Full Title: Mobilizing for a zero carbon America: A Jobs and Employment Study Report
Author(s): Saul Griffith, Sam Calisch, Alex Laskey
Publisher(s): Rewiring America
Publication Date: July 29, 2020
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
From mass unemployment to the threat of climate change, the U.S. will face a number of seemingly unprecedented challenges even after the current public health tragedy has passed. Finding needed solutions won’t be easy and will require creative thinking, robust analysis, and political resolve. The good news is that these challenges also present opportunities, particularly in terms of the economic development and job creation associated with decarbonizing America’s economy.
Based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis, our new report demonstrates that an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole. Unlike other approaches, which tend to see climate change policy as primarily environmental in nature, the study also imagines the electrification of America as fundamentally infrastructure designed to power America and its economy in the 21st century.