The cuts will mean drastic reductions in the effectiveness and robustness in state and local workforce training programs. The National Skills Coalition estimates that to turn away nearly , adults, youth and dislocated workers. Moreover, Vocational Rehabilitation programs around the country will be able to serve , fewer disabled individuals. While not all of these trainees would be set to join the clean energy economy, DOE Secretary Steven Chu cited cuts to these programs as “slowing down the significant advances made in making solar energy cost-competitive such as solar industry training that is target at military veterans and provided to community colleges.”
With reports suggesting that, even without the sequester, the dem turkey phone number and for skilled labor in the solar industry may soon outstrip supply, these cuts could be very costly for the nascent industry. In addition to the public dollars in research and development that have considerably reduced the price per watt of solar energy, the report shows that a trained workforce performs installations that result in fewer problems at the time of inspection and, as such, have a direct impact on lowering costs for project developers, consumers, and inspection authorities.
In addition, the sequester threatens the job gains that these workforce development programs have made. In his congressional testimony, Steven Chu also stated that “funding restrictions under sequestration will reduce by more than a thousand the number of homes that would be weatherized in and could result in the unemployment of skilled weatherization professionals.” This is significant, as the residential energy efficiency sector is particularly well suited to provide displaced and unemployed workers with well paying jobs. The industry generally has low barriers to entrance and no specific experience necessary to get an entry level BPI building analyst certification.
No doubt, there is something to be said about government inefficiency. There is room for improvement in nearly every aspect of federal operations. Still, the sequester is likely to be harmful to the clean energy industry, one of the few bright spots in recent years. While main competitors in Germany and China are doubling down on their funding and support for these industries, we are cutting back. In the late s, Congress held a press conference on Capitol Hill during which one member picked up a sledgehammer and smashed a Toshiba radio into tiny pieces as a symbol against the Japanese expansion in the technology market. In , instead of getting angry at global competitors encroaching on the massive clean energy market, we are getting angry at our own government for supporting it.