Emerald Cities Seattle Programs
Energy Efficenciy Retrofit Strategies in Multiple Building Sectors.
Our building sector strategies address audit and energy performance standards, cost-effective and high-road contracting delivery models, workforce agreements for expanded career opportunities for disadvantaged workers, maximizing use of existing incentives and financing options, identification and development of policy demand drivers, and data collection for ongoing building performance.
Workforce Development for the Energy Efficiency Industry.
Our goal is to align training providers, support services and funding resources with the needs of the emerging energy efficiency industry. Through a gap and equity analysis of the current training pathways, we are working to ensure equitably accessible and meaningful career opportunities in the new economy.
Community Engagement.
Increased community engagement is necessary to ensure equitable access to the benefits of the green economy. These strategies include increasing awareness of training and job opportunities, job preparedness, and organization to ensure utility usage and costs are also reduced in the residential and commercial buildings serving middle and low-income communities.
Each of these efforts are developed and managed by working groups comprised of leaders from businesses, labor, community and environmental organizations and government staff. Our organization oversees and coordinates these committees, and is in need of additional staff to compile data, produce reports on successful models to expand their scale and potential for regional impact, and to monitor and verify results.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
Emerald Cities Seattle developed a groundbreaking Community Workforce Agreement for the Large Commercial and Hospital projects for the City of Seattle's Community Power Works program, which was created through a U. S. Department of Energy Better Buildings ARRA fund grant. This workforce agreement was the first of its kind in the U.S., in that it creates and monitors meaninful career opportunities for underserved workers on public-private retrofit projects. Enforcement, verification and expansion of this agreement requires frequent and consistent monitoring of project data, coordination with training providers and contractors, and ambitious proposals to potential project partners. Agreements of this kind can have a significant impact on the job creation and retention for communities that need them the most.