New York City has announced plans to create 260,000 “green collar” jobs over the next 16 years.
The new opportunities will show up “in retrofitting apartment blocks, installing solar panels, EV charging stations, and wind turbines across the five boroughs,” The Independent reports.
“Climate change is real. We see it every time we see the coastal storms. And let’s be clear: we are in February, and you could go outside without a jacket on,” Mayor Eric Adams said last week. “Something is just not right.”
So “our Green Economy Action Plan will harness the growth of a new kind of industrial revolution and give New Yorkers the tools they need to build a resilient and prosperous city.”
The plan is meant to triple the number of green jobs in the city, to 400,000, by 2040, The Independent says. Job training under the city plan will give priority to people from “environmentally disadvantaged” communities, with work force training centres built in each of New York’s buroughs and more than 12,000 new apprenticeships established in green building and construction.
New York is also looking to add battery storage along the East River and turn two acres near John F. Kennedy Airport into the city’s biggest electric vehicle charging facility.
The city also plans to establish a new Climate Innovation Hub in Brooklyn to support 150 greentech start-ups and 5,000 jobs over the next decade. That’s on top of the more than 170 companies that have received start-up support from the non-profit Urban Future Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering since 2009.
