Ranked as the nation’s second-largest energy producer overall, Pennsylvania also stands among the top 10 clean energy employers in the country. The Commonwealth’s clean energy sector boasts nearly 105,000 jobs, including more than 13,700 in Allegheny County, as well as employment growth that’s more than five times the state’s overall rate.
All that adds up to a promising field for career exploration. What it offers in prospects,
however, the field may lack in awareness. That’s the impetus behind a new tool Sustainable Pittsburgh created to help students and other jobseekers explore careers in clean energy.
“There is a need for visibility around the clean energy economy,” said Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Executive Director Bhavini Patel. “There needs to be a better understanding of the trajectory to ensure that we’re meeting the workforce demands.”
To help build that understanding among jobseekers, particularly students beginning to explore careers, and provide tools for analyzing the market, Sustainable Pittsburgh recently launched the Future Energy Jobs website.
While Sustainable Pittsburgh does not work directly with students, it is enlisting partners to introduce the tools in schools. Among others, it is working with Penn State University Readiness Institute, which alone connects with some 30 school districts statewide, to reach out to counselors who can coach students in navigating the website.
Outreach aside, the site has been designed intuitively, so that students and educators can readily begin using it on their own as well. Among other features, it offers assessment tools so that jobseekers can identify pathways that would best suit them. The first walks students through questions to analyze their interests, while the second helps determine what jobs best match their skills.
Because many of the clean energy sector’s jobs are either in construction or advanced manufacturing, the website also offers career-mapping tools in both of those industries. The career opportunities are broad, encompassing trades as well as pathways for students seeking jobs in business, research, and technical fields like information technology.
Exploring the clean energy sector makes sense for students not only because “there’s a demonstrated need for these jobs”, but also because the industry’s growth is likely to give them staying power, said John Ukenye, Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Senior Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives. “These jobs are very future-proof—they’re not being replaced by AI; they’re a safe bet to be here, and we need to find workers for them.”
