Urban Agenda, the New York City Central Labor Council and the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance have convened the Green Collar Jobs Roundtable in response to the growing need for workers with the green skills to make New York City more environmentally sustainable.
On April 22nd Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued his long-awaited plan to improve New York City’s environmental sustainability over the next 25 years while adapting to the impacts of global climate change and accommodating a projected 1 million more residents. PlaNYC 20301 is a comprehensive blueprint with 127 separate initiatives addressing 10 major goals – from reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% to assuring every New Yorker has access to a park within a 10-minute walk to achieving the cleanest air quality of any major US city.
We applaud Mayor Bloomberg for the scope of his vision. PlaNYC addresses many of the demands summarized in the NYC Apollo Alliance 10-Point Plan for the 21st Century. We are especially pleased to see concrete proposals to promote solar energy, clean up brown fields and bolster energy distribution systems. PlaNYC also estimates 5.000 new green collar jobs in the energy sector alone.
Today, New York City finds itself at a place of great promise and great peril. The City’s enormous energy needs and reliance on fossil fuels are rising as we continue to grow and welcome new residents. Although New York City can achieve much on its own, State action is needed on several fronts if the city is to build a new energy, high performance economy. This report calls on New York State to help us realize this vision by spearheading ten new initiatives.
The city’s energy demand is so great it necessarily begs for the implementation of policies that promote energy efficiencies. This leads us to revisit the topic of distributed generation or distributed energy—a topic obscured by decades of large megawatt power plant generation and distribution.
We applaud Intro. No. 395 and the steps it takes to codify into law a comprehensive
environmental sustainability action plan for New York City. This Intro., if enacted, promises to bring together all the practical policy elements necessary to assure that our future economic development is environmentally safe, sustainable, and helps wean the country away from reliance on fossil fuels.