56 Time December 6/December 13, 2021
for projects that don’t yet exist, these
efforts are something of a leap of faith.
The same is true for the workers who
are undergoing those courses, hoping
that a brand-new, eager-to-hire clean-
energy industry will await them on the
other side.
Friedman is one of those would-be
wind workers. For months he’s been tak-
ing online classes for an offshore-wind-
tech certification through ACE MV
(Adult & Community Education Mar-
tha’s Vineyard) and Bristol Commu-
nity College. He’s taking the course
partly for personal interest, though he
says he would consider switching ca-
reers if the opportunity came up. But
with Vineyard Wind more than a year
and a half from producing power, he’s
far from certain that the work he and his
fellow students are doing will result in a
job. Offshore wind has been just over the
horizon for decades, with endless legal
battles grinding a previous Massachu-
setts venture, Cape Wind, to a halt in
- Things are likely to be different
with Vineyard Wind—the project is lo-
cated farther offshore and hasn’t faced
the same intensity of local backlash—
but many, like Friedman, remain skepti-
cal. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he says.
yet others are diving in. On a
brisk November morning, a handful of
Piledrivers Local 56 workers shivered
as they foated in the ice-cold water of
Buzzards Bay, Mass., for a training ses-
sion. During an earlier safety lecture,
one of the workers, Nick Fileccia, had
made a few wisecracks. Now, after the
piledrivers donned bright orange ocean
survival suits and slipped off a dock into
the blue-gray water, he was dead seri-
ous. “Man, that water,” he said after
emerging from 30 minutes in the frigid
bay, during which he and his classmates
had to right an overturned life raft. “I
was all jokes until we got in that water.”
That exercise was part of a Global
Wind Organisation (GWO) training pro-
gram designed to prepare millwrights,
ironworkers and other tradespeople
for the unique challenges involved in
doing their jobs at sea. Besides sea-
survival modules and classroom com-
ponents, it includes portions on work-
ing at heights, first aid and fire safety.
“A lot of it is teaching them skills that
as Vineyard Wind gets under way, the
Massachusetts Building Trades Council,
another union, plans to set up a kind of
offshore worker training pipeline, start-
ing newer workers on the onshore por-
tions of the project, like building electri-
cal substations, and then moving them
out to sea. “That’s the way you develop
a stable workforce and a skilled work-
force for this industry,” says union presi-
dent Frank Callahan.
Meanwhile, Bristol Community
College, where Friedman is currently
studying, is sinking $10 million into
launching what it’s calling the National
Offshore Wind Institute. Scheduled to
open in 2022, the facility will focus on
training workers (rather than teach-
ing courses for college credit) and will
offer programs on other aspects of the
offshore- wind industry, like finance and
insurance. Jennifer Menard, the col-
lege’s vice president of economic and
business development, says her goal is
to help replicate the economic invest-
ment that offshore wind spurred in cit-
ies like Cuxhaven in Germany and Hull
in the U.K. Facilitating such a renewal,
Menard says, means stepping up in-
vestments in education to fill gaps in
the current U.S. workforce. “I saw whatCLIMATE
we hope that they never have to use,”
says Mike Burns, director of the Center
for Maritime and Professional Training
at the Massachusetts Maritime Acad-
emy. “Practicing an emergency escape
from a wind turbine is something you
hope you never have to do in real life,
but you’re glad that you’ve been trained
how to do it.” The academy is currently
one of the only places in the U.S. where
workers can get this type of training, but
it may soon be offered at many more lo-
cations up and down the East Coast.
Labor organizations are among the
largest supporters of such programs.
The Eastern Atlantic States Regional
Council of Carpenters, for instance, is
planning to upgrade a training facility in
New Jersey with a wind- turbine mock-
up, cranes and other equipment. “We’re
in it for about $700,000, $800,000 so
far,” says William Sproule, the organi-
zation’s executive secretary-treasurer.
Meanwhile, the New York State Build-
ing & Construction Trades Council is
planning to increase class sizes in exist-
ing training programs to up the number
of workers it can prepare for anticipated
local offshore wind projects. “We are re-
ally at the very beginning, the precipice,
of offshore wind on the East Coast,” says
union president Gary LaBarbera. AndVA.
S.C.
R.I.
PA.
N.C.
N.Y.
MASS.
CONN.
N.J.
MD. DEL.
The future
of wind?
If these
potential wind-
energy sites
are developed,
Vineyard Wind
could be just
the beginning
of massive
wind-power
expansion along
the East CoastVINEYARD
WIND
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