It was also the birthplace of industrial meat, where fateful new methods permanently changed how beef, pork and poultry were produced and transported, and evolved into what is now called factory farming. Namely, refrigerated train cars enabled a nationwide supply network, and production (once local and small-scale) was highly centralized by the biggest four meatpacking companies. A surge in output relied on the abundance of a cheap, desperate and largely immigrant workforce that included children. Production lines had been effectively de-skilled through division of labour (the “disassembly line”), and workers lived in unsanitary, crowded slums on the outskirts of the stockyards. 

In 1904, the young socialist Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks in Chicago’s stockyards making notes on the squalid working and living conditions. The result was The Jungle, a novel about a Lithuanian immigrant’s journey through Chicago meatpacking. The Jungle made it to the desk of President Theodore Roosevelt, who used its stomach-turning descriptions of unsanitary meat being shipped out to Americans to push food-safety legislation. In 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, thus beginning the era of federal food inspection. 

Roosevelt’s bills overlooked Sinclair’s primary aim, however, which was to improve the lives of workers. Eventually, after decades of organizing, unions grew stronger, and the dream of The Jungle looked more like reality. Between 1960 and 1980, meatpacking wages ranged from 15% to 19% higher than average manufacturing wages. The “big four” controlled only 20% of the meat market. But the 1980s saw the beginning of a gradual backslide, with production moving from urban centres to union-weak rural areas, line speeds increasing and wages falling. From 1952 to 2020, the percentage of workers covered by union contracts went from about 90% to 18%. Today, the new big four command more than 80% of the market.

Now almost 120 years after The Jungle was published, industrial meat has yet to find the balance between profit and worker well-being. 

The most dangerous industry

In the early hours of the morning shift at a Virginia poultry factory in February 2022, a 14-year-old Guatemalan boy had been cleaning a machine that suddenly turned on and pulled him by his shirt sleeve along a conveyor. His forearm was then torn open down to the bone by plastic machine teeth. He survived the incident, undergoing several surgeries and months of physical therapy. Then in July, a 16-year-old worker was killed after being pulled into a machine at a Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Mississippi. The teens were among thousands of migrant youth illegally working dangerous jobs in the United States, many for sanitation companies where they would clean dangerous equipment like bone saws and head splitters. At the Virginia plant, minors were falsifying papers to get hired by Fayette Janitorial, the cleaning company contracted by Perdue Farms, then working overnight and attending school during the day, exhausted. 

The U.S. Department of Labor announced an investigation into Perdue and Tyson Foods, two of the country’s largest poultry producers, and in February of this year asked a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order against Fayette while it investigated the company’s labour practices. This followed Labor Department penalties last February of US$1.5 million against Packers Sanitation Services, which was found to employ more than 100 children illegally in eight states, including at plants owned by JBS, the world’s largest meat company.

The New York Times called the situation “a new economy of exploitation,” but it’s only the latest chapter in the meat industry’s history of worker hazards.

For the last two decades, groups like Human Rights Watch and Oxfam have been sounding the alarm about high injury rates, insufficient regulations, suppression of collective bargaining rights, and the growing reliance on vulnerable migrant and undocumented workers largely powerless to demand better conditions. High line speeds are cited by workers as the main source of danger, causing them to cut themselves or develop musculoskeletal disorders. Gail Eisnitz, author of Slaughterhouse, reported Bureau of Labor Statistics showing “nearly thirty-six injuries or illnesses for every hundred workers,” making meatpacking “the most dangerous industry in the United States.” Eisnitz called meatpacking workers “an army of walking wounded.” 

Horror stories occasionally spark public awareness of the meatpacking world, but the industry quickly returns to obscurity.

In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the vulnerabilities of meat workers into clear relief, once again. Amid plant closures, looming meat shortages and rising infections and deaths, President Donald Trump signed an executive order using the Defense Production Act to compel meatpacking facilities to remain open. Following this, 15 large poultry plants received U.S. Department of Agriculture approval to increase line speeds from 140 to 175 birds per minute. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) received a spike in worker complaints. 

In June 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report that found COVID-19 infection rates in meatpacking facilities up to 70 times higher than the general population due to the crowded nature of the workplaces.

Canada didn’t fare well, either. By May 2020, the single-largest COVID-19 outbreak site in North America was a Cargill meatpacking plant in High River, Alberta, where 950 cases had been recorded (out of 2,000 workers), and two deaths. The union representing the plant’s workers filed a complaint of unfair labour practice and requested a stop-work order, but the plant reopened after a brief closure, with a majority of workers reporting concern for their safety. A class action lawsuit against Cargill is ongoing.

Canadian meat workers also face the grinding pressures of speed and output. David Magina, a former inspector with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says he inspected chicken carcasses at line speeds of three birds per second (280 per minute). Even with the benefits of being a federal employee, Magina felt the deleterious effects of the environment. “My life is more important than any amount of money,” he says. Magina developed severe asthma, contracted a pathogen and suffered frequent headaches. The line workers he became friendly with regularly reported carpal tunnel syndrome, shoulder pain and eye strain. 

Magina’s tenure in slaughterhouses also triggered what may be the most inadequately addressed hazard of working in the meat industry: post-traumatic stress disorder. “I saw unimaginable things. Standard industry practice is horrific, but I’ve seen even more extreme things.” People working the kill floor in particular become “shells of themselves,” Magina says. Studies have found that slaughterhouse workers experience higher rates of depression, anxiety and negative coping behaviour such as aggressiveness, substance abuse and domestic violence. The often vulnerable economic and cultural position of these workers means they cannot access sufficient mental health support – many lean on their communities for relief.

The industry keeps looking to temporary foreign workers (TFWs) to fill its labour shortages. In 2022, Employment and Social Development Canada announced a temporary increase on the cap of how many TFWs can work at a specific work location in certain sectors (including meatpacking), from 20% to 30% (after a previous limit of 10%). In 2020, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended its own TFW program by three years so that producers could retain workers whose visas were expiring. 

Some say we’re looking at the problem all wrong. Instead of putting economic migrants in dangerous jobs, should we be creating a labour market that uplifts precarious workers and doesn’t put them in harm’s way?

A way out 

“Nobody dreams of working in a slaughterhouse,” says Kendra Coulter, a University of Western Ontario professor who studies labour involving animals. Coulter says that while unions can increase wages and improve conditions marginally, “they will never fundamentally improve slaughterhouse work.” The focus, she says, needs to be on the creation of humane jobs that are good for people and good for animals. 

A recent report by the Stockholm Environment Institute suggests that a just transition for meat workers start with the Global North. Scaling down industrial meat could reduce environmental and health impacts, especially for communities exposed to the pollution associated with factory farms. However, the report cautions that a transition away from industrial meat will have “strong repercussions for communities where large numbers of people derive their livelihoods from meat supply chains.” While the plant-based sector could create more high-skilled jobs in certain regions, policy-makers will need to prioritize “the meaningful participation of marginalized groups,” groups that are often left behind in big industrial turnovers, like when auto and coal producers vacate regions. 

The UN Environment Programme and investor network Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) have also recently called for a just transition for meat workers. “Although no silver bullet exists for this sector” FAIRR says, “a just transition for food systems must be on the agenda for investors and policymakers alike.”

For workers seeking near-term relief, one possible answer might be more initiatives like Brave New Life Project, a volunteer-run non-profit that supports Colorado meat workers aiming to find new opportunities. Not an employment agency, Brave New Life is more of a holistic support network that assists with job-seeking and works with clients to find housing and food support, or obtain new job skills.

Although no silver bullet exists for this sector, a just transition for food systems must be on the agenda for investors and policymakers alike.

 

– Helena Wright and Stephanie Haszczyn, FAIRR

“One employment agent made a worker feel guilty about wanting to leave,” says co-founder Jessi Geist, referring to the JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado. It’s just one of many barriers workers face when seeking a way out. “If immigrants have a low baseline of English, slaughterhouse work is all they can get,” Geist says. Other trade-offs like taking wage cuts for less stressful work, or upending their homes to relocate, are not always options for people supporting families. “Is my mental health more important than my family?” It’s a question workers often ask themselves, Geist says. 

Putting workers in better positions is key for Brave New Life. “Our long-term goal,” Geist says, “is to buy a piece of land, have people cultivate it, learn business skills, sell their products and become landowners themselves.” 

After an injury makes him unhirable in the stockyards, The Jungle’s central character finds work at a fertilizer plant. The fertilizer, it turns out, is toxic and deadly. Even today, it’s still not as simple as just getting out.

Christopher St. Prince is a Toronto-based journalist and fiction writer.

This story is part of our Spring 2024 Plant Power package. 

The post Is it time for a just transition in the meatpacking industry? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The announcement set off a firestorm in Alberta as Premier Danielle Smith said: “It’s very clear what they have in mind for us is devastating. They want to shut down a quarter of our economy.”

Rachel Notley, the province’s official opposition leader, suggested the federal government should just take the legislation “…and basically get rid of it.”

Just transition is an important element of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party national climate policy agenda. It’s in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which Canada signed along with 193 other countries.

The agreement considers “the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities.” That means Canada’s national plan to address climate change and transition towards a decarbonized economy must consider and support workers.

Making policy lemonade out of lemons

Needless to say, the plan has had an inauspicious start, even though the details have yet to be revealed.

So how can the federal government salvage its just transition agenda and make policy lemonade out of the political lemon that is its relationship with Alberta?

It could be argued that Alberta, with its large oil and gas industry, is distinct from other provinces and territories and is unlikely to support any plan for a just transition.

But in the past seven years, the federal government has been able to work with provinces and territories, including Alberta, using three strategies that can increase the chances of bringing the province on board with the just transition plan.

3 ways to win support

First, the federal government has allowed substantial flexibility in local policy design. For example, provinces could accept a federal carbon pricing policy or develop their own equivalent policy, using a tax or a cap-and-trade system.

While Alberta’s United Conservative Party government has fought the carbon price on fuel tooth and nail, it has quietly worked with the federal government on a pricing system for industry. Even when the UCP government changed the provincial system, upon coming to power, the federal government recognized its equivalency.

Similar flexibility and attention to local circumstances will be required if the just transition is to be politically accepted in Alberta. Simply including the province in a broader national transition strategy isn’t sufficient.

Second, the federal government offered trade-offs in return for provincial support. In Alberta under Notley and the NDP, provincial support for federal climate policies was contingent on approval of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, despite its greenhouse gas emission (GHG) footprints and the opposition of environmental groups.

The federal government can look for additional trade-offs, particularly if Notley wins the provincial election in May. Potential options include increased support for the clean-up of abandoned oil and gas wells, investments in the province’s hydrogen industry and increasing financial incentives for carbon capture, use and storage technology.

Finally, the just transition plan itself must present a financial carrot to accompany the stick of a cap on GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector, which was announced last year.

Federal enticements

The federal government has provided funding, financial incentives and investments to entice provinces and territories to back national policy goals and help them meet federal regulatory requirements.

But historically, there has been a gap between what Alberta deems to be fair and necessary support for its industry and what the federal government is willing to shell out. The just transition is an opportunity to bridge this gap in expectations.

The federal government’s fall 2022 economic update planned for $250 million for skills training for jobs in low-carbon energy industries. However, the $2-billion figure floated in the federal Liberals’ 2021 election platform is likely closer to the mark.

In addition, the support of industry was key to the viability of Notley’s provincial Climate Leadership Plan. The federal government should take advantage of the reality that many in the oil and gas industry desire and accept the need for a transition to sustainable jobs.

The path forward

Is the just transition plan dead on arrival or is there a path to salvaging this key component of national climate policy?

As is often the case with public policy, the devil will be in the details.

As with any climate policy in Canada, considering and supporting local, economic and social realities are crucial to making the plan politically justifiable in Alberta. Doing so will also help the policy achieve equity and justice.

The stakes are high, and Canada and Alberta cannot afford to see the plan fail. The frequency and intensity of natural disasters worldwide in the past few years, and a shrinking market for fossil fuels, have already spurred the transition.

Canada has no choice but to adapt its energy sources and industries.

As the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act in the United States shows, other countries have started to take this path. If Canada doesn’t plan for it, the inevitable transition will be much more disruptive — and much less just.

Brendan Boyd is an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology, Economics and Political Science at MacEwan University. Marielle Papin is an assistant professor in political science at MacEwan University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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1. Tell the whole truth about the climate crisis

Most people are living in what I call climate limbo-land. They know climate change is pretty serious, but since almost no government is treating it as the crisis it is, they assume it’s all right to keep on flying, driving a gas-guzzling SUV, eating beef and complaining about the price of oil. If people knew the half of it, they’d be full of climate anxiety and demanding rapid urgent action, just as the young climate strikers are.

The Canadian government, for its part, is generally saying the right things, but its communications around the climate crisis need to have even more urgency. Through their actions, governments should be ringing alarm bells about the reality of the situation.

Alarm bell #1: We’re heading for a world that will be at least 2°C to 3°C warmer by century’s end. The last time it was that warm, three million years ago, sea levels were 16 metres higher.

Alarm bell #2: These climate events – more destructive floods, stronger hurricanes, longer droughts, quick-spreading wildfires and more prolonged heatwaves – will all get worse. And they will cost us. In Canada, losses caused by the climate crisis are projected to cost $2.8 trillion a year by the end of the century under a 2°C warming scenario, according to Queen’s University’s Institute for Sustainable Finance.

Alarm bell #3: By 2050 there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees seeking a safe place to live. So please – tell people the truth!

2. Electrify everything

All our energy except geothermal and tidal comes from the sun, that amazing ball of fire a million times larger than our tiny Earth. For more than a million years, we have used its energy by burning wood grown by sunlight. For 300 years, we have burned fossilized wood, plants and marine organisms that grew from the sun’s energy, in the form of coal, oil and gas.

Today, we know how to use the sun’s energy directly through solar, wind (the sun’s heat creates pressure differentials, which generate wind) and other renewables. Solar and wind are already the cheapest forms of new energy, and renewable technologies will only improve and get cheaper. Battery technologies are improving every year, as engineers develop new ways to store energy that don’t require lithium and other rare minerals. No more air pollution, no more related illnesses, no more tanker disasters, and no more wars over oil. Why hang on to the past? It makes no sense.

3. Stop burning fossil fuels

Around 75% of the climate crisis is being caused by our continued use of fossil fuels. Every time we burn coal, gas or oil, we pour fuel on the crisis, making the future worse. No one is saying “Stop burning all fossil fuels today,” but the climate scientists who understand the alarm bells are saying we do need to stop investing in new oil and gas infrastructure and exploration. The only reason for fossil fuel expansion is to continue to squeeze out more profits for investors, at the expense of our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives.

Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from fracked natural gas is not better than coal, as its promoters claim, since the process of fracking releases methane, which traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making its climate impact as bad as coal.

Governments should sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as the European Parliament recently did. There are a thousand ways for civilization to flourish without burning fossil fuels. Thank you, fossil fuels. You served us well, but your time is over.

4. Spend what it takes on climate change solutions

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, nobody in the U.K. asked whether they could afford to fight the war. They did whatever it took. They borrowed, increasing the national debt to 200% of GDP. (Canada’s debt today is just 45% of GDP.) They issued Victory Bonds. They invested massively to save their very future.

Investments in solar, wind and other renewables will pay for themselves through utility bills. Retrofitting buildings to replace gas with heat pumps and better insulation will require grants and tax breaks. Investments in transit, bike lanes, walkable communities and tree planting will improve our quality of life. Investments in research and development will produce better batteries, new ways to make concrete and steel, and new circular economy materials.

The world’s nations spend US$2 billion a day on direct fossil fuel subsidies, while the oil industry has made $3 billion a day in profits every day for the last 50 years. Imagine what we could achieve if governments were to invest those subsidies in climate solutions, and levy an oil industry windfall profits tax.

5. Stop eating meat

It’s one of those realities we need to accept. The livestock industry, which produces meat and dairy, causes as much climate pollution as the entire world’s transportation. It comes from a combination of rainforests being destroyed to raise cattle, fertilizers and manure producing nitrous oxide, and cattle constantly burping methane. A kilogram of beef generates 63 times more climate pollution than a kilogram of wheat. Pork generates eight times more; chicken six times more.

The belief that if cattle are grass-fed, that “grazing is amazing,” as burger chain A&W claims, is simply not true: the cattle keep burping methane and releasing nitrous oxide through their manure.

Instead of beef and dairy, there’s a whole world of vegetarian and vegan cuisine to explore, full of taste and flavour.

6. Leave no one behind

When French president Emmanuel Macron introduced a new fuel tax in 2018, it was quickly derailed by angry people wearing yellow vests who felt they had been unfairly targeted. Canada’s carbon tax, by contrast, is returned to most Canadians in their taxes as credits or rebates. But we need to go further. We need a truly just transition in which any worker whose job disappears as a result of the reduction of fossil fuels will be assured financial support and training to find a new job (of which there will be plenty). Indigenous people all across Canada must be included in the many opportunities that open up.

7. Restore climate stability

Is all this enough? Alas no, for the climate crisis is caused not by our current emissions, but by our accumulated emissions over 200 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). In May 2022 it reached 420 ppm, a level not seen for four million years, and it increases by two ppm every year as we continue to burn fossil fuels, destroy forests and eat beef.

To restore climate stability and cease our canter to catastrophe, we need to suck the surplus carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. We can do this by protecting Earth’s forests; restoring farmland soils and wetlands; planting a trillion trees; using the world’s oceans to grow carbon-storing seaweeds, seagrasses and mangroves; making synthetic limestone; and through other means, all of which the Foundation for Climate Restoration is pursuing.

The pursuit of “net-zero” is a delusional folly: it uses nature’s solutions such as these to justify continued climate pollution. We need to do both: to cease pouring fuel on the fire and to bring all that excess carbon back down to earth, where it will no longer trap heat.

So please, leave limbo-land. Come into action-land. We need all hands on deck.

Guy Dauncey is the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World Is Possible.

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The IEA’s first-ever World Energy Employment report says the success of the clean energy transition, made urgent by the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rests on the shoulders of those workers.

The report, released last week, forecasts a rapid job shift in the energy sector as decarbonization and net-zero targets push new renewable energy projects online. But the IEA cautions that growth must be coupled with people-centered employment polices to ensure a just transition for workers.

“The transition to a secure and sustainable energy future for all requires unprecedented shifts in the global energy sector,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol writes in the report’s foreword. “Its success will depend a great deal on the actions governments, industry, labour representatives, and educators take to prepare the energy work force of tomorrow.” he added.

“Above all, it will depend on the capable workers responsible for designing, building, operating, and overseeing the new energy economy.”

The IEA breaks down energy employment statistics by sector, region, and value chain using data from 2019—the most recent year for which comprehensive numbers are available. It also includes “high-level estimates” of employment in 2021 and 2022, based on new and upcoming projects like building energy efficient power plants, bringing oil wells online, and expanding and updating grids.

The transition to a secure and sustainable energy future for all requires unprecedented shifts in the global energy sector.

-Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA.

Overall, the energy sector employed more than 65 million people in 2019, roughly 2% of the entire global work force. Jobs were almost equally distributed across fuel supply, the power sector, and end uses like energy efficiency and vehicle manufacturing. Although energy employment fell with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now back at pre-pandemic levels and is expected to continue rising through 2022, with clean energy accounting “for virtually all of the growth in energy employment,” the IEA says.

The Paris-based agency says the report is meant to give policy-makers a baseline snapshot that helps them navigate workers away from the declining fossil fuel industry, towards positive employment opportunities in clean energy. Many fossil fuel employees have transferable skills, the IEA stresses: for instance, skills in petroleum and oil engineering are applicable to geothermal energy production, and chemical engineers in refineries can apply their knowledge towards the production of green fuels and hydrogen.

Though energy sector employment is set for its fastest growth in recent years, several risks could derail the momentum, the IEA warns. “Ongoing labour shortages and increased worker turnover are creating challenges for hiring and recruitment,” with oil companies in particular facing challenges hiring and retraining staff. The projections also reflect the rapid shifts under way in the sector, with coal mining jobs especially vulnerable.

The strong demand for highly skilled workers—45% of energy sector jobs are high-skill occupations, compared to an average of roughly 25% across the entire economy—has created a competition for labour that is increasing turnover rates and driving up wages. In this competitive energy labour market, established sectors like nuclear, oil, and gas offer high wages and attract more workers, while those with a high share of construction jobs tend to offer lower wage premiums. Newer sectors also lack the developed union representation of the fossil fuel industries, especially in emerging economies, says the IEA.

Recent legislation indicates support for expanded clean energy employment. The United States Inflation Reduction Act, for example, is expected to continue increasing renewables employment at a rate that exceeds U.S. job growth overall, reports Advanced Energy Economy. Federal incentives are expected to prompt residential solar installation companies alone to take on an additional 340,400 workers over the next five years, says Solar Reviews.

The clean energy work force could also benefit from more diverse hiring practices, the IEA says. Women hold 16% of the jobs in the global energy sector, compared with 39% across the entire economy. The proportion is higher in the U.S., at 30%, but women still hold a smaller proportion of jobs in clean energy than in traditional fossil fuels, says Canary Media.

This article is republished from The Energy Mix. Read the original article.

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In 2014, a global oil glut sent petroleum prices spiralling down. By 2016, oil prices were 70% what they were two years earlier. Nearly one in three – or more than 100,000 – Alberta oil patch workers, lost their jobs. “It was scary,” says Keats, who was laid off from the Kearl Lake project. “I watched as some of my friends sold off their assets or even declared bankruptcy.”  

But there is hope for oil and gas workers like Keats that they can transition into clean energy jobs. The demand for renewable energy tradespeople is growing. Geni Peters, director of research at ECO Canada, says that 294,000 workers will be needed by 2025 in the sector, which includes both renewable energy and energy efficiency activities. Currently there are 282,200 workers. 

Keats was luckier than most who lost their jobs in the industry. When he was laid off, he jumped around for a bit, eventually heading to Newfoundland to take a job as an electrician on the Hebron GBS (for “gravity based structure”) drilling rig off the coast of the Grand Banks. “Most companies in Newfoundland wouldn’t even look at a tradesperson with only experience from out west,” says Keats.  

The GBS job lasted six months, and Keats suddenly faced a harsh reality: give up on the oil and gas industry if he wanted secure work. Inspired by an increasing number of inquiries from Newfoundlanders asking his advice about solar energy, Keats decided to learn how to install solar panels. “I fell in love with the industry,” he confesses. “From the planning to the installation and start-up, every step of solar installation is engaging, and the final product so rewarding.”  

Keats also joined an organization, Iron & Earth, that had been created by laid-off oil sand workers in the spring of 2016. The group realized that their expertise might be transferable to the renewable energy sector. They had two main questions: how could they connect with employers in the nascent sector, and would they need to upgrade their skills  to work on wind turbines, geothermal plants, solar farms and at carbon capture facilities?  

It was scary. I watched as some of my friends sold off their assets or even declared bankruptcy.

–Devin Keats, instructor for a solar skills program with Iron & Earth

Cue Iron & Earth’s Climate Career Portal (CCP) online tool, launched earlier this year as a bridge linking oil and gas employees as well as Indigenous communities with the renewable energy sector. CCP is overseen by Iron & Earth’s Innovation & STEM manager Jodie Hon, an engineer who began her career with Shell Canada, then, citing her love of nature, switched to the renewable sector. As part of the CCP, Hon is overseeing the rollout this fall of a new mentorship program and is also leading the development of a career blueprint program, which will help workers break down the transition into small achievable steps.  

“I’ve sensed relief that we exist and that there are support and tools available for people who want to make that transition,” Hon says.   

Iron & Earth is also partnering with educational institutions so that young trades graduates will be able to use the CCP to kick-start a career, Hon says. “It’s crucial that Canada’s renewable energy sector has access to a large source of skilled workers. We need to shift our country’s labour market in order to implement solutions to slow climate change.”  

This past summer, Keats, 29, was the instructor for one of the solar skills programs Iron & Earth ran in Nunatsiavut communities in northern Labrador, training them in solar installation. It was a “massive success,” says Keats. “If we apply this model across Canada, with the support of government and skilled workers, we could easily reach our goal of being carbon neutral.” (Canada has pledged carbon neutrality by 2050.)  

Hon says Iron & Earth’s plan is to help 250 former oil and gas workers connect with renewable energy employers via the CCP by March 2024 and assist 1,000 to plan their career blueprints and find mentors by March 2025.  

One key question that oil and gas workers ask: are wages commensurate in the renewable energy sector? Last year, Statistics Canada released 2019 findings showing that jobs in the environmental and clean technology sector paid higher – $75,815 annually – than the average Canadian salary of $56,783. Mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction wages in 2020 were $88,546 annually, according to Statistics Canada. But as a bonus, cleantech jobs don’t generally experience petroleum’s volatile boom-and-bust cycles.  

Keats says that there are positive aspects other than wages in the renewable sector. “Personally, when you are leaving a job site of a solar panel installation, it is fulfilling that you are out there making the change and doing something you believe in. I cannot say that I felt the same driving back to camp every night on the bus while working with oil and gas.”   

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Transition, by its very nature, is about feeling uncomfortable. If we’re comfortable, that likely means nothing is changing, because we’re enjoying the ease of the status quo.

Cities everywhere have to negotiate and navigate the complexity that comes with the different views and perspectives that make consensus on climate action a challenge. Is an energy transition needed? What actions are reasonable? Who should act, and when? Who should pay for it?

This is particularly difficult for cities at the epicentre of conventional energy-centred economies, such as Edmonton and Calgary. Local governments, business communities, community organizations and citizens give me a call when they are faced with this sort of challenge and realize they don’t know how to work together. I get invited into the heart of city conflict, over and over again, and I’ve found that bringing these historically divided groups together is a profound way for cities to make choices and act. Three principles guide my work at any scale, from small projects, such as supporting city hall and developers to create new infrastructure cost-sharing strategies to accommodate increased density, to the work of planning a whole city.

City work belongs to all

Cities are a messy web of relationships and interests, desires and priorities, where no single person – or sector – has control over the future. Government, business leaders, community organizations and citizens have unique and interconnected roles to play in legislating, innovating and making sure our cities serve their citizens well. Leadership comes from those who convene and connect these roles with each other.

Jorge Garza works with the Community Climate Transitions team at Tamarack Institute, a 19-community climate transition network. Building on their track record of supporting a movement of 330 communities that have reduced poverty for more than one million Canadians, they are now focusing on a just and equitable energy transition. The climate network collaborates with communities to localize the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and build their capacity to host robust community engagement, develop a community-wide common agenda, and track and report on outcomes.

When it comes to integrating the perspectives of government, business leaders, community organizations and citizens, Garza observes that “systematically, we are not coordinated in our cities in ways that are inclusive and informative. Everyone needs to be involved in the process of changing. Government, business, everyone. We’re not there yet.”

Instead of thinking we each need our own plan, successful cities knit the various plans together.The learning edge for climate work is to bring community, government and business together in ways that allow us to hear each other and choose to act together. Town hall meetings are insufficient because we need to build our capacity to roll up our sleeves and get to work with people we don’t usually work with, not just talk at them. Tamarack’s work is vital to build our cities’ capacity to engage with each other and make a difference.

Practise thinking differently

Transition is a tricky business because it asks us to think differently not just about our energy use but about ourselves – and to be engaged in a process of changing.

As a director in what was then the City of Edmonton’s Urban Form and Corporate Strategic Development Department, Kalen Anderson led the development of Edmonton’s City Plan. She was equipped with a carbon budget to guide city government choices and accountability tools to connect the plan’s goals with budget decisions. Anderson invited her city to think outside the box as they created the plan for the capital of Canada’s oil and gas province, establishing policy direction for the entire municipal corporation, rather than only the city planners, with the expectation that everyone will work together to achieve climate goals.

Now, as executive director of the Urban Development Institute–Edmonton Metro, Anderson focuses on how to build the city the plan envisions. Net-zero construction, for example, increases the cost of buildings. According to Anderson, “We need to look at ways to reduce other costs, such as adjusting infrastructure standards. A series of thoughtful trade-offs are needed.” When it comes to housing, if those trade-offs aren’t made, we will have a city out of economic reach to its citizens. Will citizens tolerate paying more up front for net-zero homes or narrow streets with fewer parking spaces to avoid escalation in housing prices? Will policy-makers have the fortitude to work through potential resistance to new ideas and make the necessary changes?

While Edmonton thought differently about how to plan for a climate-resilient city, the work is just beginning. To implement its plan, it will need to step into polarizing conversations and make the choices that come with trade-offs.

The currency of city improvement is relationships

The cultivation of meaningful relationships is how we learn to work well with ideas and interests beyond the status quo.

Indigenous business leader Aaron Aubin is a Kwakwaka’wakw person living in the traditional territory of Treaty 7 First Nations and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3. From Calgary, he operates a consultancy that supports Indigenous nations, governments and businesses throughout Canada. Aubin advises that cities and businesses benefit economically and culturally when they engage in conversations with Indigenous people: “Across Canada, Indigenous Peoples’ ways of knowing and doing are essential to the dialogues on how to build more sustainable and inclusive cities.”

The energy transition is an opportunity to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into our city-improvement work by crafting relationships of reciprocity with Indigenous Peoples, their governments and Indigenous-run businesses. When we reach out to create and sustain relationships with other interests, we strengthen our collective capacity – through our connections with each other – to take wise climate action.

Opportunity for economic and cultural transformation

Climate action can serve as an opportunity for economic and cultural transformation – if we are willing to work with others in ways that feel unfamiliar, awkward and even tense. Feeling comfortable may well mean we’re not doing anything new, and if we’re not doing anything new, then we’re not participating in our transition. The hard work ahead: learning how to work well together. Our survival depends upon it.

The post How to get everyone in oil towns on board with energy transitions appeared first on Corporate Knights.

East Germany’s coal industry has been in decline since German reunification, but the recently elected federal government – a coalition of green, liberal and social democratic parties – has driven the last nail in its coffin with its commitment to phase out all coal power by 2030. Questions that have hovered over Lusatia for decades take on new urgency: what will replace coal as the region’s economic foundation, and who will be on the losing end of that transition?

Lusatia is far from alone; fossil-fuel-producing regions around the world face similar challenges. Meeting them head-on will be key to the success of the massive global shift that lies ahead, and Lusatia’s resurrection as a centre of electric mobility offers both inspiration and important lessons.

Lusatia lies southeast of Berlin, on the Polish border, and is home to vast seams of the compressed peat that forms lignite, or brown coal. At one time, it was the pumping heart of East Germany, the foundation of the communist state’s energy autonomy. The sulfuric smell of burning coal suffused East German towns and cities as their inhabitants wiped its film off their windows and shook its dust from their laundry. Not only an energy and heat source, lignite fuelled the East German rail system, was used as a petroleum substitute in the chemical industry and as coking coal in metallurgy. East Germany ran on brown coal, making the roughly 100,000 people who worked in Lusatia’s strip mines, briquette factories and power plants heroes of the workers’ state.

Fred Mahro was one of them. Lusatian by birth, he was 30 when Germany united – or, as he puts it, when West Germany took over – and working as an electrical engineer in the local power plant in Jaenschwalde. He spent the next decade watching the local economy collapse as hundreds of thousands of his fellow East Germans headed west. Three-quarters of the Lusatian brown-coal workforce were left jobless, but Mahro was not among them. Describing himself as “rooted in the soil,” he stayed put, got involved in union work and entered the public service.

Today Mahro is the mayor of Guben, a Lusatian town perched on the Neisse River that forms the German border with Poland. Guben’s population of 17,000 is half what it was at the time of reunification. Its main employer – a chemical fibre company – is now Thai-owned and 6,000 jobs lighter. The challenges just keep coming. Last year, a fence was erected to limit the spread of African swine fever and avian flu from Polish livestock, while refugees from Africa and the Middle East continue to attempt crossings of the frigid Neisse into Germany. And then there’s the pandemic.

In the most recent federal election, candidates of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany received the most votes of any party in Guben. The party rails against immigration and Europe and the green transition. But Mahro doesn’t consider it a serious political threat. “They feed the fear, but they don’t offer solutions,” he says.

We spent 30 years looking for investors. And now they’re coming.

—Fred Mahro, mayor of Guben

In fact, Mayor Mahro is decidedly optimistic. Unemployment levels in Lusatia, which peaked in the mid-2000s at 25%, now hover around 7%. Good things are happening in Guben, the best of them last October, when Rock Tech Lithium, a Canadian-German lithium development company headquartered in Vancouver, announced that it would be building Europe’s first lithium hydroxide converter in Guben.

The cleantech company’s €470-million investment in the Lusatian town reflects a carefully crafted political strategy that is paying off.

“This is the last cornerstone,” says a jovial Jörg Steinbach, minister of economic affairs, labour and energy for Brandenburg, one of two federal states that Lusatia traverses. Steinbach, who was the president of a major university in Brandenburg before being named minister in 2018, has overseen the most recent chapter of the region’s structural transformation and feels that things are coming together beautifully.

Since reunification, massive public investments have been made to re-naturalize the Lusatian landscape and stimulate tourism. A chain of abandoned pits has been flooded to create the “Lusatian Lake District,” the largest collection of artificial lakes in Europe, complete with hotels, recreational boating outfits and holiday rentals. But it was clear that Lusatia could not live from tourism alone. Steinbach knew that the region’s success rested on finding a replacement for coal that feels as essential to the present and future as coal did in the past.

Open for business

The first cornerstone of that new industrial identity was laid in November 2019 with Tesla’s decision to build a US$6.8-billion “Gigafactory” – the company’s fourth worldwide – in Gruenheide, a small municipality southeast of Berlin. It is slated to manufacture 500,000 cars annually and to employ 12,000 locals. The announcement, which followed nine months of intense negotiations, was a major coup.

“This put Brandenburg on the map,” Steinbach says. And it gave new definition to the region. Tesla’s vote of confidence had a domino effect. In the last two years, BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer, and U.S. battery producer Microvast have both opened plants in Brandenburg, producing cathodes and vehicle battery systems, respectively, and enabling Lusatia to brand itself as a centre of electric mobility.

Certainly, this is what Rock Tech Lithium CEO Dirk Harbecke saw in Lusatia. A serial entrepreneur who previously worked in financial services in Africa, Harbecke anticipates a huge increase in the European demand for lithium hydroxide – an essential component of battery cathodes – as the continent’s electric car market takes off. He sees the electric vehicle boom shifting from China to Europe, destined to hit North America in two or three years.

Starting in 2023, Rock Tech will be extracting lithium from the granite outcrops of a property on Georgia Lake, 160 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and shipping it in concentrated form to Guben for processing. Ultimately, Rock Tech aims to harvest at least half of its lithium from recycled batteries, creating a closed production cycle. Harbecke also intends to expand Rock Tech’s empire of converters, with the next facility planned for the Thunder Bay area, providing access to American auto manufacturers via the Great Lakes.

In scouting locations for Rock Tech’s European converter, Harbecke, who grew up in West Germany, was interested to discover that the “other” Germany had more to offer. For one, it boasted more vacant industrial space, ready for development and well connected to road and rail. For another, Harbecke felt significant political support for his project in the former East. “They made it clear that they really wanted to have us there,” he says.

This is the last cornerstone.

—Jörg Steinbach, minister of economic affairs, labour and energy for Brandenburg

This was exactly the plan. Minister Steinbach has made promoting Brandenburg’s “open for business” message – and polishing up on his English – top priorities. He feels there’s a misconception that subsidies alone will draw foreign investors, while in fact it is other factors that clinch the deal: personal commitment, for example, and the building of trust.

Another attractive feature of Brandenburg to investors is the composition of its energy supply. At two-thirds renewable (wind, solar and biomass), Brandenburg’s is the greenest grid in Germany: pretty remarkable for a state that, as recently as 2017, was still running mainly on coal. This makes it a natural home for electric mobility – but also any other industry, in a world where carbon emissions hurt the bottom line.

The focus on renewables serves Germany’s climate goals, but also a sense of identity in places like Lusatia. There’s a cliché of East Germans as nay-saying, glass-half-empty defeatists. But given their recent history – from the expiry of the state many grew up in, to the adoption of an entirely new economic system, to a climate transition that has killed their prime resource – it’s no wonder that spirits have flagged.

Fred Mahro sees that changing. With pride, he can say that his region is now home to the entire supply chain of electric vehicles. More than a dozen EV charging stations are scattered across Guben, and Mahro is spotting more and more electric vehicles on its streets. His next car will be one of them.

In the last three years, the demographic tide has turned: more people have moved into Guben than away.

“We spent 30 years looking for investors,” he says. “And now they’re coming.”

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post How a German coal region is becoming a poster child for a successful green transition appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The new coalition government in Germany has resolved to put 15 million electric vehicles (EVs) on roads by 2030 – a considerable increase from the 540,000 purely electric cars on the road today – and to install one million more charging stations. It is using pandemic recovery funds to encourage the transition. In 2020, the government announced a €5-billion pandemic stimulus package to help the automotive industry transition to EVs. It consists of €1 billion for rebates on EV purchases, €1 billion for the replacement of older trucks, €1 billion to support technology investments by suppliers and €2 billion to help them adapt their production.

2. Penalize what you don’t want

Germany hasn’t been a leader in phasing out combustion vehicles by a particular date, relying instead on incremental measures. In January 2021, the government raised the motor vehicle tax (or Kraftfahrzeugsteuer) – an annual tax paid by vehicle owners and calculated on the basis of their vehicles’ engine size and emissions value. Owners of EVs will be exempt from this tax for 10 years, saving them an average of €194 per year. Owners of large (non-electric) SUVs will now be paying upward of €700 annually. Meanwhile, municipalities across Germany are limiting high-emission vehicles’ access to some urban zones and charging them more for parking.

3. Invest in especially hard-hit regions

As governments work to wean their countries off fossil fuels, they’ll need to make sure that marginalized communities and workers aren’t left behind. In 2020, the German government passed a “structural revitalization law,” allocating €40 billion to the country’s coal-producing regions, of which Lusatia is one. These funds, managed between federal and local governments, are being invested in transportation infrastructure, education and training, and employment-generating projects. In the last two years, the government has opened offices of two federal agencies in Lusatia – the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control and the German Pension Office – to create jobs.

4. Engage with those regions

According to Thomas Froehlich, a political scientist based at King’s College, London, public consultation is key to public acceptance. Froehlich, who has been comparing the transitions of the coal regions of Appalachia (U.S.) and Lusatia (Germany), says that given the severe impact of coal mining on local communities – villages were frequently demolished and relocated to make way for new pits – the German coal industry has a tradition of engaging with the public to gain acceptance. Froehlich feels this culture of consultation is facilitating the current transition and contrasts it with a less collective, more “winner takes all” approach in the U.S.

5. Encourage, train and compensate

It’s one thing for federal governments to sign off on massive recovery packages; it’s another to ensure that those funds are accessible to individuals and municipalities. Furthermore, investors in transitional regions are looking for a trained local workforce. Germany’s dual education system, which pairs post-secondary institutions with the private sector, is helpful in this respect. Companies like Rock Tech Lithium are tapping into – and helping train – local youth. Lastly, those who have little chance of re-entering the workforce must not be left in the dust. The German government is providing people aged 58 and over who have lost jobs in the coal industry with up to five years of compensation (equivalent to their previous earnings) to bridge them into their pensions.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

The post 5 ways to not screw up the green transition appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Leaders are grappling with this balancing act as they try to implement meaningful climate policies and keep the public on side. The question of how to achieve a just transition was central to a series of recent online panel discussions co-hosted by Corporate Knights, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Canada and the Embassy of France.

“It is not going to be easy, but it has to be effective and it has to be real,” Canadian Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan said Wednesday at the final of the three panel discussions, which focused on the outcomes of COP26 from a climate justice perspective. 

The people most likely to suffer the costs of the transition live in low-income, Indigenous and rural communities. Experts worry that their energy costs may go up, at least in the short-term, if leaders fail to consider them when designing transition policies, such as carbon taxes and regulations. Energy poverty already affects people in Canada, Germany, France and across the world, and it could get worse if governments aren’t mindful of how they’ll be affected. “We need to raise questions when we design these policies: What is the social impact of these measures, [and] to what extent are different consumer groups burdened or relieved by these policies?” said Veit Bürger, deputy head of energy and climate division at the Öko-Institut, a non-profit research institute, at the first roundtable in October, which explored the concept of energy justice. Bürger said low-income households must be compensated in some way when carbon pricing policies are adopted. There are also workers to consider, who could be displaced when they lose their jobs in high-emitting industries. 

The community of Old Crow in Yukon has shown how the transition can be successful in rural areas. For many years, this small remote community of around 250 residents has lived largely cut off from the modern world without a connection to a major road system or the power grid. Residents transport everything they need – including diesel for generators – on ice roads in the winter and by air. But Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm, the elected chief of Old Crow’s Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, said this isolation gave the community an opportunity to take a “short cut” when it came to transitioning to a renewable power source. Vuntut Gwitchin owns and operates a solar panel project that reduces diesel use by around 190,000 litres every year. The second phase of the solar farm was completed this summer and is expected to meet approximately a quarter of the community’s electricity demand. 

“With one single project, and a disruptive business model, we have shown the world [and] we have shown rural communities that we are a major part of the solution,” Tizya-Tramm told the first panel discussion. 

In France, the Yellow Vest movement of 2018 emerged in opposition to a gas tax and forced the government to rethink its approach to the energy transition. Since the protests, Emmanuelle Wargon, the French housing minister, said the government has come up with a three-pronged strategy. The first part of this plan, Wargon said, is to show the economic benefits of the transition through investments and jobs. The second step is to make sure policies are designed with their social consequences top of mind. And the last part is working with local communities to make sure that when a coal plant closes, the government encourages investment in the area so that workers are able to transition to new jobs.

To ensure results, Wargon sees three steps in a successful transition: “pioneering, mainstreaming and then putting obligations in place.” By pioneering a development or new technology, you show the public that making change is possible, she said. Making that technology or solution mainstream relies on ensuring that it’s affordable and simple, and then once it becomes widely accepted, you can implement constraints and regulations. 

“If you go too quickly from one phase to the other, you risk losing part of public opinion,” she said.

That public support will be vital for the array of policies – from market-based mechanisms, such as carbon pricing, to strong regulations that prohibit gas-powered vehicles – needed to decarbonize our energy systems and prevent climate chaos. “You need to have effective climate policies, but at the same time you need, in particular, to address the question of how [you] can create some kind of just transition in order not to put too much burden on the poor households,” Bürger said. 

With the support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Canada and the Embassy of France.

The post How do we transition off fossil fuels in a way that is truly just? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

With competing interests, values and needs at play, getting everyone on the same page will be an impossible task. Particularly when transitioning to a low-carbon economy raises a number of complex ethical quandaries, such as how best to support oil and gas industry workers who might look at the energy transition with reluctance. These issues will make the necessary transition all the more difficult to navigate together, as both a country and planet that has yet to develop a shared vision. Striving for consensus will likely result in paralysis. 

With this in mind, letting go of the association between success and consensus is especially important right now, as governments from across the world are set to meet in Glasgow at this year’s UN climate summit, or COP26, starting on October 31. Leaders face no easy task, and big talk must be met with big action if we’re going to prevent climate chaos. 

Which is why leaders attending the conference will need to avoid focusing on persuasion tactics.

If leaders spend their time trying to convince each other of “the right solution,” they’ll return home with nothing but empty promises and unclear deliverables. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be collaborative, but we’ll never get anywhere if we epitomize consensus as the pinnacle of success. 

Moving away from consensus doesn’t imply dismissing people’s perspectives; in fact, it implies quite the opposite. When we become less attached to our own ideas, and more open to the ideas of others, we’re more likely to embrace a diversity of perspectives and applicable solutions.

This was one of the main conclusions reached in a September workshop attended by fellows of the Alberta-based Energy Futures Lab, set up to respond to the federal government’s recent People-Centred Just Transition Discussion Paper. Instead of trying to find the solution to enabling a just transition, a number of insights emerged that offered, at the very least, various small stepping stones in a shared direction. Some attendees highlighted how workers could benefit from programs that will teach them new skills. And others considered how workers nearing the end of their careers might benefit from early retirement incentives. 

Attendees established early on in the workshop that striving for consensus would be an ineffective use of their time. So they instead focused on bringing forward ideas that captured the unique needs, interests and values of their specific communities. An Indigenous attendee, for example, talked about how existing skill sets could be leveraged within Indigenous communities, pointing out that an Indigenous worker is three times more likely than a non-Indigenous worker to be employed in extractive industries. It became clear just how many different approaches and tactics could be used to enable the energy transition.

Of course consensus is required when it comes to some big-ticket items, such as aligning behind a vision for net-zero by 2050 or acknowledging the scientific principles that underpin this objective. But the “solutions space” in which we must work to enable this transition is much more nuanced. It’s in this space that striving for consensus becomes a hindering force. 

So instead of trying to persuade one another that one solution is the best, COP26 attendees can approach their time in Glasgow a little differently. Rather than trying to force consensus, we can allow ourselves to delve deeper, thinking through the “creative tension” that arises as various perspectives collide. The idea of exploring this tension in a constructive way is at the core of the Energy Futures Lab’s approach and entails identifying common ground, rather than trying to persuade others to see things our way. In doing so, we can stop searching for a silver-bullet solution while also honouring a diversity of perspectives in a way that applies a variety of solutions to different contexts and in service of different people. 

In this sense, moving away from consensus isn’t about taking the ideas of a few and charging ahead. It’s not a matter of leaving people behind or justifying our inability to serve them by way of deeming consensus an impossibility. It’s a matter of acknowledging that no, we aren’t all going to agree on the best solutions or approaches, which is why we need to deploy a lot of them. Since we’ll never reach consensus around the path forward, we can instead agree to disagree while embracing a multitude of solutions and transition pathways. For instance, we can’t assume that rural communities will transition to electric vehicles in the same way or at the same rate that dense urban centres will. Different geographic regions will require different fixes so as not to be left behind when it comes to transforming our transportation systems. 

We know that attempting to convince people that our way is the best way will always be met with varying degrees of resistance, but allowing diverse perspectives to co-exist can result in the creation of a solid foundation that supports collaborative action. 

Perhaps our greatest chance of reaching net-zero by mid-century while also supporting an inclusive and equitable transition involves accepting that consensus is an unlikely reality. This isn’t to suggest that in the absence of consensus, we adopt the ideas of a select few. Instead, it’s an invitation to approach this transition from more directions, with more ideas on the table and with a willingness to experiment, create and explore outside of our personal comfort zones. 

Emma Gammans leads communications for the Energy Futures Lab, an initiative of The Natural Step Canada. She is an Alberta-based writer and communications professional who writes on topics including energy transition and community well-being.

The post Advice to world leaders heading to UN climate summit: forget consensus appeared first on Corporate Knights.