This is one of many articles in the Mercury’s 2026 Climate Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
Creating a greener future requires work—and workers. Climate and labor advocates have long championed efforts to simultaneously address climate change and create well-paying jobs.
Their efforts gained some traction during the Biden years, but the gains were short-lived. President Trump has rolled back much of the funding allocated to clean energy infrastructure and job creation, instead attempting a coal industry revival. A proposed New Deal-style mobilization for the environment is a non-starter, at least for the time being.
But here in Oregon, the effort to create good, green jobs is alive and well—even if it’s not fully reflected in the job market.
The Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) is one major program dedicated to ensuring there are workers trained to carry out the city’s climate goals—and that those workers can stay in those jobs.
“Part of addressing climate change and mitigating its impacts is providing jobs to those who are most impacted by climate change, and ensuring that those jobs pay well, treat folks well, and have avenues for individuals to grow,” said Abby Bandurraga, PCEF workforce policy coordinator.
PCEF’s dashboard, outlining the program’s spending, says the clean energy fund has granted more than $46 million to programs offering workforce training and contractor development for green jobs. As of December 2025, more than 1,500 people have gone through one of those training programs.
Connecting Canopies is a paid training program that introduces BIPOC young adults to green sector jobs. The program aims to help young people build skills in landscaping, habitat restoration, urban forestry, and environmental monitoring, in hopes of preparing them for long-term careers in the climate sector.
PCEF funding has allowed Connecting Canopies to pay participants, removing a barrier for young adults who can’t afford to spend months in an unpaid internship. The program also provides all the tools, materials, and transportation to remote job sites.
For students, that funding means “you don’t have to work a non-technical job to get by.”
“You can just fully dedicate yourself to something that really will sustain you in the long term,” said Mason Martinez, development and communications director at the Blueprint Foundation, one of three local nonprofits partnered to run Connecting Canopies.
PCEF dollars also pay for gardening classes in Oregon prisons, construction pre-apprenticeships, and programs to teach janitors how to reduce energy, water, and carbon emissions in commercial office buildings.
But all the training in the world won’t do much without long-term, well-paying green jobs. PCEF is creating those job openings and guiding graduates of green workforce development programs into the jobs. Contractors participating in PCEF’s Energy Friendly Homes program, for example, are required to fill job openings with workers who graduated from PCEF-funded training programs.
Bandurraga described PCEF’s goal as trying to build a “circular model” where the program’s investments “double their value, because we’re investing in people, and then we’re investing in contractors to bring those folks onto the work that we are doing in our communities.”
PCEF-funded programs are required to pay workers nearly double the minimum wage, with a floor of more than $30 per hour.
“We don’t want to just create jobs, move people in, and tick a box,” Bandurraga said. “We want our workers to [stay] in those jobs.”
Climate Jobs Oregon is another program working to make good-paying jobs a key part of Oregon’s energy transition. Trade unions, the state union building trades council, and the Oregon Labor Federation launched Climate Jobs Oregon in January, with the mission to ensure that the shift to clean energy is centered around workers.
The program launched in January 2026 with the publication of a report from Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute detailing “a bold vision for climate jobs in Oregon” and setting out recommendations for the state.
The recommendations aren’t small policy tweaks, but major infrastructure programs and funding commitments. Climate Jobs Oregon intends to advocate for its priorities in the state legislature and in public campaigns.
The labor movement’s “just transition” framework—which aims to ensure workers aren’t left behind in the switch to clean energy—often includes retraining laid-off workers so they can move into new green jobs. But that’s not the biggest concern for the union construction trades right now, said Scott Strickland, special projects counsel for Sheet Metal Local 16, one of the unions involved in Climate Jobs Oregon. The chief concern is having enough jobs for apprentices to take.
If Oregon undertook enough infrastructure projects to meet growing energy demands and transition to clean energy by 2040, it would create more than 200,000 jobs through 2030, the Cornell report said.
The report says the state should support green infrastructure projects with high labor standards. It also recommends Oregon streamline clean energy permitting and development; start an electricity procurement program to invest public funds in emerging energy projects (and raise labor standards on those projects); and build publicly-owned solar power and storage on private rooftops.
Labor groups and environmentalists aren’t always in agreement. Recently, they’ve been at odds over data centers, which have proliferated across the state. Data centers offer jobs during construction, but their operation requires heavy energy and water consumption while creating relatively few permanent jobs.
The Cornell report identifies data centers as critical infrastructure in Oregon, but says the state should create policies to make sure their rapid growth doesn’t raise electricity costs or hinder the state’s clean energy goals. The report suggests offering grants to pilot sustainability projects at data centers. It also recommends requiring data centers meet certain efficiency and labor standards in order to qualify for tax breaks.
The report also suggests attaching standards for job creation, efficiency, and labor standards to tax breaks given to data centers built in enterprise zones. Oregon data centers will receive $450 million in tax breaks this year, the Oregonian reported. In March, the Oregon legislature approved a one-year moratorium on enterprise zone tax breaks for data centers.
Strickland said environmental and labor groups “have let a couple of short-term disagreements taint the fact that we are much more aligned than we are not.” He said building trades have failed to effectively communicate their investment in environmental and racial justice, and environmental activists haven’t always acknowledged the importance of infrastructure in climate action.
“We can decarbonize our economy in an empowering way to local communities, and that includes the building trades,” Strickland said.