DOE's Betony Jones on Building a Sustainable Energy Workforce

My Climate Journey

This episode is part of our Skilled Labor Series hosted by MCJ partner, Yin Lu. This series is focused on amplifying the voices of folks from the skilled labor workforce, including electricians, farmers, ranchers, HVAC installers, and others who are on the front lines of rewiring our infrastructure.

Today we're talking about the US Department of Energy’s strategy on what it takes to create a successful and sustaining energy workforce. Our guest is Betony Jones, who was appointed by President Biden as the DOE'S Director of the Office of Energy Jobs. This means she oversees jobs and workforce development strategies across the DOE as well as engagement with organized labor to ensure that the department's policies and programs implementation result in high-quality jobs.

We hear about Betony's career through the Clinton administration, working at the University of California Labor Center, and founding a research group called Inclusive Economics and her decision to join the current administration to build an equitable energy workforce for the next decade.

We break down what energy jobs mean, why there's a focus specifically on manufacturing and construction jobs within that definition, and we talk about the key elements needed for high-quality jobs, above average wages, predictable hours, short and long-term benefits like retirement and healthcare, jobs that give workers a voice, plus the importance of unions in enabling all of the above and how unions form.

In this episode, we cover:

• Betony's background and career path
• How she leveraged policy research to demonstrate employment and economic impacts
• Betony's work in inclusive economics
• Denver's sales tax case study success
• The need for energy jobs in construction, manufacturing, engineering science. and R&D
• Betony's focus on the deployment workforce
• The DOE's approach to quality jobs with good pay and benefits
• The importance of workers having a voice and the role of unions
• How a union is formed, how they gain power, and the impact on the clean energy transition
• The role of the private sector in building the energy workforce
• How Betony measures success over the next 5 years

Episode recorded on Oct 11, 2023 (Published on Dec 13, 2023)

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