Recent & Current Projects
Supporting Navajo Leadership in the Green Economy
Good Green Work supports partners in the Navajo Nation to develop green career pathway learning experiences and programs. The Navajo Nation is poised to develop thousands of good green jobs and new entrepreneurship opportunities that help Navajo people, the economy of the Navajo Nation, and Navajo lands in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico to thrive. Good Green Work is collaborating with Navajo Technical University, high schools, labor unions, and industry partners in the Navajo Nation to develop regional workforce training partnerships to recruit, train, and place Navajo job seekers in high-wage, high-growth careers in Advanced Manufacturing, Skilled Trades, Engineering, and Entrepreneurship/Business Administration in order to prepare community members for growing industries within the Navajo Nation, including solar, wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, energy efficiency, and water careers.
Sustainable Commercial Refrigeration Careers
Good Green Work supports the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) to transition away from the use of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants (HFCs) in supermarket refrigeration through the widespread adoption of sustainable refrigerants with low global warming potential. “Service Readiness” has been identified by industry partners as one of the most significant barriers to compliance with new and pending mandates to phase out the use of HFCs. The industry faces an acute shortage of qualified service technicians. Good Green Work and NASRC are collaborating to assess and address the industry workforce barriers and opportunities to recruit, train, and place a highly-qualified workforce into quality sustainable refrigeration technician careers.
The High Road to Residential Building Decarbonization
Good Green Work supports the leadership of Rising Sun Center for Opportunity on a High Road Training Partnership to increase job quality in the emerging residential building decarbonization industry in the Bay Area. The focus of this collaborative project is to address the key barriers to utilizing growing publicly funded residential decarbonization programs as a lever to increase the quality of jobs in this sector, one that is of vital importance to achieving our climate protection goals, but frequently provides jobs that do not meet the measures for high job quality, including factors such as wages, benefits, workplace inclusion, safety, and worker voice. The partnership engages a wide range of public jurisdictions, technical decarbonization and workforce experts, employers, workers, and the trades through the Alameda County Building Trades Council, and their non-profit partner, the Construction Trades Workforce Initiative (CTWI). Together we seek to uncover the constraints to increasing job quality in this sector, devise win-win-win solutions that do not require tragic tradeoffs, and provide supportive resources for replication in jurisdictions around the state of California and beyond in order to create equitable pathways to quality building decarbonization careers.
California Roadmap to a Green & Blue Economy
Good Green Work is working on behalf of the Green Career Education Innovation Hub of the California Environmental Literacy Initiative (CAELI) to develop a “California Roadmap to a Green & Blue Economy.” The Roadmap will serve as a data-driven strategic guide to the development of accessible TK-16 career pathways, intentionally designed to attract and support those who are underrepresented in the growing high-wage green and blue careers that are essential to creating California’s economically vibrant, just, and sustainable future. Emily Courtney of Good Green Work leads the Roadmap design and development team in: Roadmap design, project management, Roadmap working group facilitation, and partnership development. The resulting plan will function as a blueprint for statewide, strategic education and workforce development programming to meet industry, equity, and environmental needs, attracting and directing millions of dollars of public and private funding to a data-driven approach to strengthen California’s global leadership in the green and blue economy.
City of San Rafael
Good Green Work is supporting the City of San Rafael to develop a plan for Climate Action + Economic Enhancement and Inclusion which will guide the process of equitably decarbonizing the economy, a key component of the City of Rafael’s Climate Change Action Plan. Equitably decarbonizing the economy includes:
Helping current businesses reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,
Recruiting and establishing new green businesses that are low-carbon and support community greenhouse gas reductions, and
Creating or enhancing good quality, local green jobs.
The purpose of this project is to identify opportunities, priorities, and actionable next steps to support San Rafael’s economic ecosystem to be more resilient and regenerative while growing pathways to high quality green jobs, especially for community members with barriers to employment from historically marginalized communities. This project will result in a clear and actionable workplan to support existing San Rafael businesses, develop the next generation of local green businesses, and provide outstanding workforce development pathways so that every local worker and employer is contributing to lowering greenhouse gas emissions through their daily practices, products, and/or services.