Colorado Climate Jobs wants high-quality union jobs, lower costs for working families and a clean energy economy that works for Coloradans. Are they possible under the new administration?
Gathered at a Denver training facility on Logan Street earlier this month, members of several labor unions took a stand. There were the brothers and sisters from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the drivers hailing from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001, and the craftspeople from the Colorado Building and Construction Trades Council.
Others joined them and together they announced Climate Jobs Colorado, a coalition to address the growing climate crisis, its impacts on workers and worker inequality. Creating high-quality union jobs lowers costs for working families and builds a clean energy economy that works for Coloradans, they said.
“About a year and a half ago, labor leaders from across our state started discussing what we can do with the triple aim of advancing climate goals, improving our ability to organize and represent workers across the state in the green economy, and combating economic inequality,” Dennis Dougherty, executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, told the group. “Now is the time to do something about it, and that is why we are here today.”
Colorado union leaders on Jan. 14 gathered in Denver to announce the launch of Colorado Climate Jobs, a labor-led coalition that will address the growing climate crisis and inequality by creating high-quality union jobs, lowering costs for working families, and building a clean energy economy for Coloradans. (Tracy Ross, The Colorado Sun)
A week later, Donald Trump began his second term as president. Over the next few days, Trump signed multiple executive orders that many say will set the United States on “a radically different path” from the Biden administration in terms of environmental directives and departments.
Now to figure out how to move ahead.
“We don’t know what a Trump administration will bring to the table,” said Nate Bernstein, executive director of Climate Jobs Colorado. “But it makes it all the more important that we work at the state level to enact policies that are favorable for Coloradans and for Colorado workers.”
The report
Labor officials were encouraged by a new report from Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute. Melissa Shetler, the institute’s senior training and education associate, joined the kickoff.
“We are honored to join you here today in Colorado, and have collaborated with so many of you to develop a plan that reflects Labor’s vision for addressing climate change through equitable clean energy transition,” she said. “This plan and this report emphasize creating good union jobs for Colorado communities, protecting existing workers and ensuring the (green energy) transition benefits frontline, rural and historically disadvantaged communities.”
The report cites warnings from the International Panel on Climate Changethat without rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions, the world is on track to warm between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees by the 2030s.
That warming “will give rise to catastrophic impacts not only around the world, but also in Coloradans’ own backyard,” such as the 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed over 1,000 homes, killed two people and caused more than $2 billion worth of damage, it says.
And the report gives recommendations for facing this future in the six sectors of energy, manufacturing, transportation, buildings, resilience and adaptation, and workforce development, including:
Mandating the buildout of clean energy with strong labor standards
Expanding access to clean and safe public transit while making Colorado a leader in the production and use of advanced biofuels
Scaling union-built net zero affordable housing and mandating an Equitable Building Decarbonization and Jobs Act
Developing cross-industry heat standards and regulations to protect Colorado’s workforce from occupational heat illnesses and injurieswhile creating clean, resilient, union-built water infrastructure
Improving conditions for labor organizing and ensuring that labor has decision-making representation on all climate and energy-related boards and advisory bodies
Establishing pre-apprenticeship standards and expanding funding
Climate Jobs Colorado aims to support union workers in climate jobs by pushing to maximize wages, benefits and working conditions and “make sure union members and those who wish to be in the union get a fair shake on the job,” Bernstein said.
Unions are “pushing up the living standards for all workers, and maximiz(ing) the number of members that we have in an industry so we can push up all wages in that industry,” he added. They also collectively bargain “to try to help address the concerns of members, whether it has to do with workplace safety, staffing or making sure they have sufficient resources to do their work.”
Climate jobs in Colorado
Colorado had 77,000 direct clean-tech, climate-tech and related energy jobs as of 2024, according to the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
From 2017 to 2023, the sector’s total employment grew by 2.2% compared to 1.4% on average for all U.S. states, it says.
According to a Clean Jobs Colorado 2024 report by the national environmental group E2, which advocates for “smart policies that are good for the economy and good for the environment,” Colorado’s renewable generation workforce grew 3.9 percent in 2023 to 18,718 individuals—the seventh largest in the country. It said solar and wind accounted for the majority of the sector’s workforce with 9,017 jobs and 7,880 jobs respectively.
Alissa Johnson, OEDIT’s spokesperson, said climate-related sectors added jobs at a much faster rate than the state’s overall employment, which grew by 2.5 percent.
Trump’s influence already apparent pre-2025
Even before Trump took office, potential for major policy shifts was already threatening the way Colorado operates.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission passed the 2021 Electric Resource Plan in December 2023 with winning bids for projects capable of creating about 3,500 megawatts of renewable energy.
But one of the issues the PUC discovered was “that none of the projects were under contract because the developers were saying their bids weren’t reliable anymore,” Commissioner Tom Plant said. That’s because “they don’t know what level of tariffs are going to go into place and how it’s going to impact their project costs. What might change is already changing.”
The breakout of Colorado’s Clean Energy Plan, passed by the Public Utilities Commission in December 2023. (Public Utilities Commission)
The state regulators allowed for up to 15% movement on bid prices based on changes in federal law, but on Thursday, Plant added, “so far, (Trump) is only talking about (a 10% tariff) on China,” when “during the campaign his rhetoric was more like 60%.”
“On the renewable tax credits, Republicans have indicated that they intend to use the reconciliation process to pass Trump’s tax cuts for corporations, but they have also said they want to shift some of the costs of that from other stuff,” Plant added. “There’s an expectation that they will look at tax credits that were passed under the IRA to do that. One of those tax credits was the renewable tax credit, (and) also EV tax credits.”
On Monday, Trump stalled spending under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act set to fund 42 environmental projects that could create infrastructure jobs in four states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.
“If federal funding is not provided as promised by these contracts, infrastructure jobs in Colorado would be directly affected, now and in the future,” Johnson said. But “Colorado remains committed to doing our part to ensure the historic investments promised in our state are carried out,” she added.
Trump also for a second time pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, which could jettison the United States’ Biden-era promise to cut climate pollution by up to 66% within a decade.
Colorado Climate Jobs will be watching Trump’s executive orders related to green energy and how they might impact the new climate jobs union.
“Obviously, President Biden and Congress passed some really landmark legislation with green energy and the Inflation Reduction Act,” Bernstein said. “It also has a lot of incentives to do the right thing on behalf of the workers building those things. And I don’t know if you heard the potential EPA administrator, but he said he believes in diversifying energy,” Bernstein added, referring to Lee Zeldin, Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Gov. Jared Polis’ office said in an email they “have not seen any language” on Trump’s national energy emergency declaration, which a Trump administration official told reporters “will unlock a variety of different authorities related to oil, gas and coal production.” But Polis’ office said it “is closely monitoring to determine what impacts, if any, of such an order might be.”
https://coloradosun.com/2025/01/25/colorado-climate-jobs-trump-unions/
