Author: Jessica Lobo, AEG Fellow, New York City

Boston has a goal of becoming net-zero by 2050. This means electrification of buildings and transportation. Boston’s grid needs to modernize to meet this challenge.

Last year, AEG Stakeholders outlined what they believed was the biggest obstacle to meeting Boston’s net-zero target -- lack of a ready-to-go local clean energy workforce. Such a workforce would not only need to be highly skilled but also diverse. To build this workforce, the industry needs to coalesce to provide funding and raise awareness.

AEG has given Boston a headstart on this work. We have organized a 90-minute workshop with relevant stakeholders to promote the development and education of clean energy workers.

Additionally, Boston is a city that is rife with environmental racism. In fact, in a recent study, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) found that people of color in the Greater Boston Area were more likely to live near major roadway and are therefore more likely to be exposed to high amounts of vehicular air pollution. As a way to address both Boston’s need to modernize their grid and the city’s environmentally racist urban planning, it is also the goal of the workshop to ensure these clean energy workers will not only be working on projects in underserved communities but be made up of members from those underserved communities as well.

A skilled and diverse workforce, however, is only one aspect of modernizing Boston’s grid. There are other obstacles we need to address. On August 26th, AEG will be hosting another Boston Stakeholder Challenge to determine more key obstacles to modernizing the grid. The event will feature speakers from Electric Power Engineers, Inc,Enel X North America, and Eversource Energy.

If you are interested in participating, REGISTER HERE or please reach out to Jess Lang (jess@goadvancedenergy.com) for more details.