By Saul Griffith, Sam Calisch, and Alex Laskey, July 2020
Based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis, our new report demonstrates that an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole. Unlike other approaches, which tend to see climate change policy as primarily environmental in nature, the study also imagines the electrification of America as fundamentally infrastructure designed to power America and its economy in the 21st century.
Summary
From mass unemployment to the threat of the climate crisis, the U.S. will face a number of seemingly unprecedented challenges going forward. Finding needed solutions won’t be easy and will require creative thinking, robust analysis, and political resolve.
FAQs
Q: What types of jobs do we expect to create?
All types. We imagine that the largest sectors will be electricity supply, commercial, transportation, and finance, but this plan also creates millions of jobs in education, R&D, eesidential, and elsewhere.
Q: Where will these jobs be located?
Everywhere. Building a truly 21st century grid will result in millions of made-in-America, well-paying, outsource-proof jobs distributed across every zip code in the country.
Q: Do you expect to need lots of funding from the public sector?
Not at all. Our plan is based on private investment, rather than relying on public sector funding. Instead, we look to the public sector to provide the necessary incentives and loan guarantees to enable the private sector to drive this massive transformation. We anticipate public sector funding will amount to less than 10 percent of all the investment needed in our plan.
Q: Will this plan actually solve the climate crisis?
Yes. Rather than asking what is politically feasible, we started by asking what was necessary to solve the climate crisis in the next 15 years.
Q: What economic assumptions went into this model?
On the basis of the decarbonization model described above, we built a “machines-up” account of the decarbonization transition, counting each specific piece of equipment required to make the transition. This included solar panels, heat pumps, and electric dryers, and also electrifying equipment that can be used for energy storage such as hot water heaters and electric vehicles. The jobs analysis presented here is grounded in the physical machines and equipment built for the decarbonization transition.
The new machinery and equipment are priced against the fossil alternative (e.g. $30,000 electric vehicle vs. $20,000 internal-combustion engine) and the resulting difference is established as the cost incurred for the changeover.
These costs are then used to calculate direct, indirect, and induced jobs, using standard economic methods based on data from IMPLAN. We compare this economic job creation estimate with existing estimates of energy jobs, engineering estimates of jobs created, and with historically analogous projects of this level of ambition to confirm the reality of the very large number of jobs that this model projects.
Q: What climate assumptions went into this model?
This model assumes a pathway where the American economy is fully decarbonized. Specifically, we see that only close to 100 percent adoption rates of decarbonized technology at end–of–life replacement are required for pathways commensurate with limiting warming to under 2°C/3.6°F.
The scenario does not assume retirement of current assets before amortization of original capital costs — known colloquially as “early retirements” — though agrees with the analysis that early retirement of our heaviest emitters has enormous advantages in speeding our decarbonization and limiting cumulative emissions.
In addition, no efficiency measures are assumed other than the inherent efficiencies of the substitution technologies, and our model utilizes only existing technology commercially available today.
This accounting includes solar panels, heat pumps, and electric dryers, and also electrifying equipment that can be used for energy storage such as hot water heaters and electric vehicles. The jobs analysis presented here is grounded in the physical machines and equipment built for the decarbonization transition.
The new machinery and equipment are priced against the fossil alternative (e.g. $30,000 electric vehicle vs. $20,000 internal-combustion engine) and the resulting difference is established as the cost incurred for the changeover. These costs are then used to calculate direct, indirect, and induced jobs, using standard economic methods based on data from IMPLAN. We compare this economic job creation estimation with existing estimates of energy jobs, engineering estimates of jobs created, and with historically analogous projects of this level of ambition to confirm the reality of the very large number of jobs that this model projects.
Q: How many new inventions are assumed?
None. Our model asks how we can decarbonize our economy without inventing any new tech.
Endorsements
Sen. Brian Schatz
D-Hawaii
"This important study shows that climate action can create millions of well-paying American jobs. Decarbonization is an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize American industry and grow our economy. We just need the political courage to seize it."
Carol Browner
Former EPA Administrator
"Climate change is an existential threat to our health and communities …Rewiring America provides a blueprint for reducing climate change pollution and creating good-paying jobs. It is an important contribution to the work we urgently need to be doing."
Niskanen Center
Joseph Majkut, Director of Climate Policy
"Rewiring America asks the bold question of what it would mean if we made building a clean economy, as fast as possible, our national project. The results should surprise, provoke, and inspire."
Sunrise Movement
Varshini Prakash, Co-founder and Executive Director
"This report is a critical contribution that shows that urgently achieving an all-society clean energy future by 2035 is not only necessary and achievable, but will make the world that young people inherit more prosperous. We can achieve a just transition to a better world out of the wreckage of this economic crisis, with good union jobs for all, including low-income communities and communities of color — the only thing standing in the way is political will."
Sunrise Movement
Evan Weber, Co-Founder and Political Director
"The Rewiring America team asked the question: ‘What would happen if we actually tried to transition all of the infrastructure in American society over the next 15 years to stay within the 1.5ºC safe upper limit of global warming?’ The answer they found is that would save consumers and society money, and it would create lots and lots and lots of jobs — around 25 million of them."
Climate Jobs National Resource Center
Mike Fishman, Executive Director
"As millions of people around the country are out of work, the question is: how do we rebuild? Rewiring Electricity shows a bold vision, and a great opportunity for labor across the country. Building a plan from the bottom up is exactly the way to go. This white paper shows that millions of jobs can be created with good, sustainable wages in every community in America."
Media Coverage
New York Times
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico
Guest Essay: Your Next Car and Clothes Dryer Could Help Save Our Planet
Rewiring America’s road map will create, among other things, as many as 25 million new, good-paying jobs at the peak of this effort to switch to clean energy. Those jobs will be spread across the country."
Vox
Ezra Klein
How to Decarbonize America — and Create 25 Million Jobs
"Griffith worked with economists to come up with an estimate of how many new jobs this kind of mobilization could create: 25 million over the next five years, they found ... Griffith’s plan is just about the boldest I’ve seen — and there are real questions about whether our political system is up for the task. But those are, crucially, political questions; part of answering them is showing that they can be answered, and in ways that make working Americans better off rather than worse."
Marketplace
David Brancaccio and Rose Conlon
Decarbonization Can Fix the Jobs Crisis and the Climate Crisis, Scientist Says
"[Saul Griffith is] co-author of a new report with the nonprofit Rewiring America that finds that completely decarbonizing the U.S. economy would create many more jobs than would be lost — as many as 25 million more jobs in the near-term, as we overhaul our infrastructure, and then 5 million more energy jobs than we have today in perpetuity."
Vox
David Roberts
How to Drive Fossil Fuels Out of the US Economy, Quickly
"Last week, Rewiring America made its big debut with a jobs report showing that rapid decarbonization through electrification would create 15 million to 20 million jobs in the next decade, with 5 million permanent jobs after that ... But the jobs are, in many; ways, the least interesting part of the work. Much more interesting is Griffith’s larger project, the model he’s built and its implications."
Fortune
Saul Griffith and Alex Laskey
To Recharge America's Job Market, Build a Green Electric Grid
"At Rewiring America, we estimate we can create some 25 million U.S. jobs if we move on from fossil fuels and electrify the economy by 2035, as we’ve detailed in a recent study. This estimate comes from an in-depth energy and engineering analysis from comprehensive datasets of energy, labor, and materials, conducted by the two of us and MIT engineer Sam Calisch."
Fast Company
Adele Peters
How to Create 25 Million Jobs by Decarbonizing the Economy
"A new report calculates, in detail, what it would take to aggressively transition to a clean energy economy in the U.S. by 2035 — the timeline needed to make it possible to hit the target of the Paris climate agreement — and finds that decarbonizing the economy could quickly create 25 million jobs. ‘For a world looking to bounce back from a pandemic, there is no other project that would create this many jobs,’ the authors write."