Houston Chronicle: This Houston program is building a pipeline for clean energy jobs

This article originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle on December 24, 2024.

By Claire Hao, Staff Writer

He lost his job, then his apartment. Now, he works at a solar farm via a new Houston program.

The day Frederick Mims received the call that he’d be working at a solar farm in Livingston for the next several months, he went to the Clear Lake Library and checked out a book titled “Solar Electricity Basics.” 

“I’ve been paying attention that this is the way of the future,” Mims said in October. The way he saw it, the green energy revolution was a way forward not only for society, but for his own path back to stability.

Mims first lost his construction job at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, Mims was one of nearly 250 tenants targeted for eviction at the Redford and Cabo San Lucas apartment complexes in 2023. He had support from Texas Housers, a housing advocacy nonprofit, and rent relief, but still received a final eviction notice that year around Thanksgiving. 

Mims stayed at hotels before moving in with his mother in April. While painting the garage of a fellow Texas Housers organizer for extra money, Mims learned about a new program called the Multi-Craft Core Curriculum, or MC3.

MC3 is an initiative organized by the Texas Climate Jobs Project, a nonprofit that advocates for addressing climate change with union labor. MC3, which hosted its first two classes ever in Houston over the summer, was not only free to attend but it paid students to learn about opportunities at local unions. Upon completion of the three-week course, graduates received preferred entry into a union apprenticeship. 

Mims went to the program’s orientation and left with a stack of flyers. 

“Every bus stop I was at, I put them up, passed them out to people. I'm talking to people about the program all the way to the house,” he said. 

‘An incredibly important role’ 

At the end of August, Mims graduated alongside 18 other people who went through the program’s second class of students. Each received a pair of workboots and a $1,500 completion award. One of them, an Amazon delivery driver looking for a change, said he’d learned about MC3 from a flyer at a bus stop — possibly left by Mims.

Not all would immediately go on to jobs directly related to the clean energy sector. Some would install heating and cooling systems. Others would insulate buildings. One would construct an elementary school. 

Still, they would be part of a workforce constructing buildings with less energy waste, reducing overall climate-warming emissions, according to Bo Delp, executive director of the Texas Climate Jobs Project. As the energy transition picked up pace, some could be called upon for their skills in the build-out of local energy projects. As climate change worsens, others might fortify the region’s infrastructure against extreme weather, he said. 

After all, while legislators, regulators, consultants, lawyers and investment firms shape the laws, move the paperwork and secure the money necessary for the energy transition, there's a shortage of electricians, welders, pipe fitters and insulators to build the transition into reality. 

“It's going to take a lot of people coming together to rebuild our infrastructure, to rebuild our highways and our transit systems and our substations, and install solar panels and weatherize our buildings,” Delp told MC3 participants at their August graduation. “And each of you are going to play an incredibly important role.”

After finishing MC3, Mims joined the Local 350 chapter of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, a pipeline and construction union based in Houston. A couple weeks later, he signed onto an opportunity to work at a solar farm in Livingston. The solar panels had already been installed, but crews were still needed to hydroseed the site, as well as dig retention ponds to prevent the panels from being damaged or washed out.  

Mims moved to a motel near the work site, taking the library book on solar power with him. 

A growing sector

Texas has emerged as the nation’s clean energy leader and the fastest-growing market for renewable energy projects. In response to its political skeptics, the clean energy industry often touts its potential for job creation. Texas has nearly 262,000 jobs related to clean energy technologies, the second-most only behind California, according to a September report from the Department of Energy. 

But many of the workers constructing and manufacturing solar and wind farms in Texas face high rates of injury and illness, according to research from Cornell University, the Texas Climate Jobs Project and Organized Power in Numbers. The study also found significant disparities in pay and benefits between white and non-white laborers. 

Through MC3, Texas Climate Jobs Project aims to create a local pipeline of clean energy jobs with better protections. Participants learned about various trades and earned health and safety certifications, and received daily lunches as well as stipends for transportation, phone bills and child care. 

Thirty-nine Houstonians have graduated from MC3 so far. The next cycle of classes, which will continue in Houston as well as expand to Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin, will begin in the spring and run throughout the summer. 

‘I know what I'm worth’

Being part of a union is why Joseph Salcido sought out MC3. Salcido started as a non-union worker on solar farm construction about four years ago, when he was recruited to a job by his cousin, the site’s foreman. After working in other types of construction most of his life, Salcido found that working at solar sites, where he typically earned approximately $25 per hour, was better-paying and “a lot easier on my body.”

“To know that this electricity will help little towns or little cities around here locally, to be a part of something like that that's bigger than yourself, it was enjoyable for me,” he said.

What wasn’t enjoyable was how sporadic the work could be. Salcido learned about many of his non-union solar jobs through word-of-mouth, which made it difficult to find reliable information about pay. Onsite at non-union jobs, “there’s always a big push to beat the deadlines,” he said, leading to widespread fatigue among workers and higher rates of injury. He’s worked in the Texas heat, and in South Dakota cold.

“You feel like your hands are about to fall off, because your hands are wet because the snow’s out there, and you’re touching steel all day,” Salcido said. “But again, nobody wanted to complain about it because of the fear of possibly losing your job.”

Salcido joined his local branch of the Green Workers Alliance, a national advocacy group that aims to improve working conditions in the renewable energy industry. It was there that he learned about MC3, which he enrolled in alongside his fiancé, Ann Nguyen.

After MC3 concluded, Salcido and Nguyen also joined Laborers Local 350 and the Livingston solar site, where they expect to work through the summer. They said it’s a relief to have a set pay scale and know that safety standards are in place. 

“Going to whatever project, I know I would get paid no lower than what is said. I always go in knowing, ‘Hey, I know what I'm worth,’” Salcido said.

‘A sense of hope’

The Livingston job is one of the first two solar-related contracts awarded to a Laborers-affiliated union in Texas, according to Bobby Ramos, president of Laborers Local 350. The union had historically focused on its lucrative work laying natural gas pipelines, until the pandemic brought a “hardcore slowdown” on oil and gas jobs and prompted the union to broaden its horizons, he said. 

Since then, Laborers Local 350 has invested in a new training facility in East Texas, where the union hosted two trainings on constructing solar farms this year with the Texas Climate Jobs Project. Though the union's two solar-related contracts are for environmental restoration, Ramos is hopeful the skills from the trainings will be put to use in the coming years as more solar arrays are built across the state. 

If so, unionized solar jobs could be an opportunity to extend the careers of older Laborers Local 350 members who find pipeline work to be too tough on the body, Ramos said. 

“It gives them relief, a sense of hope. It’s not just you age out of pipeline (work) and have to retire,” Ramos said.  

‘The big goal is to make this sustainable’

Ramos said he and other local union leaders see MC3 as a recruiting tool. Including Mims, Salcido and Nguyen, 12 people from the program have joined Laborers Local 350 so far, he said. 

The MC3 program is supported through grants from foundations including the Hive Fund, Power Up Harris County and Invest in Our Future, according to Texas Climate Job Project’s Delp. The program has secured nearly $1.5 million in funding, enough to graduate about 150 students through next summer, including the 39 who participated this summer, Delp said. What comes after that is “a lot less certain,” he said. 

“The big goal is to make this sustainable,” Delp said. “It's a constant battle to keep the doors open and fund these kinds of programs.”

For Mims, MC3 helped him get back into the routine of getting up in the morning for work and “be part of society again.” He hopes to save up enough money from working at the Livingston solar site to begin renting in Houston again after the job ends.

“I just want to be able to have my stability back without having to jump through hoops,” Mims said.