Fred Underwood of Underwood Solar Future checks on a solar energy system that he installed at a home in Apollo. (Photo by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)
Green energy could be the future.
by Matt Petras, PublicSource
Martin Rafanan, a retired Evangelical Lutheran Church minister, spent decades as an organizer of primarily Black low-wage workers in the St. Louis area. After moving to the Hill District in 2018, Rafanan’s attention remained focused on social justice.
“During most of my work, I haven’t been paying as much attention to the environment as I think probably I should have,” Rafanan said. “So over the past couple years, been doing a little more to learn more, be educated and to kind of take small steps in the neighborhood.”
These small steps include Rafanan and his wife shepherding an Audubon Certified Backyard Habitat, turning it into a sanctuary for birds, butterflies and other embattled creatures. The Rafanans also want to have solar panels installed on their house. But when Rafanan researched local installers, he realized a problem: It’s difficult to find a local installer of solar panels that is minority-owned or has diverse employees.
“This is an area that hopefully will grow substantially in the coming years,” Rafanan said. “And what’s the participation of persons of color in this industry? It just was interesting to me.”
Black people are underrepresented in the Pittsburgh area’s renewable energy sector, just as they are across the United States. Still, the region is home to people of color working to fix this issue as activists, educators and workers.
There’s an awareness of this issue in the Pittsburgh region, and there are initiatives in place to help address it. However, those who work on this issue readily admit it’s complicated. Because of how important the green energy sector will likely be in the future, including people of color and other marginalized groups is a high-stakes concern.
What does green energy diversity look like locally?
Black people accounted for about 9.7% of Pennsylvaia’s clean energy sector despite accounting for 11.6% of the state’s population in 2020, according to the 2021 Pennsylvania Clean Energy Employment Report. Asians, Hispanics and Latinos are represented in the clean energy sector just as well if not better than their proportion in the state’s total workforce, the report shows, but a September 2021 report from E2, a national environmental advocacy group, noted that the job gains for Hispanic or Latino people “have been largely in lower-wage energy occupations such as construction labor.”
Women make up only 22.6% of the state’s clean energy sector, despite making up roughly half of the state’s population.
Joylette Portlock works as the executive director for the nonprofit group Sustainable Pittsburgh and serves on the advisory board of The Black Environmental Collective. She explains that the problem is the result of several different systemic issues, including lack of access to transportation and child care for individuals seeking training.
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