Webinar: Experts Explain why they expect IRA will mean more jobs for veterans

On August 30, Clean Energy for America hosted a virtual panel on the Inflation Reduction Act’s potential to provide jobs for military veterans who are interested in entering the clean energy workforce. The panelists were Kevin Johnson with the Environmental Defense Action Fund, Sharon Burke with Ecospherics, Kevin Doffing with Clean Energy Services, and Michael Callendar with Highland Fleets.

Veterans are well positioned to enter clean energy. In the military, Michael added, “You end up having to deal with a lot of government entities: regulatory, municipalities, unions, all these bureaucracies, and in the military you really learn how to navigate and bring everything along.”

Plus, veterans bring valuable mindsets and skill sets. “I think military veterans come in really great because project excellence is really baked into our blood,” said Kevin Doffing. “You have all these natural tendencies: this ingrained sense of mission, completeness, finding the answer no matter what’s going on,” Michael Callendar said.

Now, more opportunities are out there, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $369 billion in climate and clean energy. For example, there’s money for apprenticeships. “Apprenticeship is going to be a really strong mechanism to get them into the industry,” Kevin Doffing said, “and once they’re in, they’re going to move up quickly utilizing those soft skills they developed in the military.”

What next? Look out for a boom of opportunities, the panelists said. “I would encourage everyone to sign up for [DOE hiring] notifications for when things come available,” said Sharon Burke. Because of the IRA, “we're talking about significant money.”

Watch the full webinar here on CE4A’s YouTube channel. 

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