Casar Introduces Act to Help Fossil Fuel Workers Transition to Clean Energy Jobs

La Loma Community Solar Farm in East Austin (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Global demand for oil, though projected to increase in the next few years, is showing a long-term trend of flatlining, and coal jobs are at an all-time low.

This is good news for the environment, but what happens to the millions of workers and their families that are set to lose their jobs? And what about the workers hired in a rush to manufacture cleaner energy, in newer and less regulated fields like solar? These questions are particularly pertinent for Texas, as the state houses nearly 12% of the country’s energy jobs and produces more renewable energy than any other state.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced the American Energy Worker Opportunity Act, which aims to protect fossil fuel workers from being left behind in the clean energy transition. “We can do right by fossil fuel workers and their families, while also accelerating our fight against the climate crisis,” said Casar in a press release.

The bill would offer many provisions geared toward making the transition to clean energy industry jobs easier: For example, fossil fuel workers could get a wage replacement or supplement for wages lost in an employment gap. “If somebody's going to leave an oil refinery and start working building offshore wind, we don't want workers to struggle with that choice because there is a dip in wages,” explains Casar. The hope is that “eventually union contracts guarantee those wages and better. My goal would be for somebody to go from working in an IBEW-organized coal plant to going and working at an IBEW-organized geothermal facility or utility scale solar manufacturer.”

Other aspects of the bill include worker education and training, up to and including a four-year degree; educational grants for the children of dislocated fossil fuel workers; and requiring agencies to prioritize the hiring of fossil fuel workers into clean energy jobs when disbursing new energy grants. Why all these protections for this industry, when workers in every field are struggling? “In this case, the climate transition is an existential threat for all families,” explains Casar. “If we don't transition this industry smoothly and thoughtfully, the entire global economy is on the line.”

With stakes like that, what are the chances of this actually passing? Well, this is not the first time such a bill has been introduced – Brown filed the same one in 2021. “We filed the same bill as before knowing that it's not passing this Congress under Mike Johnson as the Republican Speaker,” says Casar. “But we wanted to make sure this idea stays in front of members of Congress and to begin conversations with fossil fuel workers and unions in different parts of the country to see what needs to be added to this bill to improve it, and to make sure we get legislators’ buy-in.” Casar says that buy-in is there, if “in the next Congress, we're able to hold on to the Senate and have more Democratic Democrats than Joe Manchin, then we have a chance again.”

He says the hope is that this bill could reintroduce the more people-focused provisions in Build Back Better that didn’t pass during the Biden administration, and act as a sort of companion to the industrial support of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “This isn't an industry that is going to be established and supported by the Greg Abbotts and Dan Patricks of the world,” says Casar. “It's going to be federal and congressional Democrats that are helping guide these policies, especially if Kamala wins the presidency. It presents a real opportunity for us to say, you want some of this federal support to establish clean energy in Texas? Great, but we're going to do it in a way that's good for workers.”