As recovery dollars began flowing from the federal government during the Great Recession, community colleges across California—like much of the country—began investing in workforce training programs in solar energy. But when some of those jobs never materialized, the colleges and students felt burned.

“The industry wasn’t ripe yet, and the labor market wasn’t there,” says Jeffrey Clary, senior director of climate strategies at the Foundation for California Community Colleges. “Today, you’re not going to see programs that are pipelines for one job. Instead we’re training students to be mobile and adaptive, especially when you layer in AI. You want students to have that flexibility to move across sectors.”

The Big Idea: Community colleges in California and across the country haven’t moved away from so-called “green job” training—far from it. They’re investing more and more every year. But they’ve moved beyond the niche focus, in part because of lessons learned about the risk of overspecialization and in part because the nature of climate and sustainability work has shifted. 

It’s less a “green” industry unto itself and more just another part of every business. Auto mechanics, for example, now need to know about repairing electric vehicles. Welders in some states need to know how to work on renewable energy equipment, like windmills. In California, community colleges are even incorporating green job training elements into fields like agriculture and forestry….

….What has changed is how colleges talk about them. While on the surface, it may appear that colleges are backing off from the “green” framing the way that many did with DEI language in order to continue receiving federal funding, the college officials who spoke with Work Shift say the change was already happening before the 2024 election because “green jobs” are becoming ubiquitous.

A January report from Brookings urges workforce development leaders to emphasize “infrastructure skills” over “green skills.” In education, that means broader training that includes green jobs, but also general infrastructure jobs. The report advocates for a “whole building” approach in job training.

Rachel Rosen, director of MDRC’s Center for Effective Career and Technical Education, says this debate isn’t new with the Trump administration.

“There’s a whole discussion about whether or not these are skills that really cover the full gamut of different types of workforce opportunities, or whether they are specialized skills or pathways,” Rosen says. “There’s been some pushback on the idea of calling things ‘green jobs’ because it tends to conjure up wind and solar, and that’s it.

“It’s actually much more expansive and really impacts almost every job you can think of when you start digging into it….”

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