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Summary:

Nurtured by smart clean energy policy over the past decade, including the Renewable Portfolio Standard, Clean Fuels Program and Coal to Clean, Oregon’s clean energy economy has fueled private sector job growth throughout the state. Heading into 2020, Oregon’s clean energy economy had firmly established itself as the powerhouse of the state’s energy sector and was only gaining steam. At the beginning of 2020, nearly 57,000 Oregonians worked in clean energy, representing 58% of all energy sector jobs and almost 3% of the statewide workforce. In fact, the clean energy economy was outpacing Oregon’s economy-wide job growth by over 60% and contributing to the local economy in every county and every state senate district. Companies surveyed across Oregon anticipated even more robust growth, projecting to add about 2,800 clean energy jobs in 2020. All that changed with the COVID-19 global pandemic and the economic recession it precipitated. Oregon’s clean energy economy has been hammered since the pandemic’s arrival in March, with over 6,000 of Oregon’s clean energy workers—10% of the state’s clean energy workforce pre-COVID—out of work at the beginning of 2021.

Clean Jobs Oregon details the size, scope, and diversity of this core sector of Oregon’s economy, the challenges it continues to face due to the pandemic, and the promise that strategic policy action and targeted stimulus investments in clean energy hold to drive a strong and durable recovery for Oregon’s economy. Complementing this report is E2’s recent Clean Jobs, Better Jobs report that shows wages and benefits in clean energy compare favorably to other industries; in fact, Oregon’s clean energy economy pays nearly 21% more than the state’s economy-wide median wage. Taken together, these reports demonstrate that—by leveraging clean energy’s job creation potential—Oregon policymakers can help stimulate an economic recovery, make progress towards achieving Oregon’s climate goals and create jobs that come with pay and benefits that are better than many of the jobs that have been lost

Federal policies from the Biden administration and Congress are crucial for economic recovery across the nation and in Oregon. However, Oregon policymakers have a critical role to play in facilitating recovery in the state’s clean energy sector to recuperate its recent job losses and position it for continued growth in the years to come. To help realize clean energy’s job creation potential in Oregon, state lawmakers should stay the course and ensure strong implementation of existing clean energy policies and regulations, including Gov. Kate Brown’s March 2020 Executive Order on Climate Action (EO 20-04). And by adopting additional policies in 2021 that will drive investment and job growth in the clean energy economy—such as a 100% clean electricity bill and a zero-emission truck standard called the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule—state officials can leverage Oregon’s clean energy economy as an engine for growth, both now and into the future.

A BIGGER PICTURE

This report focuses solely on the energy sector of the economy and does not include jobs in retail trade, repair services, water or waste management, and indirect employment or induced employment.

• Small businesses are the backbone of Oregon’s clean energy economy. More than eight in ten (83%) clean energy workers were employed at companies with fewer than 20 employees;
• 3 in 10 construction jobs in Oregon are in clean energy occupations, from solar installers and site workers to electricians, HVAC technicians, lighting technicians, carpenters and others who work in energy efficiency;
• Oregon ranked ninth in the country for clean energy unionization, with 9% of clean energy workers part of a union – behind only Washington and California in the West and well above the nation’s economywide average;
• Nearly four in ten Oregon clean energy workers were of non-white or Hispanic ethnicity in 2019;
• Clean energy accounts for 55% of all energy sector jobs in Oregon, 35 times more than fossil fuels;
• Rural areas in Oregon are home to more than 10,000 of the state’s clean energy jobs.

Oregon Clean Energy Employment Q4 2019

Summary:

Most initiatives to fight climate change today focus on reducing fossil fuel emissions from electricity generation, transportation, and buildings. But to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we must also significantly reduce the atmospheric carbon that has already been emitted. While efforts are underway to develop new and high tech mechanisms to accomplish this, there is an immediately available and economically viable pathway for atmospheric carbon removal—one that provides a compelling new value proposition for farmers to revitalize their soils and get paid for doing it.

Regenerative agriculture methods such as cover cropping, crop rotation, low-till or no-till practices, and reduced reliance on fossil-fuel based inputs can mitigate climate change by drawing down atmospheric CO2 and sequestering that carbon in the soil, while improving microbial soil health, and increasing soil fertility, crop yield and resilience. These practices also produce multiple additional economic and environmental benefits.

For most of the past decade, agriculture has been one of the most challenging sectors of the U.S. economy. American farmers have had to endure plummeting crop prices, trade-war tariffs, rising costs for inputs like fertilizer, and increasing crop and livestock losses from extreme weather events and less predictable growing seasons—an estimated 85% of U.S. crop losses are due to extreme weather events. Then came COVID-19, disrupting supply chains, upending markets such as restaurants, schools, and institutional food, and further dimming farmers’ prospects with a likely extended recession. According to the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, net farm income could plunge by 19% ($20 billion) in 2020.

But climate-smart agriculture and soil carbon drawdown are in the nascent stages of ushering in a potentially gamechanging chapter in 21st century agriculture. Through strategic direction of Farm Bill funds and other state and federal policies, partnerships with private sector companies seeking to go carbon-negative, and increased consumer demand for low-carbon food, fiber and fuel, regenerative cultivation practices can deliver four significant economic, environmental, and political opportunities for the U.S. farm economy.

Farm Profits and Economic Recovery

Climate-smart agricultural practices offer a path to economic recovery and long-term profitability for hard-hit farmers by delivering increased and more consistent crop yields, reduced costs for inputs (fertilizer, fuel, pesticides) and crop insurance, and the opportunity to participate in markets for soil-based carbon removal. ‘Reduced carbon’ or ‘negative carbon’ crop outputs and the products derived from them may also have increased market value as consumer awareness and demand increases for products with these attributes.3 Healthier soils also make farms and ranches more resilient in the face of increasingly common extreme weather events.

Ag Tech & Job Creation

“Ag tech” is one of the fastest-growing technology sectors, with investors from across the financial sector funding startup companies creating highly skilled jobs in technologies such as microbial soil additives, advanced sensors, drones, monitoring software, GPS mapping, genomics, AI, and data analytics. The demand for accurate soil data measurement and analysis is strong, and college programs to train new ag tech professionals are growing throughout the Farm Belt. Additional innovation is taking place in the creation of agricultural carbon trading platforms, establishing carbon as a new farm commodity.

Valuing Carbon Removal & Ecosystem Services

While storing carbon from the atmosphere in agricultural soils can be a key factor in the battle against climate change, the practices that sequester carbon also deliver a wide range of other environmental benefits—including improved water quality and conservation, improved air quality, greater biodiversity, and reduced toxic inputs. Markets and other opportunities that monetize these practices are emerging, creating new revenue streams for farmers and ranchers across the U.S.

Bridging Partisan Divides

Support for policies to incentivize agricultural carbon sequestration has bridged the historically contentious divide between the environmental and agricultural communities because the practices that restore and enhance soil carbon produce both economic benefits for farmers and natural resource benefits to society. In 2017, for instance, an unprecedented coalition of environmental, business, and farm industry groups helped forge and recruit bipartisan Congressional support for the Soil Health Demonstration Trial in the 2018 Farm Bill, a key soil health enhancement and soil carbon measurement program. Since then, numerous policies building on that provision have been proposed at the state and federal levels by lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, as diverse stakeholders recognize the benefits of valuing agricultural carbon removal.