When the nonprofit Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) began tracking where financial incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act were spurring clean energy manufacturing growth and jobs nationwide, Zach Amittay figured Virginia would snag the top slot in the Southeast.

So he was startled that the state has consistently lagged behind South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia since E2 began its research after the IRA became law in August 2022.

“Overall, Virginia pales in comparison to its neighbors, especially those farther South,” said Amittay, Southeast advocate for E2. “And that’s kind of an irony considering how Virginia’s framework for clean energy policies is driving demand for solar, electric vehicles, battery storage and offshore wind.”

Through April, companies have announced at least 305 major clean energy projects in 40 states and Puerto Rico, according to data E2 has gathered. Those projects are tied to 105,400-plus jobs and more than $123 billion in capital investments.

Of those 305 projects, just four — two connected to offshore wind, one to hydrogen and one to modernizing the electrical grid — have Virginia connections. 

Meanwhile, Georgia has lured 27 projects, South Carolina, 24, and North Carolina, 19. 

“North and South Carolina and Georgia are doing everything in their power to attract companies,” Amittay said. “They’re launching a full-court press by recruiting, offering state incentives and reducing tax liabilities. It shows they recognize this is the future of the economy and they want to be a part of that.”

E2, a national, nonpartisan group of investors, business leaders and professionals, launched its research project to bring more clarity to the IRA allocation process.

“For the average layperson, it’s inscrutable,” Amittay said. “We figured we could dedicate staff time to aggregating information and making it more digestible.”

Virginia has its share of success stories but needs to double down on efforts to entice more manufacturers that are part of the renewable energy supply chain, he noted. Deploying solar panels and wind turbines is only half of the clean energy equation.

“When it comes to attracting investments, the state is missing out by doing the opposite and, it seems, pushing them away.”

Christian Martinez, spokesman for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, countered that take.

He pointed to the administration’s 2022 all-of-the-above Energy Plan as underscoring Virginia’s commitment to being a premier business location while also recognizing energy as a crucial productivity driver.

Without citing specifics, Martinez noted that Youngkin “looks forward to sharing details on several economic development opportunities … when they are ready.”

Rejecting EV battery plant set wrong tone

While state leaders can’t control company whims, Amittay and other clean energy advocates do directly blame Youngkin for nixing a proposal by Ford Motor Co. in late 2022 to build a plant to manufacture electric vehicle batteries on an industrial site in Pittsylvania County on the North Carolina border.

The automaker’s decision to partner with a Chinese company posed too high of a security risk, Youngkin said at the time.

“Virginians should be wary of Chinese communist intrusion into Virginia’s economy,” he said at his January 2023 State of the Commonwealth address, directing legislators to “send me a bill to prohibit dangerous foreign entities tied to the CCP from purchasing Virginia’s farmland.”

Youngkin’s concerns about China’s influence in this country could have been navigated so Virginia’s opportunity for the battery facility didn’t go up in smoke, Amittay said.

“At the time, he was trying to establish a national brand because he had bigger political ambitions,” he said about Youngkin’s presidential aspirations.

In February 2023, Ford announced that the battery plant would be built in Marshall, Michigan.

That loss not only hurt Virginia, Amittay said, but also cued companies that the state might be wary of rolling out the welcome mat to clean energy innovation.

Martinez said Youngkin’s concerns “that the Chinese Communist Party aims to dominate the world at the expense of the United States” were validated when Ford said last November it was scaling back its Michigan plans.

However, Ford explained it was curbing production capacity and employment expectations in Marshall — from 2,500 jobs 1,700 jobs — because of rising labor costs and consumers’ hesitancy to shift to electric vehicles.

IRA a magnet for hydrogen, wind, grid upgrade 

At its core, the Inflation Reduction Act is a massive package that dedicates $369 billion over 10 years to clean energy innovation via tax credits, rebates and other incentives. Many of its programs are designed to boost domestic manufacturing jobs as the country transitions away from fossil fuels.

The latter is a signal to stateside and international businesses, Amittay said, that the United States is serious about tamping down the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are causing climate change.

Thus far, the pull of the IRA’s promise has convinced four companies, Hitachi Energy, Fugro, Lyon Shipyard and Topsoe, to either expand or put down roots in Virginia, according to E2’s database.

Topsoe, a Danish company that focuses on emissions reduction technology, is the latest entrant.

In mid-April, it released plans to spend $400 million on a factory in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond, to manufacture specialized solid oxide electrolyzer cells essential for producing green hydrogen. It would employ 150.

While Topsoe has started the permitting and design process, company spokesman Gabriel Martinez said no timeline is set yet.

“The final investment decision will be dependent on market demand and regulatory developments,” he said, adding that the green hydrogen would be produced by Topsoe’s customers, not on-site in Virginia.

If built, Topsoe’s largest U.S. investment would be eligible for up to $136 million in IRA incentives, Gabriel Martinez said.

Another European company, Fugro, is in the midst of bumping up the workforce at its Americas Center of Expertise for Offshore Wind in Norfolk. The Dutch geo-data business first landed in Virginia in 2007 when it was hired to help expand nearby Portsmouth’s Craney Island Marine Terminal operated by the state Port Authority.

A few years later, Fugro began pivoting to offshore wind as possibilities for the industry took shape in coastal Virginia and beyond, said Peter Tattersfield, who directs wind business development in the Americas.

Dominion Energy is on the verge of beginning offshore construction on its 176-turbine wind farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. At peak capacity, it will generate 2.6 gigawatts of power.

Fugro deploys specialized equipment such as buoys, sensors and robots to capture information about water currents, wind speeds, wave heights and soil types to create detailed maps of the ocean floor and the surrounding maritime environment. Scientists also study sea mammal and fish habitat.

“Wind developers need to know what they’re building their turbines on and where they should be installing cables,” Tattersfield said. “Basically, we build an earth model so they can feel confident about their projects.”

Fugro will steadily add professional jobs to keep pace with the Biden administration’s goal of achieving 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, he said. The company isn’t in line to receive IRA money directly. Instead, business will grow as more and more wind developers take advantage of generous IRA incentives.

“Our industry is still in its infancy, but we’re strategically positioned in Virginia,” Tattersfield said. “A wind developer is like a general contractor who has all the incentives to get the house built. If he’s successful, then all the subcontractors are pulled along toward success too.”

Relatedly, Norfolk-based Lyon Shipyard announced last fall that it would be spending $8.5 million to increase its capacity so it can provide a range of services for the commercial ships and vessels that attend to offshore wind farms. The ship repair company, active along the Elizabeth River since 1928, expects to add 134 jobs.

Meanwhile, Hitachi Energy is investing $37 million to add 26,000 square feet of production space to its power transformer building in Halifax County to support the manufacture of bigger transformers specifically designed for utility and renewable energy markets.

Transformers are a crucial piece of grid resiliency because they stabilize voltage to ensure power flows efficiently and reliably.

Steve McKinney, the head of Hitachi’s transformer business in North America, said he expects the addition to the existing 607,000 square foot plant in South Boston to be online by the end of 2025. Hitachi will hire 165 employees to its current on-site workforce of 450.

McKinney said there’s a “good possibility” Hitachi would tap into IRA incentives to offset equipment costs, but didn’t yet know a dollar figure.

The Virginia investment is just a tiny slice of the $1.5 billion Hitachi is pouring into its transformer capacity globally as demand for electricity explodes because of the growth of everything from data centers to electric vehicles.

“A lot of the grid network was built decades ago, and it’s time to upgrade,” he said. “Who would have thought five years ago we would be having this conversation about this level of investment in clean energy provided by the IRA?”

Can Virginia catch up?

“We’re still in the early innings, but this is going to be transformational for the U.S.,” Amittay said about IRA infusions. “It’s complicated because there are a lot of technical details, a lot of agencies involved and some funding programs haven’t been rolled out yet.”

Despite those hurdles nationwide, Kim Jemaine, Virginia director for Advanced Energy United, isn’t confident that Youngkin has the will or the wherewithal to catch up with other states in the Southeast.

Her organization represents businesses intent on accelerating a clean energy transition.

In her eyes, the governor has spent too much time undermining the Virginia Clean Economy Act and promoting far-off energy sources such as small modular nuclear reactors.

“By touting an all-of-the-above policy, he’s missing research and development and manufacturing opportunities in other investment spaces,” Jemaine said. “What about batteries and long-term storage? There’s a ton of untapped potential there.”

She’s also worried that some of the initial excitement about transforming the Hampton Roads region into an offshore wind hub has fizzled since Youngkin took office in 2022. That political landscape means it’s easier for existing companies to expand than for new ones to move in.

With so much ground to make up, Amittay agreed, waiting around isn’t an option.

“We all know that the best time to plant a tree is 30 years ago, but the next best time is today. It’s time for Virginia to think about how it can plant some trees.”

Advocates see missed opportunities as Virginia lags its neighbors in clean energy manufacturing is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by Alli Gold Roberts, senior director for state policy at Ceres. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

As the harmful economic and financial effects of climate change become increasingly clear, investors and companies around the world are rapidly adjusting their business models — not just to reduce the risk and their exposure to climate catastrophes, but to capitalize on the industries of the future. 

That’s why, across the U.S. and in Colorado, businesses and investors are doubling down to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in innovative and sustainable clean technologies. And as that technology has advanced to make it easier and more advantageous for companies to cut their pollution, policymakers at both the state and federal level have worked to incentivize exactly these kinds of investments — to ensure their economies benefit from this windfall as they build for the future. 

In Colorado, we have seen officials take bold policy action to accelerate the adoption of clean electricity, clean transportation, clean buildings, clean appliances, and even clean lawn tools — an impressive suite of policies that have helped the state keep pace with other national climate leaders. Now the state has an opportunity to trailblaze in another sector of the economy, one that has so far lagged in pollution reduction: heavy industry and manufacturing. 

Under Colorado’s ambitious climate and environmental justice laws, the state is required to slash climate pollution from industrial sources — like factories and plants — by 2030. To achieve that goal, policymakers are in the process of crafting what will be a first-in-the-nation regulatory program: Phase II of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy Management for Manufacturers, otherwise known as GEMM II, will be adopted later this year and go into effect as soon as next year. 

At a time when cleaner products are growing their competitive advantage in the global marketplace, GEMM II gives the state a real chance to be at the vanguard of clean manufacturing. But to reap the economic benefits promised by this transition, Colorado must get the policy right. 

The sustainability nonprofit I work with, Ceres, partners with companies and investors to capture the economic benefits of clean energy and reduce the financial risks of climate change. Having done this work for more than 30 years, Ceres has developed a robust understanding of how public policy can best help the private sector achieve these goals so that they can benefit entire state economies. Even companies that are not part of the manufacturing sector have a strong interest in reducing emissions from within it, because they often rely on its products — from microchips to glass bottles — within their supply chains and know they cannot fully clean up their own operations without policy support. 

That is why Ceres recently submitted a letter to state officials outlining what we believe are the best ways to successfully achieve the goals of GEMM II. Chief among them is simplicity. Colorado is on the clock to meet its climate goals, and 2030 is coming up fast. Policy clarity is essential to helping manufacturers prepare.  

This is not the time to introduce complex programs that essentially allow manufacturers to keep polluting at the same rate. Instead, GEMM II should prioritize rules that directly reduce climate pollution from manufacturing sites, encouraging them to adopt innovative yet proven technologies that will achieve the program’s goals while better positioning industry to thrive into the future. 

The GEMM II program must also strongly favor solutions that reduce not only pollution that harms the climate, but also air pollution that harms people and often comes from the same sources. Air pollution is a serious issue in its own right, causing increased rates of heart disease, lung disease, and other serious health problems in nearby communities. Almost all of the facilities that would fall under the GEMM 2 policy are located in communities that currently suffer from disproportionately high levels of pollution. Beyond its health effects, the threat of air pollution to their health and livelihood is also a drag on local economies. In addition, Colorado law requires that these communities must benefit from GEMM II — and reducing their exposure to toxic pollution is a clear benefit.  

While GEMM II may sound like a challenge to some manufacturers, it should be better understood as an opportunity. New incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act and other recent federal climate investments, as well as state tax credits and grant programs for the industrial sector, have made it more feasible for manufacturers to clean up their operations. What’s more, they have also sparked a rush of investor and corporate interest in clean manufacturing, and a number of success stories as industry leaders move to embrace clean solutions. 

We urge Colorado policymakers to seize this momentum and help manufacturers capture the swelling interest by adopting the most ambitious version of GEMM II possible. This is a chance to set a gold-standard policy that will make the state’s industrial sector more competitive, its climate goals more achievable, its air cleaner, its communities healthier, and its economy better positioned for the decades ahead. 

Commentary: Colorado can lead the nation in clean industry — if it gets the policy right  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Auto industry jobs are returning to Ohio’s Mahoning Valley with the growth of a fledgling electric vehicle manufacturing cluster.

Now, local leaders are taking steps to make sure there will be enough qualified workers to fill those new positions.

Youngstown State University is hosting a virtual job fair Wednesday for the region’s emerging electric vehicle, energy storage and other tech companies, as well as other employers. The school is also launching a “skills accelerator” program to help train workers.

Despite decades of layoffs, Ohio still ranks second only to Michigan in jobs making automotive parts and third nationwide in jobs for manufacturing motor vehicles. Some jobs in the electric vehicle industry will resemble those for fuel-powered cars. Others will be dramatically different.

“There is not repetitive work in our environment,” said Tom Gallagher, chief operating officer at Ultium Cells, a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution, which is set to open a battery factory in Warren next year. He spoke at a June 7 panel that was part of Green Energy Ohio’s 2021 Electric Vehicle Tour. 

Work with raw materials at the front end of the process requires an understanding of chemistry. Battery assembly will take place in an automated clean-room environment. Gallagher said the company is seeking employees who can work with programmable logic controllers and handle troubleshooting and other aspects of automation. That demands skills in STEM fields — science, engineering, technology and math.

“You may not necessarily need an advanced degree, but you need more than a high school diploma,” said Jennifer Oddo, who heads Youngstown State University’s division of workforce education and innovation. In January, the Department of Energy announced a $1 million project to help Youngstown State and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory set up an energy storage workforce training center. Labor unions also will play a role.

“The IBEW is really excited to be part of this transition to green energy,” said longtime Local 573 member Dave Bush. The union already has apprenticeships for work in solar, wind and other clean energy fields. As the electric vehicle industry grows in the area, more apprenticeship opportunities will be available, he said.

The Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce is actively recruiting more companies in the supply chain. BRITE Energy Innovators has a growing e-mobility practice. And auto parts maker Aptiv has an electric vehicle charging research center in the area.

History of innovation, and loss

“Historically, we’ve made stuff here,” said Rick Stockburger, president and CEO at BRITE Energy Innovators. “We’ve been innovating and creating here for a long time.”

The first Packard automobile rolled onto Warren’s streets in 1899. The state has a long history in electric vehicles as well, including Cleveland’s Baker electric cars and Toledo’s Millburn Light Electric vehicles.

“Up until probably 1911 or so, 80% of all the cars on the road were either electric or steam,” said John Lutsch, program and marketing manager for the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland. “Just like today, you could simply push a button and go.”

Gasoline-powered cars became dominant only after a plunge in the price of gasoline, the debut of the electric starter to replace the hand crank, and various other innovations that would spawn an industry that employed thousands in Michigan and Ohio.

“I was born around the time the steel mills started closing, and things were basically on a decline,” said Todd Johnson, pastor at Warren’s historic Second Baptist Church, who moderated the Green Energy Ohio panel. “Quite frankly, that’s probably affected the mentality and the outlook and even the verbiage in the way we talk about the valley. We’ve probably talked more about what we’ve lost, as opposed to what initiatives or opportunities might be a gain to us.”

Starting in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube, Jones and Laughlin, and U.S. Steel shut down steel plants. The next two decades also brought layoffs and other woes to the auto industry. The Big Three automakers’ financial woes came to a head in the first decade of this century. Despite a federal bailout and millions in state tax incentives, GM closed its Lordstown Cruze plant in 2019. All those developments had ripple effects throughout the area.

Poverty rates for Trumbull and Mahoning counties before the COVID-19 pandemic began were about 15% and 18%, respectively. As of April, corresponding unemployment rates were 6.7% and 6.8%, putting them in the top four counties statewide.  

Bridging skills gaps

In addition to local colleges, Mahoning Valley’s location near major thoroughfares puts it within an hour of universities in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Akron. But problems remain in recruiting.

“The workforce that I’m being presented does not reflect that of the community that resides here,” Ultium Cells’ Gallagher said, noting that he faces a lack of African American, Hispanic and women candidates. “I need to change what I’m doing to attract them.”

One problem is a skills gap. Another problem is that many young adults “don’t see the hope of what our parents experienced 50 years ago,” Johnson said.

“The digital divide is real, along with race and socioeconomic lines,” Johnson said. About 95% of teens nationwide have access to a smartphone. Yet many teens and adults in his community don’t know the basics for “productive” use of technology, such as attaching a resume to an email.

Many skills still need to be taught, Youngstown State’s Oddo said. “We’re going to be offering some free industry certifications for our youth who are interested in the jobs, for those who need just a little bit more technology experience and exposure to gain those digital skills.”

Training for people who already lost good-paying jobs presents added challenges. Those with families and mortgages may already have taken one or two other low-pay jobs to help their families survive, Johnson noted. Paid apprenticeships can help, but families may still need funding to help through the transition. At the other end of the spectrum are people who would lose public assistance if they earned more than a menial wage.

“There’s a cliff involved when you do try to work,” Johnson said. Without subsidized housing, food assistance or other benefits, some families wind up with only a tiny amount or even less than before. Policies need to be reformed, he said. “This population of people are a missing workforce.”

Meanwhile, the vision for “Voltage Valley” won’t magically transform into a field of dreams. Indeed, Lordstown Motors announced June 8 that its electric pickup truck business will likely fail without another major infusion of capital.

“We’re in a hyper-competitive environment. So to say, ‘We have available space and a desire to want to succeed; we’ll see how it goes’ is not a strategy for success,” Gallagher said. The region will have to demonstrate good value propositions to investors. And speed to market matters. “Our abilities to make investments and go to revenue mode as quickly as possible are critically important.”

State policy also sends a message as companies consider investments, BRITE’s Stockburger said. Recent legislative moves supported utilities and fossil fuel interests, discouraged renewable energy growth, and now threaten further growth in Ohio’s solar and wind industries.

“We need to make sure that government gets out of the way” so that Ohio’s clean energy industries can flourish, Stockburger said. “We make sure that the playing field is level.”

Ohio’s ‘Voltage Valley’ looks to develop workforce for electric vehicle industry is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

PAINTSVILLE, Ky. — A high-tech manufacturing training center in this eastern Kentucky town is widely regarded as a singular success story of federal support for revitalizing Appalachian coal country. 

The 40,000-square-foot training center here in Johnson County, shaded by the 80-foot highwall of a reclaimed abandoned coal mine, is the home of eKentucky Advanced Manufacturing Institute. In 2016 and 2017, the newly organized institute was awarded two grants totaling $3.5 million from the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization grant program. AMLER is a $115-million-a-year federal program supporting projects that produce new jobs on or adjacent to reclaimed abandoned mines. 

eKAMI, as it’s known, has run with that idea. The nonprofit institute has trained nearly 200 eastern Kentucky workers — most of them men, many of them laid-off coal miners — since its first class graduated in 2018. During the 15-week course, which also is supported by a separate federal grant, students learn to program and operate digital machining tools and autonomous robots. eKAMI’s students graduate to $28- to $32-per-hour jobs in the thriving Middle Atlantic intelligent manufacturing sector. The nonprofit group itself employs 8 people. 

eKAMI has established such a credible track record that it won $6.4 million more in AMLER grants in 2018 and 2020 to build and staff a similar training center 40 miles west at the medium-security Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in Morgan County, the state’s largest prison.

“Manufacturers are seeking a talented workforce. They’re here recruiting even before our classes graduate,” said Kathy Walker, a former coal industry executive who founded eKAMI in 2015. “Our waiting lists are long. We have a lot of people who want to work. It takes courage to flip the switch from mining to 21st-century advanced manufacturing. But they find out they can do it.”

Yet even as it is recognized in Washington and Frankfort — Kentucky’s capital — as a champion Appalachian job developer, eKAMI also illustrates the complexity and challenge of developing 21st-century economies in regions so heavily influenced by 20th-century fuels. Producing good jobs and revitalizing regional economies is exceptionally difficult. More money is just a start. 

“If you just look at the dynamics of what’s going on at eKAMI in terms of trying to build a new economy in eastern Kentucky, what’s happening is they’re training an able workforce and then shipping them out,” said Peter Hille, president of the Mountain Association, a nonprofit community economic development group in Berea. “That’s another form of extraction, right? The solution has to be really broad and integrated. The pieces have to knit together so that they build on each other.”

Walker notes that her primary goal is to recruit an advanced manufacturer to settle in Paintsville, or other small eastern Kentucky towns where reclaimed minelands qualify for AMLER grants. Buford Owens, an eKAMI instructor who worked for 30 years as an underground coal miner before he was laid off in 2017, added that while most graduates commute out of the region for jobs in northern Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, they typically return home on weekends. 

“That’s wages that are circulating in towns around here. It’s helping the area,” he said. 

Still, the larger point that Hille raised is relevant, just as it’s been for more than half a century. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty and created the Appalachian Regional Commission to direct tens of billions of dollars to various job creation and development initiatives in 13 states from western New York to Mississippi. Eastern Kentucky’s efficient and scenic highway network, which ended the region’s transportation isolation, is one measure of the commission’s effectiveness. But Census data also shows that eastern Kentucky counties, including Johnson County, are entangled by poverty rates that are more than twice the national average.

Joe Biden is the latest U.S. president to direct Johnson’s poverty-fighting goal to job creation on ruined industrial landscapes. President Jimmy Carter first introduced the concept in 1977 when he signed the bill that has spent $7 billion so far to reclaim Appalachia’s abandoned coal mines. Carter signed a second bill in 1980 that authorized a total of $5 billion spent to date for cleaning up the nation’s Superfund toxic chemical sites. 

President George H.W. Bush approved the environmental cleanup program for the nation’s nuclear weapons plants in the late 1980s, which now spends almost $7 billion annually. In the early 1990s, President Bill Clinton approved the Pentagon’s even larger program to rid installations of chemical wastes and other toxic hazards. 

Shortly after taking office, Biden signed an executive order that promised to help rural regions move past their dependence on fossil energy markets, and his administration has identified $37.9 billion in existing federal grant and loan accounts, including AMLER, to meet its job creation and revitalization goals.  

The economic logic behind big land restoration programs is pretty clear. A study published in May by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts calculated that every $1 million spent on reclaiming abandoned mines generates eight direct and indirect jobs.

The Abandoned Mine Lands Economic Revitalization grant program embraces those data points and advances them in several steps. It asks private businesses and local governments to collaborate on projects that join mineland restoration with job-producing results beyond earth removal and grading. Since it was established in 2016, with heavy lifting by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican of Kentucky and former chair of the House Appropriations Committee, the AMLER program has authorized $655 million in grants in six coal-producing states and for three tribes. Kentucky’s share so far is $140 million.

According to Kentucky authorities, 55 projects in 21 counties have been selected for AMLER grants; $42 million has been spent to date and $79 million more has been approved. Grantees, according to the state, “have projected over 4,000 jobs.” But neither the state nor the Department of Interior has conducted a formal assessment of the accuracy of that number.

Kentucky’s AMLER projects, like those in the five other Appalachian states, are typically small, scattered, and hard to find, just like the towns where they are located in the state’s heavily forested and steep Appalachian region. 

State authorities, who review applications for the federal grants, cite other successful projects that fall into two basic categories.

The first is assistance to build industrial parks and to help recruit new industries. For instance, Perry County won a $6.5 million grant in 2018 to add capacity to Dajcor Aluminum’s plant in the Coalfields Regional Industrial Park. The industrial park had already benefited from a $900,000 AMLER grant in 2017 for a natural gas service pipeline. The Canadian company has added 31 employees since December, according to the state.

The second category seeks to grow a new rural Appalachian economy from the natural and cultural resources at hand — reclaimed minelands, recovering forests, ample farmland, and eastern Kentucky’s intriguing history and mining culture.

A rails-to-trails project, for instance, opened this spring on a former coal railroad corridor in Prestonsburg with the help of a $1.95 million AMLER grant awarded in 2016. It serves as a foundation of the developing recreational economy in the town of 3,250 residents.

The developers of the Wilds of Emily Creek have applied for a $3.5 million AMLER grant to turn 7,000 acres of forest and reclaimed minelands into an ecotourism attraction on former mine sites in Martin and Pike counties. The project has already gained a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to control invasive plants. 

“We’ve got a big canvas here to work with,” said Kenneth Van Hoose, who manages the project. “We’ll take our time to make this a place people want to visit.” 

AMLER grants in the five other coal-mining states of the East are invested in similar projects promoting the reclaimed landscape. In southwest Virginia, Project Thoroughbred, a grain processing plant meant to bolster a nascent malted barley economy in coal country and generate 50 jobs, was awarded a $2 million AMLER grant in 2019.

The largest AMLER grant in Kentucky, $12.5 million, was awarded in 2016 to the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation, a nonprofit development group, to build an 80,000-square-foot wildlife center on abandoned minelands in Bell County, in the southeast corner of the state. That project, Boone’s Ridge, has evolved into a $56 million, 12,000-acre recreation destination that is under construction. The foundation has benefited from two other federal rural grants and loan programs — $3.1 million from the Appalachian Regional Commission for constructing infrastructure and $23 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Frank Allen, the foundation’s chair, projects that when it is completed in May 2023, Boone’s Ridge will be capable of employing almost 250 staff members and attracting 1 million visitors a year. But Allen has $10 million more to raise. 

“This is really hard work in this region,” he said. “There is only so much the federal government can do. I’ve learned the hard way. Investors would much rather go into urban environments.”

Few regions of the country know the “hard way” more intimately than eastern Kentucky. As recently as the early 1990s, eastern Kentucky mines produced 130 million tons of coal annually. Last year it was under 10 million tons, according to federal figures. Thousands of abandoned mines await reclamation, according to the Interior Department. In 1950, eastern Kentucky mines employed nearly 70,000 miners. Just over 2,000 miners are working now. 

eKAMI’s lengthy waiting list for students seeking training reflects that number. “These are new collar workers,” said Kathy Walker, the founder. “We need to train them in mass. Much more than we are capable of doing now. I can tell you, manufacturers have jobs waiting for them.”

In the shadow of a reclaimed mine, this Kentucky center is retraining coal workers for high-tech manufacturing is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.