A new program from southern Maine workforce development agencies plans to train hundreds of new workers for the clean energy industry.
Green Jobs for ME is managed by the Coastal Counties Workforce Inc. and operated by Goodwill Northern New England. It is funded with a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
Goodwill's senior director of workforce services David Wurm said the program will target people who are underrepresented in construction and engineering occupations.
The initiative will offer subsidized training, apprenticeships and degree programs to job seekers and help connect workers to employers, Wurm said.
"Within this kind of renewable energy field, these two pathways of construction and engineering is where we saw a pretty deep vein of both current jobs, but also future jobs," Wurm said.
The groups plan to train more than 300 workers over the five year program. Jobs include everything from entry-level laborers to project managers, Wurm said.
There is a labor crunch in the construction industry nationwide, according to Kelly Flagg, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Maine.
Programs like this can help get workers into in-demand jobs with transferrable skills, Flagg said. Not every worker that comes out of the program will work directly in renewable energy, but they will still be needed for jobs to support the industry, she added.
"A lot of the jobs that we are talking about are not necessarily the ones you would think of as green jobs," Flagg said.
But building a solar farm or a wind power development needs workers who can operate cranes, move earth and do other jobs to move the development ahead, Flagg added.
"We support a number of those different occupations, including those you would think of like electricians and solar installers and those things," she said.
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