is half of what it was during the Great Recession,” he said.
The USEER survey found that the U.S. energy and energy efficiency sectors employ 6.8 million workers, and added 120,300 new jobs in 2019, over 7 percent of all newly created jobs nationwide. “It’s remarkable growth,” Foster said, adding that the sectors outperformed the overall economy for the fifth year in a row.
The 2020 USEER was produced by Energy Futures Initiative, a not-for-profit clean energy think tank led by former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and the National Association of State Energy Officials. The report is based on supplemental surveys of approximately 30,000 employers conducted in September through November that enriches the employment data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report focuses on fuels; electric power generation; transmission, distribution and storage; energy efficiency; and motor vehicles.
According to the report, Pennsylvania energy jobs continue to rise in most sectors. Foster said energy job growth in Pennsylvania was ranked in the top 10 in the United States for the past three years.
“Although there was a slight drop in 2019 in fuels production, down roughly 1,000 jobs, the other sectors including transmission, energy efficiency, and motor vehicles all grew significantly,” he said.
The fuels sector employs 53,122 workers in Pennsylvania, with mining and extraction jobs representing roughly 44.3 percent of fuels sector jobs in the state. Overall, traditional energy jobs in Pennsylvania grew by 3.8 percent since the 2019 report, increasing by 4,290 jobs over the period.
One specific project Foster cited was Royal Dutch Shell’s multibillion-dollar ethane cracker plant being built by about 8,000 workers in Beaver County. When it is complete in the next few years, it will manufacture the building blocks of plastics derived from processed ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale found in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. About 600 people will work at the plant once finished. Construction of the plant was put on hold due to the coronavirus in mid-March, but workers have since been called back to work.
Meanwhile, the report found that energy efficiency jobs in Pennsylvania also showed growth last year, adding 2,623 jobs (3.8 percent). The energy efficiency jobs in the state are largely found in the construction industry, such as with traditional HVAC companies.
“Energy efficiency will help in the post-COVID recovery,” Foster said. “You have a wide range of occupational opportunities putting people to work on retrofitting and making buildings in industrial settings making them energy efficient. You can touch every single state and county in the nation with energy efficient buildings.”
According to the Pennsylvania data highlighted by the report, employers in Pennsylvania are optimistic versus their peers across the country in regards to their job growth over the next year for the traditional energy sector. Energy efficiency employers expect to add 4,452 jobs (6.2 percent) over the next year, the report said.
However, employers in Pennsylvania reported the greatest overall difficulty in hiring workers for energy efficiency jobs specifically. Employers cited three main challenges: lack of experience, training, or technical skills; insufficient non-technical skills such as work ethic, dependability or critical thinking; and a small applicant pool.
Post-pandemic, Foster said the government should focus on tax credits, investments in new energy technologies such as offshore wind, and investing in energy job training programs and apprenticeships.