Building a Resilient Workforce for New York City – Key Takeaways from the 2025 Green Skills Summit
The green economic transition is already underway. NYC's green economy is projected to nearly triple by 2040. But as the demand for green talent surges, the question becomes: do we have the workforce ready to build it?
At the 2025 Green Skills Summit, hosted by The New York Climate Exchange (The Exchange) and Brooklyn Navy Yard, experts came together from across the workforce ecosystem, including organized labor, training providers, educators, businesses, and policymakers.
Across the two-day summit, attendees convened to discuss the key skills, hiring demands, opportunities, and solutions in the workforce ecosystem. Expert and practitioner panels focused on four critical areas: building decarbonization, advanced energy, vehicle electrification, and stormwater resilience.
Together, attendees and panelists charted a new path forward to meet the tremendous workforce demands ahead, by building the talent, trust, and technology required to get the job done.
Demystifying the Benefits of Building Decarbonization
To kick off the Summit, panelists offered a frank assessment of the path toward building decarbonization. New York’s path to a green economy is still being held back by red tape and communication challenges that make it difficult to deliver clean energy projects.
Key challenges include:
Administrative and political hurdles: A lack of alignment between city and state agencies is slowing down the flow of projects, and the high skilled jobs that accompany them.
A lack of coordination between employers and trainers: Partners like Solar One emphasized that training coordination gaps are preventing necessary updates to curriculum, credentials, and delivery models.
Confusing terminology and public distrust: Technical jargon around decarbonization creates barriers for public engagement. A panelist from Con Edison also noted that there is a need to rebuild public trust in utilities, communicating that their relationship must move beyond the monthly energy bill.
Moving forward:
To meet these challenges, stakeholders must focus on streamlining processes, aligning incentives, and improving communication. This includes better political alignment to cut through "red tape" and ensuring a consistent flow of projects.
One specific opportunity to close the skills gap is the creation of a comprehensive playbook for decarbonizing older buildings. Panelists also called for a shift in communication to compelling storytelling about the "after" for building owners, focusing on cost savings and affordability to clearly illustrate the benefits of this process.
Advanced Energy: Connecting with Communities
Building on the communication discussion, the advanced energy panel highlighted that the sector's main operational barrier is in connecting with communities.
Challenges include:
Community Backlash and Misinformation: Deep community engagement is essential because the advanced energy sector faces significant issues with miscommunication and misinformation. There is often resident backlash against energy storage citing, especially in Environmental Justice communities, creating a critical operational barrier.
More advanced technical skills are needed, but critically, other blended skills for project management, design and engineering, and communication can help prepare this workforce to build trust with residents.
Moving forward:
To bring communities into the advanced energy transition and rebuild trust with residents, evolving workforce training must pair technical expertise with the skills to communicate about new infrastructure and its benefits. Policymakers must also take steps to articulate the value of new energy sources to communities to gain informed buy-in from residents for these projects. This focus on engagement should lead to new talent sourcing avenues that tap into local talent, building on the work of organizations like RETI Center and Solar One.
On the technical side, comprehensive training must blend traditional electrical theory with new technical expertise like battery technology. Building capacity in project management, design, and engineering will clarify long-term career pathways in this sector.
Vehicle Electrification: A Pathway for Continuous Learning
As Electric Vehicles (EV) become a popular alternative for both city fleets and individual drivers, they are becoming one of the fastest growing sectors of the green economy. However, major barriers still exist to realizing this potential.
Challenges include:
Skill gaps: A lack of skilled labor for charging infrastructure maintenance poses a critical problem for advancing careers in this sector and creates hesitancy for further investment.
Need for Upskilling: A continuous need for upskilling reveals a significant digital literacy divide among existing workers, and the rapid pace of technology advancement from OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) poses a challenge to skills alignment and safety training.
Space and infrastructure constraints: For transit organizations like the MTA, converting existing depots to accommodate charging infrastructure is complicated by space constraints.
Moving forward:
Addressing these challenges will require policy solutions that incentivize industry. Another opportunity is to leverage AI technology to track recurring real-time problems and hold manufacturers accountable for equipment performance.
Most critically, a model of continuous training and upskilling is required to keep technicians current, with a major focus on high-voltage safety. With demand for fleet technicians growing, panelists stressed the need for early and ongoing training. Panelists recommended adding support to high schools and colleges like Bronx Community College (BCC), to effectively integrate EV curriculum and keep up with the needs of the sector.
Stormwater Resilience: A Critical Emerging Workforce
Stormwater resilience — the systems and jobs that protect New York City from flooding — is a critical emerging category, especially as extreme weather events grow more frequent and intense.
Challenges include:
Current training faces significant roadblocks: Outdated civil service titles don't align with the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) skills needed for modern systems, and there's a lack of future-oriented planning that incorporates data like 2050 flood maps. A crucial line for job growth is being missed due to a lack of funding for O&M and emergency preparedness.
Moving forward:
Any solution in stormwater resilience needs to be grounded in an approach that recognizes and resources communities’ existing resilience. Many residents are already doing this work informally and could benefit from increased funding and more formalized jobs for their existing efforts.
The panel also called for revamping civil service titles to reflect current technical needs, creating clear apprenticeship pipelines for urban technical jobs, and better aligning major infrastructure projects with local hiring. The panel pointed to national models like D.C. Water's local hiring for inspiration.
O&M is a major area of need, and innovative training tools like VR, GIS, and AI models will be essential to prepare the workforce for this complex, high-stakes sector.
Looking Ahead at a Green Skills Future
The overall takeaway from the 2025 Green Skills Summit is clear: while the challenges facing New York City's workforce are systemic, the path forward is paved with actionable solutions. The focus must now be on initiating deep coordination across all sectors, implementing continuous learning models, and prioritizing effective communication that frames the transition in terms of community value and economic opportunity.