On December 12, 68 stakeholders from across the Northwest joined CETI for a webinar, ‘Northwest Stands to Gain Jobs with Clean Energy Transition,’ to learn more about the key findings from our Net-Zero Northwest Workforce analysis. This blog offers a recap of the webinar for those who couldn’t tune in.

Grounding: CETI and Net-Zero Northwest

The event began with Eileen V. Quigley (CETI Executive Director) giving background on CETI and Net-Zero Northwest: Technical and Economic Pathways to 2050 (NZNW), an economy-wide deep decarbonization pathways analysis that examines the energy, health, and workforce impacts if the Northwest were to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Getting into the Data: NZNW Workforce Findings by Sector

Next, Ruby Moore-Bloom (CETI Research Analyst) walked through the NZNW Workforce analysis by sector, with a focus on near-term impacts on the path to 2050. Below are some high-level findings for how energy employment would change between 2021 and 2030. The following percentages include direct, indirect, and induced jobs:

• Overall, the modeled net-zero emissions pathway would support a 17% increase in energy employment in the Northwest.
• Net employment supported by the Electricity sector would increase by 43%.
• Despite displaced jobs in fossil fuel sub-sectors, the Fuels sector would support a 19% increase in employment.
• Due in large part to electrification measures, the Buildings sector would support a 22% increase in employment.
• Employment supported by the Transportation sector would increase by about 1%.

In addition to sector-wide results, we also broke down the data by subsector, industry, occupation, and wage. To learn more, you can watch the recording of Ruby’s portion of the webinar, which includes associated graphs and figures, or check out our NZNW Workforce website.

Diving Deeper: Playing with Interactive Visualizations

Next, Claire Buysse (CETI Research Fellow) walked through how to interact with the visualizations on the NZNW Workforce website that break down results from each sector and allow you to get much more granular and specific with the data. The interactive tools allow you to filter data by modeled year, subsector, industry, occupation, and wage.

Each sector page (Electricity, Fuels, Buildings, Transportation) offers five core figures:

• Subsector Descriptions and Example Jobs: A table that provides context for the subsectors and jobs that make up each sector.
• Northwest Baseline Employment & Job Growth Loss by Subsector: For each sector, this figure shows the baseline employment in 2021 and the growth or loss experienced in 2025, 2030 and 2035 by subsector. It can be filtered by year and subsector.
• Northwest Sector Jobs by Industry Category: A pie chart shows the proportion of jobs in each industry category examined for a given sector from 2021-2040. It can be filtered by year and subsector.
• Northwest Sector Jobs by Occupation: For each sector, this graph shows the change in employment from 2021 to 2030 by occupation, including net growth or loss.
• Northwest Sector Jobs by Wage Tier: This bar chart compares the percentage of jobs in three different wage tiers between 2021 and 2030 for each sector.

If you want to learn more about how to interact with the Net-Zero Northwest website, check out Claire’s portion of the webinar recording.

In Case You Missed It, Some Resources

In case you couldn't join us live, here are some resources for you to explore:

• Slide Deck, Webinar Recording, and Webinar Q&A
• NZNW Workforce Key Findings
  

What's Next

Intentional workforce development is key to fostering an equitable clean energy transition with the urgency that the climate crisis requires. With that in mind, we are excited to get to work on state-specific clean energy workforce analyses for Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to be released in early 2024.

We will also be releasing a blog series in the coming weeks that will dive deeper into some of the more nuanced aspects of the Workforce analysis. To stay up to date on all this work and more, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.