President Schuler’s speech continues a long line of AFL-CIO positions touting hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear as solutions to the climate crisis while neglecting the renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal, that provide far greater climate-safe energy at far less cost -- and create far more jobs. For example, a 2022 AFL-CIO Convention Resolution discussed old and new nuclear technologies, hydrogen, continued use of natural gas and coal, and carbon capture and storage. But there was not even a mention of such renewable energy sources as solar energy, wind power, and geothermal power, even though these are now producing far more new jobs than fossil fuel production and use.
The AFL-CIO would be wise to considerer a recent finding by the International Energy Agency, the intergovernmental organization that governments most rely on for projections about the future of the global energy industry. The IEA has long been an advocate for hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear energy as solutions for the climate crisis. In its 2021 Net Zero Roadmap half the post-2030 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions were to be delivered by new technologies not yet on the market – like hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear energy. But in its 2023 Net Zero Roadmap that share has fallen to 35 percent. According to Dave Jones, a peer reviewer for the IEA World Energy Report, “The biggest change to the 2021 report is the downgrading of carbon capture, hydrogen and bioenergy, and the upgrade awarded to renewables, efficiency and electrification.”
Striking UAW auto workers are drawing a roadmap for American unions to win a just transition to a climate safe economy. While the Big Three auto companies have resisted the Biden administration’s timetable for electrification of the auto industry, the UAW has taken a strong stand in favor of electrification – and is striking in part to promote electrification plans that will create good jobs and prevent a “race to the bottom” for auto workers. As noted in “A Just Transition for Auto Workers – Just What Is It?” below, they have laid out concrete demands that provide for such a just transition. Not only that; as pointed out in “Auto Workers Winning Steps Toward a Just Transition” below, the auto companies, faced with determined strikers, have already agreed to some of those demands.
IEA Executive Director Faith Birol says,
Governments, companies and investors need to get behind clean energy transitions rather than hindering them. There are immense benefits on offer, including new industrial opportunities and jobs, greater energy security, cleaner air, universal energy access and a safer climate for everyone.
Shouldn’t that go for organized labor as well? |