Energy / Oakland, California: 2010 Smarter City - Energy

Credit: City of Oakland

Oakland has attracted nationwide attention for its efforts to couple solutions to poverty and environmental problems. “We believe in a comprehensive approach – growing demand for green services, developing local green businesses, and training residents to become the new green workforce,” says Garrett Fitzgerald, Sustainability Coordinator for the City of Oakland. One of its most innovative energy initiatives bundled up in this remedy is training a green-collar workforce to combat unemployment as well as a host of environmental ills. This is where the Oakland Green Jobs Corps steps in.

 

Initiated by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in collaboration along with the Oakland Apollo Alliance, the Oakland Green Jobs Corps trains and helps place low-income residents in jobs like solar installation, energy-efficiency retrofits and green building. It is operated by a combination of the Cypress Mandela Training Center, Laney College, and Growth Sector, which perform the skills training, academic training and job placement aspects of the program, respectively.

If this strategy sounds familiar, it may be because the founder of the Ella Baker Center, Van Jones, was appointed by Barack Obama and served for a brief time as the White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. The Green Jobs Corps graduated its first class of 40 in June 2009, sending newly skilled workers to hands-on jobs—often building and retrofitting—with Bay Area companies. These successful initiatives, with significant funding from the city, have proved to be models for cities across the country.

Oakland undoubtedly benefits as well from California’s progressive energy policies. The state’s renewable portfolio standard pushes investor-owned utilities to use renewable sources, so even though Oakland does not own its utility, the city’s provider, PG&E, currently provides about 14 percent of its power from renewables. Much funding for innovative energy-saving programs in Oakland has been awarded by California’s State Energy Program.

Its Bay Area location may be an even bigger benefit. Residing among environmentally likeminded Bay Area cities, Oakland has joined a number of local and regional partnerships and coalitions that make energy-saving initiatives much more effective and widespread. A pilot program for improving energy efficiency in affordable multi-family housing in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley is soon to launch, as is the Energy Upgrade Alameda Program, which with dozens of other local governments will provide outreach and guidance for residential energy retrofits.

But like any city, Oakland still faces energy challenges—some unique and some universal. “Developing large-scale programs to motivate residents and businesses to spend their own resources on highly cost-effective energy improvements continues to be a challenge,” said Garrett Fitzgerald, sustainability coordinator for the City of Oakland. “Over half of Oakland’s housing stock is renter-occupied, and finding ways to motivate both tenants and property owners to invest in energy improvements to these properties is difficult.” Still, Oakland is off to an impressive start.