Pittsburgh has all the resources to be the next big green energy hub — except the workers to make it happen

Technical.ly

24-02-2025

Brandon Grainger stood beneath a towering, 13,800-volt webwork of power lines and transformers constructed inside a laboratory at the Energy Innovation Center in the Hill District, home to the University of Pittsburgh's GRID Institute. Solar panels layer the sawtooth roof and a prototype wind turbine spins high above the parking lot. Both provide energy to the lab, and a research opportunity for those seeking to understand how to best integrate renewable energy.
As power demands increase from booming tech and AI development, the GRID Institute studies how to efficiently get electricity where it's needed, and Grainger and other professors prepare students to eventually work in advanced industry.
But concerns persist, and a question remains: Do we have enough labor — from doctoral candidates to electricians — to meet the demands of the future?
'Well, the answer is no,' said Granger, an associate professor of electrical engineering. His graduate students, mostly electrical engineers, are being hired nearly eight months before they graduate, he said, and undergraduates, too, are being scooped up by industry well before they leave campus.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has the industrial capacity and hard-working heritage to be a bedrock of green energy manufacturing and development at a time when climate-friendly projects awaiting connection to the grid could go a long way toward addressing energy supply challenges.
Research and investment is already flowing to the region, but as green energy development accelerates, the local stock of legacy labor might not match the demand for workers, potentially posing a serious risk to the sector's development amid quality control issues and delays. At the same time, local efforts are striving to train and graduate new workers to help meet the need.
Energy investments and clean job creation
Billions of dollars have been invested in energy projects in Southwestern Pennsylvania over the last decade.
From 2012 to 2022, capital investments and energy projects in the region totaled $6.2 billion, according to data from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
Since then, according to the 2025 Climate Power Report, clean energy projects alone have:
Spurred $1.33 billion in investment across Pennsylvania
Created 4,692 jobs in the state
Set the stage for a further $1.15 billion in investment and 2,916 more jobs across 19 approved projects, including 14 located in what the report deemed disadvantaged communities.
In Southwestern Pennsylvania, several projects have fueled regional growth.
A $500 million investment in Eos Energy, in Turtle Creek, is expected to create 700 jobs, including 650 full-time positions and 50 union construction jobs. An $18 million investment in Westinghouse to build a microreactor accelerator hub in Etna, will add 40 jobs, while an almost $88 million investment in Mainspring Energy to build a linear generator manufacturing facility in Findlay Township will create 891 jobs.
But who will fill those jobs?
Workforce development efforts to capitalize on investments
When the Connelley Vocational High School first opened its doors in the Hill District in 1930, it was the largest school of its kind in the U.S., graduating some 1,700 locals each year trained in legacy trades like welding, machinery and masonry. Now, the gilded age equipment has been replaced with the tech startups, research laboratories and asset management offices of the Energy Innovation Center, a microcosm of a fledgling local green economy built on the back of legacy industry.
Upstairs, a manufacturing floor under construction will house production lines for high-tech magnetic components for electrical vehicles. Below, research labs host academics and startups testing prototypes with potential to accelerate a modern energy future. Cubicles house scores of analysts managing the output and sale of solar and wind energy across America.
Down the hall, an effort is underway to train the workers who might eventually install the technologies being developed several doors down.
'It is an ecosystem, and it's not just about clean energy,' said Holly Merriman, EIC's program manager for clean energy workforce development. 'It's about energy efficiency. It's about the next generation of energy and meeting ever-increasing demands for energy and then trying to be a step ahead of the workforce needs.'
In her role, Merriman works with private companies to identify their labor needs now and in the future, and to connect private enterprise, including local solar developers, with resources for training and hiring.
The EIC has partnered with the Community College of Allegheny County and the local nonprofit New Sun Rising to restart a once-shuttered solar training program and make it accessible to at least a dozen solar companies in the region, 'to get as many people ready for the influx of solar projects as possible,' Merriman said. The program trains and certifies workers to install solar panels at no cost, and has graduated 20 students with certificates across the last two cohorts.
Another company, Vitro Architectural Glass, develops specialty glass coated for solar panels and energy efficient buildings like the new First National Bank building in the Lower Hill District. Vitro has partnered with the EIC and the Bidwell Training Center, in the North Side's Chateau neighborhood, to train local workers to be the lab technicians who develop that high-tech product.
And in a few months, the Pittsburgh Gateways Corp., which owns the EIC, and Penn College of Technology will open a new facility in Homewood, dubbed the Clean Energy Center — Pittsburgh, which will train 100 to 200 workers per year in energy efficiency and building performance for residential homes, Merriman said.
A large share of the programs in Pennsylvania focus on electrical (41.5%) and HVAC/R (38.1%) training. A smaller share is targeted at building performance analysts and energy auditors, with 13.5% of programs available statewide.
Inside the former vocational school, an ongoing pre-apprenticeship program trains people interested in joining the building trades — carpenters, laborers, electricians. Merriman said the students coming out of those classes interview directly to join local labor unions, which are increasingly preparing to build green energy projects.
Some might eventually work with the company upstairs, Exus Renewables North America, a firm that calls itself a one-stop shop for renewable energy management.
There, a wall of flatscreens displays the real-time generation from the company's portfolio of wind and solar farms across the US, monitoring weather patterns and some 15 million data points every 10 minutes.
The company, which was founded in 2018 with four people, now employs 90 in a two-floor office inside the EIC. Recently, Exus acquired four wind farms in Cambria and Somerset counties, which the company is working to repower with the latest technologies.
For just one of those projects, repowering required 190 workers across various trades — iron workers, electricians, road workers and crane operators.
Challenges persist in clean energy workforce development
At a green energy roundtable at the EIC in September, Aaron Brickman, who leads clean technology economic development initiatives at the U.S. think tank, RMI, declared his faith in the Pittsburgh region's potential to develop world-leading green energy and clean technology manufacturing.
'The investments are already flowing. This isn't a theoretical exercise.' It's absolutely critical, Brickman said, to trade on existing, industrial capabilities and capacities and existing labor skills. But local research shows that challenges persist around developing an adequate workforce to reach that potential.
An October report from Sustainable PGH which gathered data from three years of conversations with local stakeholders, identified four key barriers:
Limited ecosystem connectivity, which hinders collaboration and knowledge sharing
Low visibility and accessibility of clean energy jobs
Employment barriers, such as transportation and childcare
A lack of training programs.
Despite those existing challenges and new ones brought by a Trump administration bent on prioritizing fossil fuel, some see the local landscape improving.
'We're not in crisis level,' Merriman said. Four years ago, she added, there were about four job openings for every job seeker. 'That was a crisis,' she said.
'A couple of years ago, the labor market was really tight and it was very, very difficult,' recalled Jim Spencer, one of the co-founders and CEO of Exus. 'Renewables was pretty hot and it was very difficult to attract talent here.' Now, though, he said he doesn't see a real labor shortage.
'We're not a renewable energy hub in any sense of the word, and that's unfortunate,' Spencer said. In a region where power supply is waning as demand for electricity is increasing, he hopes renewables take on a greater role. 'People want fossil-free generation,' he added, and with so much emphasis on data centers and AI, and the associated spike in demand for energy, he said, 'thinking that we're going to be an AI hub without pairing that with renewables is foolish.'
Exus is hoping to build a large-scale solar panel factory here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It considered West Virginia, but became concerned that it might not find 500 to 1,000 people to fill the jobs. Pittsburgh and the broader region, said co-founder Dhaval Bhalodia, 'is great for that labor pool, that blue collar heritage.'
Spencer said it remains to be seen if momentum will persist under President Trump's second term.
'We're feeling some headwinds from the new administration,' Spencer said, pointing to an executive order that failed to mention wind or solar within a new definition of energy. 'Which is ridiculous, because 90% of the new additions to the grid were renewables across the country last year.'