After rising for the last decade, the number of green job opportunities in New York City declined between 2022 and 2023, from 19,476 to 15,501. The recent dip suggests that continued growth ‘is far from assured,’ a new report says.
An electrical Industry training center in Long Island City, Queens in 2017. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
New York City’s green economy is “not yet anywhere close to fully charged,” a new report by the research hub Center for an Urban Future (CUF) says. The organization analyzed data by the labor market firm Lightcast on job opportunities posted by employers online between 2013 and 2023.
Green jobs totaled about 2.2 percent of all unique New York City job postings in 2023. That’s up from 1.4 percent of job postings in 2013, according to CUF.
After rising for the last decade, the number of green job opportunities declined between 2022 and 2023, from 19,476 to 15,501. The recent dip suggests that continued growth “is far from assured,” the report says.
New York City faces a series of hurdles in its quest to shift to cleaner sources of energy. For one, buildings are transitioning away from planet-warming fossil fuels and switching to clean electric energy at a sluggish pace, and both solar and wind are failing to reach their full potential.
Last year, the city announced big plans to host nearly 400,000 green jobs by 2040.
That would be up from 133,000 in 2021, according to the most recent estimates provided by the New York City Development Corporation (NYCEDC), which worked in partnership with the Mayor’s Office to create the plan.
The ambitious “Green Economy Action Plan” involves activating public sites for electric vehicle charging, creating 12,000 green apprenticeships by 2040 and green training facilities in every borough. It will also invest $100 million in a Climate Innovation Hub at Brooklyn Army Terminal to generate 5,000 new jobs.
But a progress report on the plan is yet to be released. While city officials noted the green action plan projections are for the long-run and that economic conditions can vary a lot by year, CUF says job prospects in the green sector are off to a sluggish start.
“No part of New York City’s economy has greater potential for long term growth than the green economy,” said Eli Dvorkin, policy director at CUF and co-author of the study.
“But our report finds that job growth has been far slower than most city leaders anticipated.”
Slow growth
Compared to the larger labor market, green job growth has lagged, especially within the city’s “core green” economy, the CUF report finds.
Core green jobs are those that play a direct role in reducing planet-warming emissions, like installing solar panels or energy efficient systems in buildings.
Of the 719,367 New York City job postings made in 2023, there were just 2,184 unique opportunities available in the core green economy, accounting for only 1 percent of all jobs posted that year, according to Dvorkin.
Meanwhile, the same period saw 70,002 postings in health care, 56,314 in finance and insurance, 46,912 in tech, and 18,318 in the management, scientific, and technical consulting services sector, the report says.
NYCEDC has a more optimistic outlook on the growth of the green sector over the coming years. The organization says expected gross domestic product (GDP) output could nearly triple to $89 billion annually by 2040 as city officials carry out the “Action Plan” to create 400,000 new green jobs.
“With hundreds of thousands of jobs expected in the coming decades, it remains vitally important we continue to grow this sector in an equitable way that all New Yorkers can benefit from,” a spokesperson for NYCEDC said in an email.
The Action Plan projects job growth in 21 types of occupations, which will provide “pathways to stable and well-paying careers for all New Yorkers,” the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development said.
Since the Action Plan’s release, the administration has made “great strides in amplifying the vision” it lays out. The Mayor’s Office added that they “are committed to ensuring the city’s necessary decarbonization translates to a more inclusive economy and shared prosperity for all New Yorkers.”
But inroads for green jobs have been particularly scarce in the building electrification sector, the CUF report notes. A series of laws to boost this area are slowly kicking into gear over the next few years, so the effects are yet to fully translate into the job market.
While a local prohibition on the use of gas equipment in new construction started last year in New York City for new buildings of seven stories or less, the mandate won’t go into effect for larger buildings until 2027.
Starting this year, the city’s Local Law 97 (LL97) will fine buildings larger than 25,000 square feet that fail to reduce their carbon emissions through energy efficiency upgrades.
But putting together the funds to make the necessary LL97 building retrofits has “gotten more challenging for many property owners due to rising interest rates,” the report notes.
As of now, city property owners have filed just 2,021 permits to install new, more energy efficient heating and cooling systems since 2017. Heat pumps, an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional heating and cooling systems, are yet to reach their full potential either, as less than 1 percent of all housing units statewide have one.
There is also a shortage of job opportunities for electricians and heating and cooling technicians, which could further delay the shift to electric in buildings and limit the number of solar panels installed on New York roofs, the report points out.
“Of the more than 40,000 job listings in New York City’s construction industry posted since 2020, 6,500 were for HVAC technicians while nearly 6,000 were for electrical contractors and installers,” the report notes.
Headwinds
Approximately 70 percent of job growth in New York City’s green economy is expected to come from transitioning existing positions like construction managers and financial consultants into the green sector, according to NYCEDC. And 30 percent would be entirely new jobs that do not exist today.
But when industries that generate clean energy like solar and wind aren’t growing fast enough, green job growth also takes a hit.
The Big Apple’s solar industry, for instance, has accounted for only about 750 new jobs over the past decade, the CUF report reveals.
Two thirds of the city’s entire solar capacity comes from single-family homes. Meanwhile, large commercial and industrial buildings together account for just 7 percent of the city’s total expected annual production of solar energy, according to the report.
Clean energy generated from offshore wind is also facing headwinds thanks to the federal government. President Donald Trump, who has declared he “hates wind,” paused new leases and halted new permits for offshore wind contracts.
Mayor Eric Adams and NYCEDC announcing the release of the Green Economy Action Plan on Feb. 28, 2024. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
And the Republican ordered all federal agencies to stop distributing federal dollars for clean energy projects made possible under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The myriad delays New York City faces in carrying out its green transition is taking a toll on its workers, union leaders say.
“It’s having a terrible impact on the workforce in New York City,” said John Murphy, a member of the Clean Energy Jobs Coalition and international representative of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters.
“The unions can’t bring people into their apprenticeship programs without knowing there’s going to be work there, and so everything’s kind of at a standstill right now,” Murphy added.
Plus, the city has a growing ecosystem of green economy workforce training organizations, which New Yorkers can check out here, that rely on the green economy to stay alive and thriving.
The only way to ensure workers aren’t left out of a job, the CUF report says, is for New York City officials to do a “full court press” to implement the green policies that are already underway. And environmental groups across the city agree.
“There’s definitely more work that could be done, both on the city and the state level when it comes to advancing green projects,” said Jenille Scott, climate director at a non-profit that champions for green jobs, the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN).
“We need more green projects to come to life in order to create those opportunities for working class New Yorkers.”
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