Empowering Energy Workers Through a Prosperous Transition Campaign
16 November 2022
Luisa Da Silva, Executive Director Iron & Earth discusses prosperous transition campaigns and how they can be utilized alongside renewable skills initiatives to empower workers.Empowering Energy Workers Through a Prosperous Transition Campaign
As the energy industry innovates in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, workers must adapt to the new low-carbon requirements.
Some employees that have been working in the oil and gas industry for years have been using the same skill set since they started. However, the industry's innovation requires new technical knowledge that may be foreign to these workers. To successfully work in the energy industry, these workers must be educated on transitioning to a net-zero workplace and economy.
Luisa Da Silva, Executive Director at Iron and Earth, sat down with Rachel Gregory, Digital Host at the Global Energy Show, to discuss implementing climate solutions, prosperous transition campaigns, and how they can be utilized alongside renewable skills initiatives to empower workers.
The Advantages of a Prosperous Transition Campaign to Empower Workers
How Iron and Earth Contribute to the Canadian Energy Transition
Rachel: Luisa, who is Iron and Earth, and what makes your organization unique?
Luisa: Iron and earth is a worker-led organization with the mission to empower fossil fuel and indigenous workers to create and implement climate solutions. The way that we achieve this is through our various training initiatives.
We have a renewable skills initiative where we help workers gain the skills they will require for the net-zero economy. We also do our advocacy work with our prosperous transition campaign, where we speak with representatives, stakeholders, and the government to help them understand what changes Canada needs to be able to make to adjust, transition, and achieve our net-zero goals.
The Importance of Renewable Energy Projects
Rachel: Why are projects like renewal important for Canada and how do projects like these help diversify the economy and the workforce?
Luisa: Renewal is a very unique project that's happening right now in Taber, Alberta. If we look at the Alberta landscape, about 170,000 orphaned or abandoned drill wells cover thousands of hectares of land. The renewable project is all about taking that disturbed land and its current infrastructure, going onto that land and building a solar farm. One of the important things about that is by using this disturbed land, which already had been used for generating energy, it leaves agricultural land for agricultural purposes.
Transitioning Skill Sets of the Fossil Fuel Industry to Renewable Projects
Rachel: What are some of the skill sets that the fossil fuel industry and indigenous workers have that can be transitioned to clean energy?
Luisa: They have a lot of technical skills. For example, if you look at an oil and gas plant, it's not dissimilar to a hydrogen plant, and it is these building and infrastructure skills that will come in handy in the net-zero economy.
How Fossil Fuel Workers Are Responding to the Net-Zero Economy
Rachel: What do workers say about transitioning to the net-zero economy?
Luisa: It’s really interesting because people are very concerned about jobs and they're also concerned about climate change. So, however they come at it, they can see that Canada needs to transition to a net-zero economy.
Most fossil fuel industry workers are interested in transitioning to net zero. And the majority of them, about eight out of ten, have some experience on net-zero projects. Still, they face barriers to entry to come over into that economy. The majority of them just have baseline technical skills.
One of the biggest barriers to entry is that they need a little bit of upskilling to translate the technical skills they already have into the skills needed in the net-zero economy. So many workers we speak to are hopeful; they want Canada to make the transition, and they just need the opportunity to be empowered to do that.
How Iron and Earth Is Helping The Fossil Fuel Industry Transition
Rachel: Luisa, what lies ahead for Iron and Earth?
Luisa: We're launching our social enterprise, which will help provide opportunities to upscale workers on a large scale. Up until now, we've been doing this through our renewable skills initiative, which has been great; it's very bespoke and helps communities develop those skills.
But we're talking about thousands of people that need to transition from the fossil fuel industry into the net-zero economy. So what we're doing is launching our social enterprise, which will help, on mass, bring in fossil fuel workers and rapidly upskill them through our renewable skills initiative, which is ten days. It's five days, hands-on, five days in class. After that, you'll be well on your way to a career in net-zero. We're really looking forward to launching our social enterprises.
Learn More About Topics Like the Prosperous Transition Campaign
As the Canadian energy industry continues changing, services such as the ones provided by Iron and Earth are key to helping workers gain quality information and tools on working in a net-zero economy.
If you're interested in learning more about topics like the prosperous transition campaign and how it’s shaping the North American energy industry, register for the next Global Energy Show today.
