This report presents recommendations on potential high impact philanthropic investments to advance deep building energy efficiency improvements at scale within the healthcare sector. It is one of five reports being developed for a coalition of six philanthropies that are collaborating to see what they – and others – might do to rapidly increase and scale the energy efficiency retrofit market for buildings in the United States. These philanthropies are the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Living Cities, MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. The other sectors for which market development strategies are being developed include: commercial office, commercial retail, single-family residential, and multifamily residential.
In the summer of 2012, expert panels of 10-12 individuals were convened for each of these sub-segments. These panels developed recommendations on priority approaches and research needs for each sector. The recommendations in this and the other segment reports build upon these initial ideas.
The process used to develop these recommendations included background research on energy efficiency strategies for the healthcare sector and interviews with 33 participants in the sector, representing healthcare systems, NGOs, trade associations, service providers and utilities.1 The interviews solicited feedback on the recommendations from the expert panel as well as other ideas the interviewees had on how to advance this
market.
Human capital — workers’ skill and knowledge and creativity — has always anchored our vision of the green economy. But as a darkening economic and political horizon circumscribes this country’s exuberant green imaginings, plotting a course to our common future requires a new reckoning. Greener Pathways (2008) and Greener Skills (2010) charted the intersection of workforce development and a greener economy. This report, Greener Reality, explores not only the practice and promise at the crossroads, but equally importantly the economic, natural, and political context which surrounds that intersection. All the work at the corner — diverse in structure and quality as it is — faces the challenges of that context, a reality increasingly defined by rising temperatures and inequality, and declining true democracy. Our efforts, and those of many other thinkers, advocates, practitioners, and policy-makers invested in building a greener economy, is surrounded and often swamped by the fierce forces at play in American politics.
One of the most promising developments of the past several years is the emergence of a green economy. With environmental awareness growing across this country, green skills are being added to existing occupations (in fields such as energy and engineering) and new jobs that are primarily “green” are rapidly emerging. Green jobs — jobs that contribute to meeting the goal of achieving environmental sustainability — encompass a broad range of occupations and skill sets, from technical expertise in building, retrofitting, conservation, or planning, to business functions that support the work such as sales, customer service, or accounting. Some green jobs are new; others represent the retooling of existing occupations. Jobs range from entry level positions to those requiring advanced credentials, but most are “middle-skill,” requiring more than a high school degree but less than a four-year college education.
Everyone wants to coax green shoots from the economic badlands. And as the promise of green jobs has generated a flood of workforce initiatives, most everyone would like to put their hands on an atlas of green programs, skills, and credentials. But after two years of discussion and research, we’ve concluded that not only is developing a comprehensive, comprehensible map of “green” credentials impossible, it isn’t worth doing if it doesn’t get us closer to a coherent national system. And that is the central argument of this paper.
We believe current excitement about the new energy economy, and concern about national competitiveness, can be leveraged to finally achieve progress on reforming our fractured education and training system. Not only does this country need a far greater investment in workforce development, but skills — particularly at the lower end of the labor market — need to be delivered in very different ways. The priorities, as we see them, are more organization into navigable career pathways aligned with demand; curricular modularization and credentialing; and the integration of those social service supports necessary for advancement.
Critical to this reform agenda is the development of a national skill credentialing system. This paper makes the case for such a system. We outline an American skills agenda and call for a better, stronger, greener workforce system to support it. We describe what’s out there, focusing on national certifications in renewable energy and energy efficiency. And we conclude with a series of policy recommendations for federal, state, and workforce system stakeholders