This meeting focused on accelerating regional climate resilience by leveraging the historic strengths of the Central Coast’s agricultural, design, engineering, and energy workforce. Together, we discussed how local training programs can be mobilized for high-impact regional projects—including microgrid deployment, clean agricultural fleet transitions, and low-carbon building materials.
Craig Lewis of the Clean Coalition discussed a variety of possible pathways into the renewable energy workforce, focusing on microgrid deployment and emphasizing the importance of an employee’s alignment with the mission of an employer. He also presented example initiatives that prospective employees could be involved in, including Super Green Homes, a program that encourages all-electric homes that reach Net Zero Energy (NZE) with Solar Microgrids for unparalleled resilience, Greenbark, a new utility-scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) being developed by Scale Microgrids, and the Sierra Blanca Community Microgrid, a 34-home community in La Quinta completely disconnected from the electrical grid.
Schedule:
11:30am-12:00pm – Lunch (in-person)
12:00pm-12:05pm – Welcome by Lujuana Medina, Environmental Initiatives Division Manager, Internal Services Division, LA County
12:05pm-12:10pm – Moderator’s Welcome by Tessa Charnofsky, Special Assistant, Internal Services Division, LA County
12:10pm-12:30pm – Keynote Presentation by Das Williams, Senior Advisor of Policy and Legislative Affairs, Central Coast Community Energy and Former State Legislator and Santa Barbara County Supervisor
12:30-1:30pm – Panel Presentations by Amanda Martin, Regenerative Builder; Grace Wu, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies Program, UC Santa Barbara; and Craig Lewis, Founder & Executive Director, Clean Coalition.
1:30-1:45pm – Q&A Discussion
1:45-2:00pm – Program Spotlight with Em Johnson, Senior Director Climate Programs and Kathi Brennan King, Director of Education & Operations, CEC Environmental Hub
2:00-2:30pm – Tour of CEC Environmental Hub (optional)
About SoCalREN Regional Workforce Alliance
The SoCalREN Regional Workforce Alliance (RWA) brings together industry, local government, community-based organizations, training, and education stakeholders to collaborate, network, share tools and resources, and take meaningful action that will advance our region’s workforce ecosystem. The purpose is to gain and provide insight on programs, policies, opportunities, gaps and challenges facing workforce development initiatives in Southern California.
