On Thursday, March 2 at 12:00 PM join the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy on a hybrid event about green jobs. The in-person component will be held at Kleinman Center for Energy Policy 220 S. 34th St. University of Pennsylvania

Electricity is central to society—for organizing, communicating, working, and providing care. Depending on how we design and implement it, energy infrastructure can either enrich or impoverish a society.

In this talk, energy justice scholar Nikki Luke chronicles how subsidized worker training programs in the South, modeled after Van Jones’s “green jobs, not jails” program, grew a workforce of laborers in utilities, energy efficiency, and solar panel manufacturing. Based on interviews and observational data with union, charitable, and community college job training providers in Georgia, Luke demonstrates that more work must be done to instill high-road labor practices in the South, curtail geographical competition at the expense of workers, and support a social wage.

Speaker

Nikki Luke is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Luke is a 2022-2023 Kleinman Center Visiting Scholar.

Moderator

Shelley Welton is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy with the Kleinman Center and Penn Carey Law. Her research focuses on how climate change is transforming energy and environmental law and governance.