In a packed room on day two of the 2024 Boston Globe Summit, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey joined Globe climate reporter Sabrina Shankman in a 30-minute discussion on building the climate workforce.

They were introduced by Jim Hunt, the executive vice president for Corporate Relations and Sustainability for Eversource Energy, this year’s Globe Summit presenting sponsor and New England’s largest energy delivery company and a clean energy provider for the region.

Healey, who campaigned on climate awareness and promoting a transition to clean energy in 2022, has made climate policy a key focus of her efforts in her first year of office. 

In her tenure, she has overseen the continued development of offshore wind energy in Massachusetts of which the state is a national leader. However, it hasn’t been a perfect road toward carbon neutrality, as state legislatures also failed to pass a climate bill supported by her administration that would have streamlined climate infrastructure build-out late this summer.

“Gov. Healy is one of those folks that really gets it,” Hunt said. “We’ve worked with her administration to advance these policies on clean energy, energy efficiency, and innovation … to make sure that we’re bringing good-paying, green jobs to our community.”

After playing a short promotional video for Eversource, the panel between Healey and Shankman began with a discussion of the clean energy jobs market. 

Despite Massachusetts’ large clean energy workforce in comparison to other states, a safety report from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center found that the state would need to add 38,000 more clean energy jobs to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, Shankman said.

“We’ve treated that challenge as an opportunity,” Healey said. “It’s a huge opportunity for economic development and for real growth in our labor workers.”

Healey said that “the clean energy industry is thriving in Massachusetts,” but that in order for the state to reach its goals, expansion of the climate workforce is needed to actualize that infrastructure.

“We know that [the] workforce is really key to this. And my view is, as we compete against other states, other countries, whoever figures out this workforce component first wins,” Healey said. “We know that the heroes, really, of the clean energy development machine are going to be the electricians, the installers, the innovators. And we’ve got to grow that pipeline.” 

But that growth is coming soon according to Healey, as her administration unveiled workforce training program grants after her appearance at the Summit.

“Tomorrow, we are going to be announcing $16 million for workforce development and small businesses,” Healey said. “Is there more to do? Of course. But, I view us in Massachusetts as competing. We all know where we need to go.”

Healey said that growing the workforce not only comes from being able to supply workers for necessary energy jobs but also attracting companies like Eversouce, which is based in Boston, to make Massachusetts the center of their operations.

“We are number one in the country in education and in innovation, and that’s going to help us attract more of these companies who want to invest in the world of Massachusetts,” Healey said.

Healey concluded the talk by discussing the way to justly transition away from fossil fuel industries and what to do with workers whose jobs will no longer exist in a state running primarily on clean energy sources.

“We will keep labor at the table for all of [these discussions] because there are folks who have been working in fossil fuel industries who have incredible skills and talents that need to be transferred now to renewable industries and clean energy industries,” Healey said.

Hunt then returned to the podium to deliver closing remarks to the crowd.

He told The Beacon in a post-panel interview that Boston offers unique opportunities to students and those looking to enter the climate workforce under Healey.

“I think for Emerson students in particular you’re blessed to be here in Boston where we really are at the epic center of climate tech and innovation,” Hunt said. 

He said that Eversource, which is nationally recognized as a leader in energy efficiency programming, works with Emerson and other large institutions like universities and hospitals to help them achieve their decarbonization goals largely through energy optimization. 

“That could be through small changes like lighting retrofits to bigger air source heat pump installations, all the way to electrification,” Hunt said.

Emerson Sustainability continues to work to help Emerson fulfill its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, and the city of Boston, Massachusetts, as well as public university partners like UMass Boston, have made commitments to reach the same goal by 2050.

Healey told The Beacon that the state should continue to support and fund institutional efforts to increase carbon neutrality.

“What I can do as governor is continue to force and press on decarbonization of our big buildings, of our transportation system [and] of housing,” Healey said in an interview. “That’s how we can be part of this.”

“Also making sure that the institutions have a pipeline of students [is important],” Healey said. “Which is why we’re investing so much in clean energy apprenticeships and training in high school so that when kids get to college, they actually are able to further develop their [climate] education.”

Shankman told The Beacon that educating the public on climate change is a major responsibility journalists have.

“One of our biggest roles as almost as a public service is explaining to people what they’re seeing around them and how climate change is touching their lives and also not exaggerating it,” Shankman said. “It’s a mix of both needing to inform and also being accountable to ourselves to make sure we’re painting an accurate picture of what’s coming.”

Shankman’s beat has been climate change for 15 years and she has seen attention and resources devoted to covering climate grow over that time.

“I would say it’s changed completely. Both in terms of the number of journalists who are focusing specifically on climate change and in the support from publications,” Shankman said. “The next big frontier is getting climate change across all the beats so that everybody’s writing climate no matter whether you’re a religion reporter, or a politics reporter, or a sports reporter.”