Mobilizing for a zero carbon America:
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs

July 2020 | By Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch

From mass unemployment to the threat of climate change, the U.S. will face a number of seemingly unprecedented challenges even after the current public health tragedy has passed. Finding needed solutions won’t be easy and will require creative thinking, robust analysis, and political resolve. The good news is that these challenges also present opportunities, particularly in terms of the economic development and job creation associated with decarbonizing America’s economy.

Based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis, our new report demonstrates that an aggressive national commitment to electrify all aspects of our economy would create up to 25 million good-paying American jobs over the next 15 years and 5 million sustained jobs by mid-century. This is the first analysis of the job opportunities that would result from a rapid and total decarbonization of the economy as a whole. Unlike other approaches, which tend to see climate change policy as primarily environmental in nature, the study also imagines the electrification of America as fundamentally infrastructure designed to power America and its economy in the 21st century.

What others are saying about the report:

"This important study shows that climate action can create millions of well-paying American jobs. Decarbonization is an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize American industry and grow our economy. We just need the political courage to seize it." Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)

"Climate change is an existential threat to our health and communities..  Rewiring America provides a blueprint for reducing climate change pollution and creating good-paying jobs. It is an important contribution to the work we urgently need to be doing." Carol Browner, former EPA Administrator

"Rewiring America asks the bold question of what it would mean if we made building a clean economy, as fast as possible, our national project. The results should surprise, provoke, and inspire."  Joseph Majkut, Director of Climate Policy, Niskanen Center

“For so long we’ve been sold the lie that we have to choose between good jobs and a safe environment, that our generation has to choose between a livable planet and a thriving, equitable economy. The Rewiring America Plan puts that lie to rest once and for all. This report is a critical contribution that shows that urgently achieving an all-society clean energy future by 2035 is not only necessary and achievable, but will make the world that young people inherit more prosperous. We can achieve a just transition to a better world out of the wreckage of this economic crisis, with good union jobs for all, including low-income communities and communities of color — the only thing standing in the way is political will.” Varshini Prakash, Co-founder and Executive Director, Sunrise Movement

“The Rewiring America team asked the question: ‘What would happen if we actually tried to transition all of the infrastructure in American society over the next 15 years to stay within the 1.5ºC safe upper limit of global warming?’ The answer they found is that would save consumers and society money, and it would create lots and lots and lots of jobs — around 25 million of them.” Evan Weber, Co-Founder and Political Director, Sunrise Movement

"As millions of people around the country are out of work, the question is: how do we rebuild?  Rewiring Electricity shows a bold vision, and a great opportunity for labor across the country.  Building a plan from the bottom up is exactly the way to go.  This white paper shows that millions of jobs can be created with good, sustainable wages in every community in America." Mike Fishman, past Secretary Treasurer, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and President, Clean Jobs New York

Author Bios

Saul Griffith is an engineer and inventor. As Founder and Chief Scientist at Otherlab, an independent R&D lab, he helps government agencies and Fortune 500 companies understand energy infrastructure and deep decarbonization. He’s been a principal investigator and project lead on federally-funded research projects for agencies including NASA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-e), National Science Foundation and United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). He was awarded the MacArthur “Genius Grant” in 2007.

Alex Laskey was the President and Founder of Opower, the global leader in cloud- based software for the utility industry. Under Laskey's leadership, Opower grew from a two-person startup to a publicly traded company whose software is used by more than half of the largest electric and gas utilities in the world. Today, Opower, now a division of Oracle, delivers more than 6 TWh of energy savings per year and helps homeowners save more than $1B per year on their energy bills. Laskey is a Board member of Arcadia and a longtime Director of the Conservation Lands Foundation. He was a founding Commissioner on the Energy Transitions Commission and a board member of Advanced Energy Economy.

Sam Calisch is an engineer and scientist developing advanced manufacturing technologies for the decarbonization of our economy. He is a Research Fellow at Activate, and his current project, Elmworks, has received NSF and DOE funding to develop agile manufacturing of high performance electric motors. Sam earned his PhD in 2019 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the Center for Bits and Atoms, where he led successful technical collaborations within academia, in community fab labs, and with Global 500 companies. Before MIT, he worked at engineering R&D firm Otherlab, building analytical and computational tools for advanced manufacturing and energy projects. Sam also holds a M.S. from MIT and a B.A. from Grinnell College.